I have many duplicates of songs in Library, Original and Lossless. If I choose to delete original song, will I retain "proof of ownership?"

Hi Bill,

The basis answer is Yes -- all the songs you've bought over the years will still be in your Purchase history, and you'll be able to download them again if you want to.

I guess I hesitate a little bit in saying this, because it does depend on the songs still being available in the iTunes Store. I'm not aware of cases where music has been removed from the store, but I would guess this is a possibility, since the whole thing depends on Apple maintaining contractual relationships with the copyright holders, etc. Neil Young, for example, recently pulled his music from online streaming services, I think. So anything could happen.

I hope this helps answer the question.

Why are you making lossless copies? Unless this is for a specific task such as audio editing there is no point in doing it. Any quality lost during the original encode will not be regained through lossless conversion. It will only make the file larger.

I believe converted copies will not have the "purchased by" information that you see when you get info on a track i iTunes and show summary. Not that that matters in terms of Apple having a record of purchases you have made, it's more a matter of convenience should you use multiple AppleIDs and want to know with which one a purchase is associated.

The highest quality is if the original file is in Apple Lossless, AIFF, or WAV format. The conversion of the original CD or master copy to one of those formats undergoes no loss. However, when Apple converts their original to AAC/M4A for sale in the Store there is irreversible loss and it is that lossy file you get. So no, burning the AAC file is not going to be as good to an audiophile as if you had started with the original lossless format, but converting the AAC to a lossless format first will not regain that quality, it will only result in a file that is larger but the same quality as the original lossy AAC with which you had to work.

Summary: There is no point in converting your purchases to lossless. If you really want the original CD quality you will have to either buy the physical CD or find an online vendor who deals in lossless format files (tends to not be as wide a selection).

You're welcome. Incidentally, you can only click "solved" on one post (you had already done it for richard grant's post), "helped" on two posts, and you can't change them after they have been done.