Recovering iTunes Library

Kayne Red Robe

The family computer has managed to fuck itself and I am considering just reformatting the thing, but my family uses iTunes and I'm not familiar with how one goes about recovering their music library afterwards. Is there anything special I need to do so they don't lose the music they paid for?

melphor

If they purchased their music via iTunes, no worries that history is always saved from Apple and can be retrieved. Once you rebuild, reinstall iTunes and put in your Apple account you can redownload all your music purchased via iTunes.

Otherwise you would need to copy the folder that is your iTunes Library (Edit > Prefrences... > Advanced > iTunes Media Folder Location) and the specific configuration files (if you don't want to redo all your playlists, etc) (typically on a PC it is in Documents > music > iTunes folder). Then you just need to copy these files/folders in the exact same location after you rebuild the computer and reinstall iTunes.

Gaslight

My dad just finds himself in this exact situation after his old computer died in an electrical storm. If there is a quick and easy way to redownload all his purchased music, what is it? I seem to recall iTunes used to prompt you about whether you wanted to buy download insurance for each song you bought or something like that, so I was initially thinking that if he didn't have the files backed up he was screwed.

Gdiguy

melphor wrote:

If they purchased their music via iTunes, no worries that history is always saved from Apple and can be retrieved. Once you rebuild, reinstall iTunes and put in your Apple account you can redownload all your music purchased via iTunes.

Are you sure that's true for old music? Now it is (because the icloud stuff is free for songs bought through itunes), but I don't actually know if they extended that to all songs purchased in the past (as of a couple years ago, it definitely wasn't true)