Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 July 11

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July 11

Recovering lost iTunes

Back in aught-11, I had iTunes on my Windows 7 PC and several hundred dollars worth of music in its library. That was all lost some time later, when the machine died with no backup of the tunes. I now have a new computer running Windows 10. It has never had iTunes installed. Is it possible to install iTunes and get my music back without paying for it again? Surely they still have records of the purchases on my account - (?) TIA. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:42, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Provided that you know the account name and password, you can re-download it. See instructions here - X201 (talk) 11:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@X201: It took hours to get back to the forgotten account name and password, but the rest was easier. I ended up doing it differently from those instructions, but thanks for getting me past the initial hurdle of "Can this even be done?". (I'm surprised Apple would be so reasonable about it, actually.) Awesome to have my music back at a cost of US$0. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:47, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

In my experience, being reasonable about anything but the original price is Apple's business model...you buy a comparatively pain-free life with the premium price. Or in my case, I buy a Unix-that-simply-works on quite good hardware... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

But assuming the OP means they actually bought the music from Apple in the library (as opposed to adding it via the iTunes Matching service) this is hardly something anything close to unique to Apple. It's the whole point of tying your purchases to an account, and it works the same for Google Play, Amazon and pretty much anyone offering music purchases in that way.

The primary problem is whether you can trust the provider not to disappear, and whether the music is DRM free. (Notably, if the music is not DRM free and the provider dies, you're pretty much SOL.) For purchased music thanks in part to Apple's power over the music companies pretty much everyone has moved to DRM free for music purchased from the service.

Videos (TV series, films etc) still have DRM on most services. Still other than the DRM niggle, the basic principle works the same for video (Amazon, Play, Microsoft, Sony, Apple etc) games (Steam, GOG, Humble, Microsoft, Origin, uPlay etc), ebooks (Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Apple, Play etc) etc, albeit with a possibile limitation how many devices may simultaneously use the purchase in sorm form. You don't need to keep a backup of the content locally, you can always retrive it via the service using your account. Again that's the point of the account system or really the "cloud computing" revolution.

Of course the limitations imposed by the system when combined with DRM are controversial hence why e.g. the Xbox One plans failed.

And actually Apple, does impose the limitation that you pretty much have to use their software to retrieve the content (but for music, because it's DRM free not to play it); something fairly common but which isn't always required. Amazon notably still lets you download music via the web. Still for most people the complications of being in multiple ecosystems is too annoying hence why they tend to stick with one and get annoyed when someone tries to force them to adopt another one (e.g. uPlay and Origin) regardless of whether software, limitations etc from the new ecosystems are really any worse than what they were using.

The iTunes matching service is a bit of a different beast although again the Google and Amazon services work similar albeit each with their own limitations etc. The nature of such systems means they're a little more complicated to compare.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:50, 12 July 2017 (UTC)