Purchased songs not downloading into iTunes library

If it's not showing in the Purchased section for downloading then have you checked to see if you've hidden it : Hide and unhide purchases in iTunes or iBooks on your Mac or PC - Apple Support ?

So the album is showing in the Purchased section, but only in the 'All' section not under 'Not In My Library' ? The album's tracks aren't listed (without a cloud icon) in the My Music section of your library - if they are, then even if you no longer have the actual music files on your computer iTunes will see them there and assume that you have them somewhere and that there is therefore no need to be able to redownload them.

Deauthorising an account on a different computer shouldn't make any difference. Does it show with a cloud icon against it for redownloading in My Music if (when viewing My Music) you select the View > Show iCloud Music Purchases :

Hi King Penguin, NealF,

I also cannot download already purchased music. But I differ from Neal in that the music IS in my 'not in my library' list.

I can't pin point when this problem began as some music was purchased a while back, perhaps over a year, and some were purchased via the mac and some via my iphone 5s.

I have up to date software on both, I have followed the apple advice of signing in, going to the 'not on my library' list, where I have 9 albums (or part albums). When I click the cloud with the downward arrow, it attempts it, and whizzes through each song until eventually an error message pops up saying "There was a problem downloading items... you do not have the privilege to make changes" or something like this, the error message stopped popping up after a few times.

I only have one apple ID and I have actually paid for the music!

Is there something wrong with iTunes, the computer, the internet settings? I have this great computer and no idea how to use it.

Please help before I put my foot through it and send apple the bill!

Thanks

The account that you are logged into on the Mac has read and write access on the folders where your iTunes library is stored/downloaded to ? By default on a Mac your library is stored under :

/Users/username/Music

Oh, no, my music folder is on a hard drive, not on the mac - very clever of you to realise. It is connected to the mac tho via usb!

I don't know how to find this path you wrote above anyways: Users/username/Music... is it via the 'finder' ?

My music is on the memory device HD-PCFU3/iTunes/iTunes music

I suspect you've hit the nail on the head but please can you tell me how to implement a solution?

Thank you

The Users/username/Music is found via Finder, if you are using an external drive I'm not sure where downloads are stored whilst they are being downloaded e.g. whether they will go to that folder before being moved to your external drive when they've completed downloading - to go to that folder in Finder do shift-command-g (or from the Go drop-down menu at the top of Finder select 'Go To Folder') and type (or copy-and-paste) '~/music' (without the quote marks ; the '~' is a shortcut for 'Users/Username')

To check and/or change the read/write properties you need to select/highlight the folder and do 'get-info' (command-I) and you should get a popup on which you can change them : OS X El Capitan: Set permissions for items on your Mac

Oh no, I followed your instructions, and it takes me to my music which is

Mac HD/Users/me/Music - I thought all my music was on my device. I'm so confused!

And yes, I do have read and write privilege!

actually my music itself isn't there, the 'iTunes music' folder is on the external device.

Is this mess mend able?

All that is in the mac/users/me/music folder is other meaningless folders like 'album artwork' and 'previous itunes libraries' which have small documents within, which i cant open...

Please help I really don't know what to do.

Wiggly

The users/account/Music directory is likely to exist whether your actual music is stored on the hard-drive or on your external drive, it contains some files that iTunes uses/maintains about your library. The 'previous itunes libraries' folder contains versions of your library form previous versions of iTunes - the .itl files are iTunes library files, effectively a database of the info that you see in iTunes : About iTunes library files - Apple Support.

If you are storing your music on an external drive then you need to look at the folders on that drive and make sure that your Mac account has write access to it (what I'm not sure about is how the downloads work e.g. whether they will be written directly to the external drive, or whether whilst downloading they are stored in the users/account/music folder and when the download has completed they are moved to the external drive).