Purchased iTunes music albums have vanished!

[Lennyvalentin]

Years and years ago, I bought a few albums to put on an Apple iPod Shuffle with a whopping 2GB of storage on it (this was the 2nd generation (IIRC) Shuffle with the large metal crocodile-style clip on the back.) The tracks mainly just sat in my account, as I never really used that Shuffle and instead got myself an iPhone 4 with Spotify.

Recently I've considered expanding my collection though so I can have some stuff stored on my Apple Watch and listen offline when I'm out walking without my phone, but to my dismay, all my music is gone from my itunes/icloud/whatever account.

I know it was all there as recently as maybe a year and a half ago when the new Apple Music launched, because iOS/Apple Music would hog the middle button click on the headphones remote and start playback from Apple Music instead of Spotify every time I hadn't used my phone for a while. To stop it from happening I was forced to nuke all the tracks stored in Apple Music off my phone.

So it seems that's the last I ever saw of those albums... If you remove music from within the Apple Music app is it actually wiped clean off of your iTunes account? Madness!

I don't suppose Apple refunds the purchase price either... *grumble grumble*

 

[chabig]

You can redownload purchased music in iTunes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201272

 

[Lennyvalentin]

You can redownload purchased music in iTunes.

Yes, I was looking there, and all that was listed was that bloody U2 album nobody asked for or wanted which Apple foisted on everyone a few years back. Other than that, completely empty.

Out of pure desperation, I went to "my account" section inside iTunes just now (since I had iTunes open already just to doublecheck I hadn't missed anything) and there was this tiny "hidden purchases" link there. Upon clicking it, my purchased albums reappeared, so now I'm like, WTF? Why did it hide my purchases? Why is it even POSSIBLE to hide purchases...?

And why wasn't there at least some indication in the purchased sections of the store that there were HIDDEN ALBUMS squirreled away somewhere else...?!

This is confusing and nuts. Dammit, iTunes sucks! I mean, I knew it sucks; I mean it REALLY SUCKS.

 

[Brenster]

Yes, I was looking there, and all that was listed was that bloody U2 album nobody asked for or wanted which Apple foisted on everyone a few years back. Other than that, completely empty.

Out of pure desperation, I went to "my account" section inside iTunes just now (since I had iTunes open already just to doublecheck I hadn't missed anything) and there was this tiny "hidden purchases" link there. Upon clicking it, my purchased albums reappeared, so now I'm like, WTF? Why did it hide my purchases? Why is it even POSSIBLE to hide purchases...?

And why wasn't there at least some indication in the purchased sections of the store that there were HIDDEN ALBUMS squirreled away somewhere else...?!

This is confusing and nuts. Dammit, iTunes sucks! I mean, I knew it sucks; I mean it REALLY SUCKS.

I feel your pain. I had to go in and ‘unhide’ music I’d bought in 2014 to download it onto my iPhone X (Beatles US Albums boxset). The ‘hide purchases’ only works from the point of view of hiding away anyuthing you might have bought that isn’t current/in the top 20/is ‘out of date’ and not ‘current’. For everyone else, its a pain in the proverbial.