Adding Music from CD's and previous purchased downloads to a new iMac

TheAlpsman wrote:

Two questions in one please. I am a music obsessive :-

1) I have a perfectly functioning 2014 iMac which Apple is slowly making unusable to the extent that I can no longer play Music that I have 'purchased' from the iTunes store because due to my computers age and lack of available updates (OS Big Sur was the last one) my account is no longer recognised in the iTunes/music store. I appreciate that a time will always come when it is not commercially viable to produce updates but if I have bought these albums and tracks why do I not own them regardless of the age of my computer and why can't I play and listen to purchased music on my own computer?

I have a late 2012 Mac mini running Catalina that works perfectly well with the iTunes Store and my Apple Music subscription account. Perhaps there is more that can be unpicked here so you play your music again. If not then it should still be possible to transfer everything to a new computer as long as you have backups, or you do so before the current one dies.

2) Because of these problems I have decided that the only way forward is to buy a new iMac. Due to where I live I only have access to a premium reseller rather than an actual Apple Store and to my horror they are telling me that I will not be able to put my own music onto a new iMac and that they are unaware of an App that will let me do this as 'iTunes no longer exists and Music won't allow this'. I have ripped over 6000 albums of my own CD's or purchased albums as downloads all of which I want to transfer to a new iMac (if I buy one) from my old iMac . Before I look at other brands of computer have I been given wrong advice and what is the reality. Many thanks and sorry that this is lengthy

This is just wrong. Yes, iTunes has been retired on Macs since Mojave, but the Music app that replaced it should be able to access your unhidden past purchase history in the iTunes Store, and you can add new music, ripping it from CD, or purchasing from a variety of online sources, not just Apple. I particularly like to buy from Bandcamp where I get access to high quality downloads, and the artists receive a greater share of my money.

tt2

You're welcome. See Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer - Apple Community and Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community. If you want to describe your current issue in more detail perhaps I can help. If you're having difficulty signing into the iTunes Store make sure that your clock and region are set correctly, and temporarily disable any VPN. Your computer should be authorized to your Apple ID in order to stream/download past purchases.

tt2

TheAlpsman wrote:

Two questions in one please. I am a music obsessive :-

1) I have a perfectly functioning 2014 iMac which Apple is slowly making unusable to the extent that I can no longer play Music that I have 'purchased' from the iTunes store because due to my computers age and lack of available updates (OS Big Sur was the last one) my account is no longer recognised in the iTunes/music store.

I would think that Big Sur would have no problem accessing the iTunes Store to re-download songs that you have already purchased from the iTunes Store.

But in any case, it would be a good idea to download the music that you have purchased and make local backups. Then you'd be able to restore music from local backups and would not be completely dependent on future access to the iTunes Store.

I appreciate that a time will always come when it is not commercially viable to produce updates but if I have bought these albums and tracks why do I not own them regardless of the age of my computer and why can't I play and listen to purchased music on my own computer?

You need to safeguard local copies of the iTunes Store music that you buy – just as you need to safeguard vinyl records and CDs that you buy. If you lose or destroy a vinyl record or CD, a store won't give you a new copy for free. In this respect, the iTunes Store is a bit more forgiving, because it does allow free re-downloads. If you're worried that there will come a day when you can't take advantage of that, you need to be making local backups which will be there whether the iTunes Store is or not.

TheAlpsman wrote:

2) Because of these problems I have decided that the only way forward is to buy a new iMac. Due to where I live I only have access to a premium reseller rather than an actual Apple Store and to my horror they are telling me that I will not be able to put my own music onto a new iMac and that they are unaware of an App that will let me do this as 'iTunes no longer exists and Music won't allow this'. I have ripped over 6000 albums of my own CD's or purchased albums as downloads all of which I want to transfer to a new iMac (if I buy one) from my old iMac . Before I look at other brands of computer have I been given wrong advice and what is the reality. Many thanks and sorry that this is lengthy

Music won't let you play purchased music?!? That's just flat-out wrong. I've got a Music library full of music from my own CDs, and from the iTunes Store, to prove it.

Importing a large iTunes Library to Music can be tricky. There are two issues:

• Music may refuse to recognize the iTunes Library, forcing you to re-import the individual song files. That would not be a huge pain, except that …
• If your iTunes Library is very large, and you tell Music to import everything within a top-level directory, the Music app may fail to import a number of files. In my experience, it would either import all songs within an album, or it would import none of them. Doing a new import, of just one or a few albums at a time, would succeed (and this was how I eventually repaired my library).

My hypothesis is that when you point Music at a directory, and tell it to import everything within it, it builds a list of every subdirectory that contains an album. That list can be very long – and if it overflows, Music silently truncates it.

The workaround is to import your music in multiple smaller batches, so that each batch is small enough that it does not trigger the (likely) "buffer overflow" bug.

TheAlpsman wrote:

All of a sudden I can no longer play purchases from the store that I made prior to February 1st 2009 .

Sounds like you are referring to songs that have DRM on them.

When Apple first launched the iTunes Store, they sold songs in 128 Kbps file, and all of the songs had DRM on them. This was probably a sop to the record companies, who had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into realizing that people would actually pay for downloaded music if you made it convenient for them to buy it.

Once the iTunes Store took off, the record companies weren't happy with the idea that Apple might become too powerful, relative to them. They gave Amazon permission to start selling MP3s without DRM … and then made a deal with Apple. Apple would stop charging a flat price for all songs, and would let the record companies choose between several price levels; in return, Apple would get to sell songs without DRM.

Since then, the iTunes Store has sold all music other than music videos in non-DRMed 256 Kbps AAC format.

I can play later purchase put this still equates to several hundred UK pounds worth of music. I can still access them via my iPhone 16 but that of course is nowhere near the sound that I can achieve by channeling them through my computer. I suspect that they are DRM protected and possibly advanced data protection issues are a problem but as I have purchased them that should not be an issue.

Sounds like they do have DRM, and the only way that you are going to be able to play them is by logging into the Apple Account that you used when purchasing them. It should be very easy to confirm whether they are DRMed, both by looking at the bitrate, and by looking to see whether the description of the type includes "Protected."

When Apple first made the move from DRMed music to non-DRMed music, you could buy non-DRMed upgrades for many (but not all) DRMed songs. But the upgrade offer was only for a fairly short time, and your opportunity to take advantage of it expired long, long ago.

If I buy from Amazon or Bandcamp I simply own them and they are mine to play but it appears not from Apple.

1. If Apple had not dragged the record companies, kicking and screaming, into allowing the sale of downloaded music, there never would have been an Amazon MP3 Store. The record companies let Amazon sell DRM-free music because they thought that Apple might become too powerful as a retailer.
2. The fact that early iTunes Store songs had DRM on them does not mean that current iTunes Store songs do!!! Apple removed DRM from iTunes Store songs starting in 2009, once the record companies let them.
3. Bandcamp is a different case. They set out explicitly to be more customer-friendly than the record companies traditionally have been. You may also notice that while there are some artists that release music both using the regular record company channels and using Bandcamp, most major label music is not available on Bandcamp.

Hi,

As Servant of Cats notes Apple changed the conditions of sale in 2009. I think at some point there has also been a change to the way DRM products are delivered and unlocked, which may mean that files you already have on your computer, and worked in the past, no longer do. I would suggest holding down option as you launch Music to create a new empty library. When you are signed into your Apple Account then Music should list all of your unhidden purchases in this otherwise empty library. Try downloading and then playing some of these older purchases to see if they function correctly. If so then it should be possible to go back to your original library, right-click problem purchases, click remove download, then right-click again, and download. You should probably backup the items you want to replace first.

Note there is a non-zero probability that some of your past purchases have been removed from the iTunes Store by their respective rights holders. If so redownloading is not possible.

tt2