10 November 2008

Purchased Songs Disappear From iPhone

Just recently I finally broke down and got an iPhone. My old Sony Ericcson T610 was konking out so it was time to buy a new phone anyway. So far I've been very happy with it, even the service from at&t has not been too bad. Being that my old phone was nearly eight years old, having a phone with newer, more easily accessible features is a nice change.

A couple weeks ago I purchased the new album from Ryan Adams and the Cardinals from iTunes on my iPhone. After listening to it for a week or so I sync'd my iPhone with my MacBook Pro only to realize that the entire album disappeared from both the iPhone and iTunes. Upon trying to download it again on my iPhone, I received an error stating that I had already downloaded it, am I sure I want to purchase it again? So I started Googling the problem and much to my amazement this seems to be a fairly widespread issue with the iPhone. I found many folks in the same predicament with no solution whatsoever. The only option is file an issue with Apple about it by selecting the purchase in my iTunes account and clicking a button named Report a Problem.

So far I have received nothing from Apple about the problem I reported and, sadly, I don't expect anything. My solution was to purchase the album a second time and make sure it was backed up by iTunes so I won't lose it again (hopefully).

Has anyone else experienced this and had the situation remedied by Apple in some way?

8 comments:

  1. Yes, I lost all the songs I downloaded directly to my iphone. The songs I downloaded onto iTunes on my computer are still here... For now.

    I just noticed this, so I haven't done any investigating yet.

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  2. I ordered Day and Age by the Killers today on my i phone , i then synced with I tunes Desktop and then on my drive to work noticed half the songs missing from my iphone...
    This is insane...

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  3. Sorry to revive this thread but this has just happened to me. I made a purchase several weeks ago, have done several syncs since and went to play a track last night. The artist is still listed on my library but there are no tracks listed.

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  4. And just in case anyone has this problem here is the Apple support page dedicated to this topic (And refunds I presume)

    http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact.html?form=music&topic=Music%20Purchases&subtopic=Lost%20or%20Missing%20Items

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  5. I also just lost all my music purchased via the iPhone after syncing with my Mac.. but I finally managed to get it back by doing the following:

    1. In iTunes, click your iPhone's name underneath 'DEVICES' on the left-hand panel

    2. On the page that now displays, select the tab 'Music' from the top of the page

    3. Tick the box next to 'Sync Music' (text in bold)

    4. Press button 'Apply' at the bottom-right of the screen

    That seemed to fix it! If you don't want to copy your whole music library over, try changing the settings on the last page, before ticking the 'Sync Music' box.

    Also please note I'm not using the very latest version of iTunes, so some stuff might have moved around for all I know.. If you don't see these options in the same place, you'll have to hunt around for them.

    Can't believe that a) Apple apparently aren't bothered about helping people with this, b) this seems to be a default behavior, to 'steal' all your music when you sync up, and not tell you why!! Anyone listening Apple?!

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  6. Over 1.5 years since last post in this thread and I have experienced the same problem recently. Luckliy, I only bought one song and it is still available on my Mac but lost on my iPhone on which I bought it.

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  7. Buy songs from AMAZON in future. I bought songs from both years ago 1/2 my APPLE SONGS are gone. I can still get my AMAZON songs. Alos when I have a problem I can always talk to sopmeone at AMAZON

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