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It is Apple's fault because they could have easily defaulted to preserving all songs rather than deleting them. It took extra work for Apple programmers to add a function to iTunes that removes songs not purchased in the same region. Were they really coerced into such behavior? It's more likely that this "feature" was a selling point for record companies, not consumers. Moral of the story: check who owns software before using it.

> It's more likely that this "feature" was a selling point for record companies, not consumers.

From parent:

> I know that if I remembered/knew which songs I bought, I could buy them again and it might not charge me a 2nd time

So if they don't charge you again, then what's the selling point for record companies?

The selling point is that there's enough uncertainty and complexity in the process that many (most?) people won't successfully avoid charges for re-buying music.

The icing is that the mere existence of the complex, uncertain process insulates record companies from accusations that they're forcing people to re-buy music (as with the transition to CDs). Re-buying just happens to be the much more convenient option.

Apple can say they don't automatically copy over songs purchased in another region. Allowing you to "purchase" the songs again for free sounds like a workaround that the parent found. However you look at it it's not for the good of the customer.

Correct. The back door is already written in the terms and conditions. Have fun reading them. Wasn't it Steve Jobs who said, he never signs a contract that is longer than a page?

Steve Jobs could have said whatever he wanted without it being true. The problem isn't in him saying it, the problem are certain persons who believe it and repeat the nonsense.

Is your comment in any way related to my post?

Steve Jobs may not have signed complex contracts. This does not exclude, that Apples layers make the customers sign complex contracts, does it?

Steve Jobs promoted the digital lifestyle, although he was a vinyl junkie and owned high-end audio stuff. The point is, that the advice he gave about the length of contracts is good, unimportant if he followed it or not. It is useful for customers to follow and that does certainly not exclude apples customers (although, nowadays, you may not be able to buy a slice of bread, if you insist on short terms and conditions).

Jobs was a master of saying one thing today and then contradicting himself tomorrow without hesitation or acknowledgment.

> However you look at it it's not for the good of the customer.

Yeah, it's obnoxious as fuck. But it doesn't cost any more money.

Your reply is completely unrelated to the parent. shurcooL backed up his device and restored to a new device, and the music was missing. Most likely, he didn't actually sync the music to the computer, so the computer didn't have the files in order to sync back to the device. The fact that it was from a different store meant the device also couldn't redownload them from the store (because the per-country stores are effectively completely different stores).

> Normally, I have nightly backups to iCloud, but since they are (unfortunately) not as thorough, I made a full local backup to my MacBook, and restored it on the new iPad mini with Retina.

Sounds like he made an effort to preserve his files. I know from personal experience how easy it is to mess something up with iTunes and lose all data. Like when the iOS 8 upgrade failed and the only way to unbrick the iPad was to reset it through iTunes.

> Most likely, he didn't actually sync the music to the computer, so the computer didn't have the files in order to sync back to the device.

Quite the opposite. I had the computer before the iPad mini, and all music is on it. In fact, it still has the music.

I did a full backup and restored on new iOS device, and this brought back everything (apps, settings, contacts, etc.) except the songs.

If your music is in iTunes, and you restore your device from iTunes, and you have iTunes set to sync music to your device, then your music will be synced to the device.

So either your music isn't in iTunes, or iTunes isn't set to sync music to your device.

Or perhaps your reading comprehension sucks

That's a very un-called-for comment. He said his computer has his music. He never said that he had his music in iTunes and that iTunes was set to sync his music.

"Moral of the story: check who owns software before using it."

How do you check software behaviour without using it and falling into the trap?

I agree that it is most likely a feature that music companies request. They usually don't allow sales and use under equal conditions everywhere (see youtube).

>How do you check software behaviour without using it and falling into the trap?

Read the source code. You shouldn't trust software that doesn't let you do that.

Color of bits comes to mind...

>> It took extra work for Apple programmers to add a function to iTunes that removes songs not purchased in the same region.

I certainly wasn't involved in the project, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where it's actually easier to do it this way. "Replace data" is an easier operation to implement than "merge."

That was my read on this too. Consider how an iPod reacts (or used to, I haven't used one in a long time now) when you plug it into an iTunes instance that isn't the one you originally synced it with - it asks if you want to flatten everything and replace it with the contents of the connected library.

Not necessarily true: in a simple relational DB, it could be that 'region_cd' is part of the primary key. This would have the same effect, and was probably driven by a then-reasonable initial requirement. It seems very likely that no 'delete' ability was added to support this.

This is the way it is intended by Apple.

I made the same experience moving to a different country and changing the "nationality" of my Apple ID. When contacting customer support about all my missing purchases, they said that this was standard procedure. It seems that Apple basically stores a country flag in your account, then everything you see and buy applies to that flag only. When you change country, you get a different "walled garden". You still somehow "own" all the content, you just can't see all of it. If you try to e.g. install an app you bought when registered in a different country Apple will give it to you for free stating that the purchase has been restored because you have already bought it. It still won't show up in the purchased items list.

I suspect if one were to switch back, it would go back and show all old purchases but not the recent ones from the last region. This seems to be their current implementation which they also seem happy with. It's really sorry state, because so many people move between countries these days and this is very unintuitive and causes a lot of annoyance.

> It still won't show up in the purchased items list.

It does show up once you have "purchased" it for free from the new store.

Asking for a one-world government is a pretty absurdly extreme response to iTunes store licensing problems.

I imagine the problems a one-world government would create far surpass any potential benefits you may have imagined.

The same thing happens for app purchases, it happened to my while moving country. At the same time, I did not have any problem with the Windows Store or Google Play.

Windows Store used to be extremely bad pre-Windows 8 - I live in Uruguay and it basically didn't work unless you lied repeatedly about your location, age, etc., and required several factory resets (that was my experience with a Nokia Lumia 800).

It turned me off Windows as a mobile OS, but from what you're saying, it seems they've cleaned up their act now.

Edit: it seems they're still boneheaded with regards to the Xbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8698610

That depends. Are we letting Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz run it?

No, just the sort of people that are attracted to ruling the world.

So... yes.

> I imagine the problems a one-world government would create far surpass any potential benefits you may have imagined.

That’s implementation-specific. Not necessarily a hypothetical one-world government must work like the government that’s running your country or mine.

I certainly assume, it is a bug. Getting software to handle complex behaviour correctly is not easy.

But that does not help. Songs are gone, money may be gone, lots of work to do, legal action may be possible, but for a few songs? Why not take this as a warning, that a company will not take good care of our property? Apple did this before, a few years ago, btw. Microsoft even closed its music store (remember the Zune?), which resulted in total loss. Cloud stories will come. The only lesson that can be learned is, we shouldn't give up control over our property, certainly not to companies who benefit from our losses. However this is implemented.

Physical media for music is a way. The best sounding CDs from the early 80s cost cents only. Some even gain resale value (mfsl gold editions for example) as listeners with good taste realize, how crappy recent remasters sound.

When I commented a review of the Beatles vinyl mono editions recently, another guy (a grumpy old brit, for sure) replied: 'I spit on your digital downloads' :o). Maybe that's good advice (Although it would be interesting to understand, how he wants to spit on digitial data - it is not even physically available to spit on).

> it is not even physically available to spit on

Right on!

> Why not take this as a warning, that a company will not take good care of our property?

I think it's probably good to ask, are things like this even property at all? And if so, whose property is it really?

I "bought" a movie on Vudu. It said "Buy this movie" right there on the screen. But what I really bought is a longer rental license than the normal "rent this movie" license.

If Vudu goes out of business, what do I own? Nothing. If I rage-quit Vudu, what do I own? Nothing. If the ultimate rights holder objects to the "sale," a la Amazon and 1984, what do I own? Nothing. (And I don't want compensation for the lost movie/book, I want the fucking item that I supposedly "purchased.") And I can't decide to sell my movie to someone else.

Like owning real estate, digital property is a bundle of rights. But with digital property, that bundle can probably be comfortably held between thumb and forefinger like a pinch of salt.

> Microsoft even closed its music store (remember the Zune?), which resulted in total loss.

No, they didn't - the Zune music store is still around as Xbox Music, and any songs you bought via the Zune store will still be there (or mine are, anyway.) I believe you're thinking of PlaysForSure, which was not Zune related, but according to Wikipedia the closure of MSN Music did not result in total loss. Maybe there's some detail I'm missing?

That said, I agree with your larger point. All the music I care about is either physical or in DRM-free MP3 format and not synced to anyone's cloud or store.

Ah, ok. Thanks for clarification. I did not follow the story to the end (or did not expect that the story went on, after the shutdown was announced). Maybe I also mixed it with Sonys connect service. But indeed, the point is still valid: if the stores are not profitable, they can be shut down and the content can be removed.

> I certainly assume, it is a bug.

If it's a bug, that's a suicidal testimony.

The very same thing happens with people moving country.

Having moved from the UK to the US, I lost access to everything I'd purchased when I updated my billing details (no longer having a working UK credit card).

All Apple support could do was give me a list of the software/music I was missing, I presume to make re-purchasing easier.

That's so bad. Account management has always been abyssimal.

No account merging, no transfer of purchase is a part of it. I found the easiest way has always been to keep multiple accounts and switch accounts when switching stores.

But when I say "easiest" it's more like "less horrible than all the other way you can get screwed" and you still have to so many battles to fight to have your content where you want.

Did you try contacting iTunes customer support? In my experience they're pretty good at trying to resolve the issue. I don't know how much power they have when it comes to different country stores (i.e. whether the customer support can even see the store for a different country), but I'm sure they would have done what they could to restore your purchased music.

I was going to at first, and I'm guessing it's likely they would've been able to assist in some way, but then I just didn't bother to.

To be honest, it was easier for me to accept the loss and just move on. I don't listen to music that much anyway, and when I do, I can just stream from Spotify or YouTube.

No, that is Apple's fault, they have a list somewhere of all your purchases and all they have to do is make sure you can download them again.

Why didn't you just pirate the songs you had already paid for?

because its illegal?

Why would you pay for the songs when you could pirate them? Presumably because you want to conduct your activities legally.

If you already paid for the song, there's absolutely nothing wrong with downloading the song in a format so that you can listen to it. In a strictly moral "money for the artist" sense. In the Netherlands, this used to be perfectly legal as well, as it should be (maybe no longer, as recently something changed about our laws concerning 'downloading').

Last time I checked, it was illegal in the UK.

I have songs from both the AU and US iTunes stores - when I do a restore from iCloud backup it just asks me for my password for each account and happily downloads both. Not sure what went wrong for you.

I have just one account. I changed it from Canadian store to US store.

I'm pretty sure if you log into the Canadian account again there will be a list of past purchases.

At least there is for apps

I suspect that this is what happened—they need to log into their Canadian account, which they somehow got logged out of.

It's the same account - he changed what country his account applied to because he now has a US card. There is no Canadian account to log-in to. I guess if he tried the reverse he could lose his US purchases.

Yep, that's exactly it.

No, this happens if you change your country in your existing account. I moved from one country to another, changed my existing account, and poof all my purchases were gone. I could get them for free again if I knew my purchases. This worked up to a certain point. Now, if I redownload an album that I already purchased, it wants to repurchase it again (after warning that I already have it).

It's a mess.

You can switch the account back to Canada and get access to your old purchases. I've done it before.

Of course I can switch back (Netherlands in my case). They could also just fix this, because it is stupid and unintuitive. And the competition supports moving across borders correctly.

If rights are a problem (which seems unlikely, since I can still download it if I know what I purchased). Just give me the apps and music that they have licensed in both countries.

> Plus it's a lot of work to find/remember which songs I bought.

You could try looking at your billing history. It's frustrating to navigate, but I would be surprised if Apple flushed that too: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2727

Welcome to the DRM future.

That music that you brought, you don't own it, as you also do not own those computers you are carrying on your pockets.

And just wait untill people start to really apply DRM to contracts and biling, the aplications it was conceived for.

Fully agree that Apple needs to do more to support users who work across multiple countries. I still have apps purchased with different accounts and need to enter a range of passwords everytime I do a restore.

Have you tried speaking with iTunes Support. They are very helpful and can sort out your missing purchases.

> It's not completely Apple's fault

It's not even remotely Apple's fault. Content licenses have always and likely will always be done country by country. And seriously 1 currency ?

Yes, Apple's customers are typically ones who cross boarders and have international careers.

> It's not even remotely Apple's fault.

Because Apple clearly indicates that your iTunes items are not bought, but rented for an undetermined time. It's right there, on page 17 in the small print of the EULA, in plain sight.