Purchased music won't stay downloaded

[rdkendrick]

WTH is it with iTunes? I always seem to either lose a song, buy a duplicate, because I didn't remember buying it, or they won't stay downloaded. When I got another Air, with 4g LTE, I reloaded from my other Air, with wireless-only, most of my purchased music, plus the ripped music did not go back on. I even tried AppTrans, but it kept erroring out.
I finally wiped, reloaded, using iTunes, but, now, when I play music, I am finding that I keep having to re-download my purchased music. Some of the songs will not stay downloaded. As soon as I click on the cloud, the circle starts, then finishes, but goes back to a cloud.
Reloading also wiped out the tags on my ripped music, and I spent half a day, re-adding it back in. iTunes sucks a$$. Is there a better way tonreload music + apps reliably?
My post is about the purchased music not staying d/l'ed. I am just venting the other stuff.
It's been awhile since I have been on here, because I can usually solve the problem, but this is stumping me.
Any help, guys n gals?

 

[rdkendrick]

Before you say, "turn on iTunes Match'" I am not subcribed to it, so there is no button to turn on. I DID find that my "automatically d/l all music & apps" was turned off, but turning that back on does not fix this problem.
Stumped.

 

[rdkendrick]

No one has an answer for me? No one? I am so disappointed, it has been 2 weeks.

 

[twerppoet]

Are you tapping the song to play, or tapping the cloud icon next to it? The first just streams the song. The second actually downloads it.

The automatic download only affects songs when you purchase them on other devices or computers. If you purchase a song on one device it automatically downloads on the other. It won't do anything for songs previously purchased or already in your library.

I didn't really understand the rest of your post. I think you crammed several issues into a general complaint about iTunes on the computer; but I'm not sure. Pretty much everyone agrees that iTunes on the computer, especially the Windows version, needs a major overhaul. I don't have any real problems with it, but I'm on a Mac, and I've been using it from almost the beginning. That familiarity keeps me from spotting most issues, since it just works for me the majority of the time.

 

[rdkendrick]

Hi Twerppoet,
I am trying to download it. It is purchased music from iTunes.
When I tap on it, to d/l, it goes back to the cloud icon. It WILL play by streaming, it just will not stay downloaded.
There are a few other songs with the same problem.
It has me stumped. I have not syced with iTunes, for about a month, because it messes up the album artwork on my songs. I know that iTunes has gone through two upgrades since I have synced last, but I don't think it is an iTunes problem.
Another weird thing, that is happening, is that I can play music, for a few hours, then the next day, the same songs that played, now have a cloud beside them. They d/l ok.
Any ideas?

 

[twerppoet]

The behavior you are describing is normal for iTunes Match, but you said you're not using that. So, I'm stumped.

Is this behavior happing in the Music app, or in the Purchased tab of the iTunes app? And how much free storage to you have on the iPad? If you're close to being out of storage the iPad might be trying to conserve space.

 

[scifan57]

Syncing with iTunes on your computer should not mess up the album artwork, it never messes up my album artwork. With that and the other problems you're having when trying to download music. it's possible that iTunes on your iPad has been somehow corrupted. If so, only a restore will be able to fix it. If you decide to restore your iPad, make sure to back up just before the restore.

 

[rdkendrick]

Hi TP,
It is happening in the Music app. I have an iPad Air, 64GB, wireless and 4G LTE. According to General Settings-about, I have 13.6 GB available, so plenty of space.
This is the history of this iPad. I had an iPad Air, but only wireless, so I bought another Air, 64GB, with AT&T cellular. I backed up my first Air, set the 2nd Air to be restored and, for some reason, it took away most of the ripped music, and did not d/l half of my purchased music. I also tried using AppTrans, but it kept erroring out.
I always had good luck with CopyTrans, but it doesn't work on anything above iOS 7.
I cleared the newer iPad, again, and tried restoring again, same thing, so this time, I just copied all my ripped music to my playlist on iTunes, and it showed up, but with screwed up tags.
I knew the tags would not be correct, because some of the music were songs I had never added, so I corrected the tags, then did a backup/sync.
When I did that, I lost most of the album artwork for the ripped music. I spent 6 hours fixing album artwork & tags. I am almost afraid to sync it, again, because I don't want to have to do that, again.
It has me stumped, too. If nothing else, I may just dedicate a day to restore the darn thing and see how it goes. Everything else on it works fine.

 

[rdkendrick]

Sorry scifan57,
Didn't mean to leave you out.
Could be a corruption. I DID use CopyTrans, and it errored out three time on three tries. I did a restore frim the old Air p, again, after that.
Hard to say. I may just try to backup/restore, if I am feeling brave enough .
I wish Apple had more utilities like Windows does. Wish there were a way to format the memory, or test it, to make sure all 64GB's are working okay. Kind of like a check disk. Also wish we could defrag, but it does not work well on chip memory as it does on media. Or a kind of registry fixer to make sure programming is in order.
I do use Memory Doctor, regularly, to keep the memory clear, and clear out unused apps from memory. I may try deleting the song, then loading it back from iTunes, see what happens.
If the same problem, I will have to restore.

 

[scifan57]

Thanks for the update. I hope your latest efforts will finally solve the problem.

 

[twerppoet]

Hm. I suspect most of your problems arise from your switch from CopyTrans to iTunes. The workaround apps are exactly that. Workarounds. They take advantage of holes in Apple's system, so they can't be depended on to work correctly after updates to either iTunes or the iOS end of things. The iOS end seems obviously, but those apps usually depend on the drivers that are installed with iTunes on the computer, so those updates can also cause problems.

A lot of people dislike iTunes, and I don't blame them. Apple needs to step up it's game there, especially on Windows. But, it is the only app that you can use, and expect Apple to provide a solution when things go wrong. And in my case it's the only app I can offer advice on, since I choose to stick almost entirely within Apple's ecosystem.

So.

You're not going to like this answer, but your best bet is to fix everything in iTunes on the computer (tags, album artwork, metadata, etc.) then start Music clean on the iPad. Depending on how much ripped music you have, that can be a long task.

If iTunes doesn't find the artwork, you can do what I did for the albums (ripped or otherwise) that didn't work for me. Do Google searches on the albums, and past the artwork in manually using the Get Info feature in iTunes. If you select entire albums you can apply the artwork to the album without doing each song.

Almost every problem with album tracks, collections, etc. can be fixed in the Get Info tabs; though it might take a bit of experimenting to get exactly the right combination.

It can be a lot of work, but it tends to stick once done. (It's always a good idea to make sure you're backing up your computer regularly, so corrupted data can be restored if necessary)

Once everything is correct on the computer you're free to experiment with syncing to the iPad, because you can always clear the Music from the iPad and try again.

The easiest, least messy way to clear music from the iPad is to turn off Music syncing in iTunes, then sync. Once the iPad is clear, you can try syncing everything (if you have the space) or selected albums, playlists, artists, genres, etc.) If you go with the second route and have lots of music I suggest breaking it up into several sync sessions. This seems to help. Or it did the one or two times I've cleaned and reinstalled my music to the iPad.

You'll also need to make sure your computer is authorized with your iTunes account. You should find that under the Store menu.

That's the best advice I can give at this point. I can't guarantee results, but it's what I've done on the few occasions I had problems. But, those problems were nothing like what you are describing, so I'm far from sure this will help. You could do a lot of work for almost nothing. I say almost, because at least you'll have a clean iTunes library on the computer when done.

Oh yes. I you chose to import your ripped music, but leave it in the original folders, I suggest you delete it from iTunes and let it import (make copies) to it's own data base. When iTunes just links to other folders then anything you do to those folder afterwards can mess up the database. This is the default import method, so if you don't remember the leave in place method, you probably didn't' do it.

This does use up more space, but it's way more reliable.

 

[rdkendrick]

TP,
Thanks for the advice.
To clear up something I am not quite sure of; when I copy music to my playlist, it is importing, right?
I understand the long time involved in re-creating tags and album artwork. One of my peeves is that iTunes dors not have all the original albums, but "Greatest Hits" this and that (dors make it easy finding the song), but growing up in the age of album artwork, I am sort of a purist in that area.
Oh well, I have some work ahead of me, whenever I start to get tired of this problem.
I have noticed it happens to almost every three songs I play, which is strange, too. Something is definitely corrupt. Most of the time, the songs will download, but I have about a total of ten songs that, when, in the Music app, I click on the cloud, they download, but then the cloud re-apoears. Strange.
Thanks, again!

 

[twerppoet]

It's importing if you copy the music from a folder into iTunes. If you are just arranging it into playlists then the music is already in your library. You are just organizing it for easier playback.

Search for the problem songs directly in iTunes on the iPad. After making sure they don't show a price (so you pay again) try downloading them from there.

 

[rdkendrick]

It's funny you say that, because I just noticed a song that I KNOW I bought was missing. There was a price on it in iTunes, so I just bought it again. It was one of the songs that would show up double, on my last iPad, so it is possible I may have deleted it. With my swiss-cheese memory, I am not sure.

 

[peterfan]

You can use Apptrans to transfer your songs from one device to another so they won't be lost. Here is the coupon if you want to buy it: AppTrans for Windows coupon code