Why I don’t use the Apple iTunes Store

Last week I was talking with my colleagues (which are Apple fans just like me) about the iTunes Store. One colleague mentioned that he bought songs in the iTunes app on his iPhone. Then his iPhone was erased and he wanted to download the songs again from the iTunes store. But when he tried to do that he saw he had to purchase the songs again. The same thing happens when you bought songs in the iTunes application on you’re Mac or PC and the hard drive crashes and have no backup’s of you’re songs. After you installed you’re new hard drive and reinstalled iTunes again you will find out that you have to purchase all you’re songs again.

What apple advises you to do is to make a backup of you’re songs you bought in the iTunes store. The problem I have with this type of ‘buying songs’ is that you do not buy the actual song but you buy a single download for the song; also see this Apple support document confirming that. If I buy a song in the iTunes Store I expect to buy a license to download and use this song on my Mac and iPhone for the rest of my life. But it’s not, if my hard drive crashes and I have no backup then I have to buy all my music again. That is why I think you better of with buying the album on compact disc.

Let’s take a look at this example for the album “U2 – No Line On The Horizon”.

However some users are reporting that it is possible to contact Apple and they will allow you to redownload you’re songs again. But shouldn’t you’re music be licensed to you’re Apple ID and make it possible to download you’re music again after a hard drive crash? And maybe limit this to once a year as an anti-pirating feature?

And that’s why I don’t use the iTunes Store anymore to buy music.
An Apple fan.