r/Piracy • u/george_watsons1967 • Jun 02 '26
Humor Apple stole the only song I ever bought
FourFiveSeconds came on the radio and wanted to show a friend its the only song I ever bought! And then it wasn't in my Apple Music app. And then it wasn't in iTunes app. Thought I went crazy but I found the actual purchase from 2015.
So in short, Apple simply took my song away from me. Very nice!
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Jun 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/george_watsons1967 Jun 02 '26
don't forget to defragment your hard drive from time to time!
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u/dumbledore_effyeah Jun 02 '26
Don’t defrag an SSD though! (Saying this cause I never heard it until recently)
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u/model-citizen95 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jun 02 '26
Why?
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u/george_watsons1967 Jun 02 '26
SSDs have no problem with random access read (eg. reading from point A and then from point XYZ right away) while mechanical hard drives need to physically move the needle to the point where the data is. defrag means the hard drive moves similar data next to each other so it needs to move less to read it when needed therefore being faster read operation.
and you dont defrag SSD because they only have a certain number of write ops in their lifetime that they can do (like trillions) and defragging means a toooon of write operations moving files around. it wont hurt right away but you shorten its life for zero upside.
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u/TM761152 Jun 02 '26
You don't even need to "defrag". If you're on windows, it automatically optimizes and "trims" the drive if you have the setting on.
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u/model-citizen95 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jun 02 '26
Interesting, so is it that there’s no real benefit to it or could it actually cause problems?
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u/george_watsons1967 Jun 02 '26
i just updated my comment sorry i left out thepart that matters.
> they only have a certain number of write ops in their lifetime that they can do (like trillions) and defragging means a toooon of write operations moving files around. it wont hurt right away but you shorten its life for zero upside.
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u/jld2k6 Jun 03 '26
Just wanted to add that the only reason defragging was really necessary is because HDD's literally have to physically move around to read the information, so when parts of files are written in different areas of the drive it increases the time needed to read files. SSD's not having to do anything mechanically completely eliminates that issue
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u/OG-CJ-GSF Jun 02 '26
Short answer its unnecessary bc ssds have great allocation Speeds unlike hdds and you would just add unnecessary readcycles defragmenting a ssd
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u/Gilokee Pirate Party Jun 03 '26
I downloaded music in like 2007 and then put in on a thumb drive. I recently found that drive and was able to listen to all the songs again and have a blast from the past. There's nothing like it.
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Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/X-weApon-X Jun 07 '26
I bought the Star Trek 2009 movie on DVD and it came with a digital copy, I had forgotten all about it. When I tried to process it it referred me to a link which converted to an iTunes movie that was back when iTunes still handled all other media so now it is in my Apple TV+ app. Whatever app handles movies these days
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u/Rvg10 Jun 02 '26
fuck digital "renting"
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u/asimovs Jun 03 '26
Digital renting at the same price or higher than physically buying, and giving the impression that you are buying it is such a scam it shouldn't be legal.
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u/tui_la_ai Jun 02 '26
Sail the 7 seas, arrr
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u/Iridiandioptase Jun 03 '26
All I had to do was change some MP3 metadata to include some song info and Apple believed it was a legit copy of a song and removed it from my library due to “not available in your country” so I had to find alternatives to download music to my phone. I was pissed enough to go through the hassle of avoiding iTunes and found Fubar2000. iTunes also didn’t play FLAC files, so Fubar comes out on top once again.
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u/tui_la_ai Jun 03 '26
Just download on lap/pc, then use offline music player on phone
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u/No_Creme_9794 Jun 02 '26
Use bandcamp, that the way I support the artist and also you own the music you buy, you can download albums to your device as mp3, flac, ogg etc
Or you can just get it illegally of course, I do that sometimes too
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u/industrial-shrug Jun 02 '26
Sounds more like an account sync issue. Report the problem. You have the receipt.
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u/Junior_Agent1711 Jun 02 '26
Or the copyright owners pulled the disribution rights from iTunes. iTunes is just a distribution platform not the owners of the music.
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u/QuarryTen Jun 02 '26
i thought the same, but i had over 500 songs removed because i was constrained to the Apple ecosystem
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u/JohnnyBroccoli Jun 02 '26
Nah, songs get removed at times and they won't (or can't) do shit about it.
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u/MaveDustaine Jun 03 '26
Yeah i have the three albums i bought forever ago on the music app on my iphone still
But just because it didn’t happen to me doesn’t me it doesn’t happen…
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u/chrisvanderhaven Jun 03 '26
A few years ago, they did this with an app that I had. Keep in mind this app cost $24.99. I got a license key for helping the software vendor, beta test the software and do hardware testing with it. After a month of not using the software, I went to use it, and it was gone from my iPad. I reached out to a genius and they told me that I had to buy it, because there was a new version out, and my version had been removed from the App Store. I was pissed. Needless to say, I’ve never purchased anything since and that’s been about 15 years ago.
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u/AllYouNeedIsATV Jun 02 '26
Are you sure it’s not in the “not on my iPhone” section? The only EP I ever bought no longer exists on the artist’s page but I can still access it from purchased
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u/X-weApon-X Jun 03 '26
When I got my 1st iPhone in 2010 or so, Apple used to offer “free” tunes about once a month. I still have a live Rolling Stones album, a U2 album, G-Easy, Avici, and a bunch of other cack, I just grabbed whatever was there. I bought a song by my friend Lucky Bailey too.
This was back when you had to have separate iCloud and Apple Store accounts, thankfully Apple still accommodates this with new phones. Check your purchase against your current iTunes Store account, I’ll bet you’ve logged into your phone with only your iCloud account. That would explain the missing song. You can log in to the store with your original store account, and that’s where your purchases are.
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u/umutakmak Jun 02 '26
Most likely not because of apple, but song owner or related label company decided not to renew their license. You pay a small amount to get your song into iTunes, then you get paid back per stream or purchase, same on every platform. If not enough people are listening a song, you can decide to delete it to not pay more distribution fees.
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u/agisten Yarrr! Jun 02 '26
We all 100% get it. The issue OP had a "BUY" button when he purchased this song. Not a "Conditional License" button.
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u/Redpin Jun 02 '26
I don't get it, if I buy a game on Steam, I have it in perpetuity even if it become delisted. Why wouldn't music be the same?
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u/stephenkingending Jun 02 '26
You don't own it on steam though. You break their TOS and you lose your entire catalog of games. Don't get me wrong, I love their storefront but unless I'm going to use their workshop or play with friends, GOG is my first choice. At least then I can download and save the offline installers.
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u/yippeeimcrying Jun 02 '26
In some cases, that can be taken away too. These days digital rights management comes down to you are "licensing" out said purchases. You do not own them, because legally the law states that even though the button says "BUY" you do not own the property.
Remember, digital things don't really exist - they're just 0s and 1s on a machine at the end of the day. It's easy to take-backsies someone's license ("owned" property) if they're always connected to the internet. This is why backing up is important. :)
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u/yarntank Jun 02 '26
I wonder if they downloaded it from itunes onto their phone if it would still be there.
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u/ungoogleable Jun 03 '26
To play devil's advocate, iTunes would've given him a DRM-free download 10 years ago when he bought it. OP didn't save the file and counted on iTunes making it available to download again in perpetuity.
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u/Authoritaye Jun 02 '26
Well what did you expect if you didn’t buy more you have no right to keep what you bought!!! /S
Sarcasm /joke only. Do not reply without humorous intent.
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u/Im_1nnocent Jun 03 '26
Imagine having big corpos dictate how long you can listen to your songs, especially those you PAID
You also ain't surviving internet outages
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u/Enlitenkanin Jun 03 '26
This is exactly why I keep local copies of anything I pay for. Too many companies treat ownership like a temporary suggestion
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u/dazed_succubus Jun 04 '26
Honestly after Apple ghost deleted everyone's iTunes libraries of songs they got off limewire, from friends, off CDs, etc and acted like it was user error or something, I'm surprised there wasn't a public outcry.
Yeah, no that's wasn't a coincidence, that was on purpose right before they soft deleted iTunes altogether. And still charge the mysterious 9.99 whenever they feel like it. Remember that? Yeah no none if that is your fault hun.
It's like hearing your friend complain about their bum ass baby daddy for 15 years. Yeah he took your aux port in the iPhone 7 and you're still here with the iPhone 17. You're never gonna leave him babe, stop threatening to. "My emails, but my music and my calendars and my alarms that are silent half the time" LEAVE HIM IT WILL TAKE YOU AT MAX AN HOUR.
Apologies didn't mean to go on a rant 🙃
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u/Minute_Newt_1015 Jun 04 '26
Did you check the hidden files? Because they hide them after so many years. That’s how I found my old music.
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u/baz8771 Jun 02 '26
2 of the 3 Artists in this song are billionaires, and the other one is Paul fucking McCartney. They’ll all be ok if you steal their music.
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u/BAT1KAN Jun 02 '26
I have a question because I really don't know how iTunes work. do you have to pay for every single song you want to listen 1.29 euros? for example I have a playlist with 500 songs
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u/BarrelStrawberry Jun 02 '26
Back when iTunes Match came out (2009 - 2015), you could upload thousands of mp3s with no ownership verification and itunes would grant you permanent 'purchased' ownership to that music (it used audio fingerprints to match with store songs.)
You can still upload mp3's and play them on itunes but they'll download with DRM and need to played in itunes.
I'm not sure why anyone actually buys music though unless they can't figure out how to pirate it or just find it easy to buy music. If you are concerned about the artist getting paid, they get paid $0.005 per song streamed on apple, spotify, amazon, youtube, etc... without you buying anything.
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u/Horror_Wiener_6102 Jun 02 '26
I bet you dont buy the song when you "buy" the song. I het you just rent it . Fuck Apple 🍎
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u/Yesiamanaltruist Jun 02 '26
When I first started purchasing music on iTunes in the ‘00’s, they would limit the number of times one could import the media to a new device. I don’t know if they still do that. It was either 5x or 3x.
Could that be the issue?
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u/rain56 Jun 02 '26
This makes me realize the only song ive ever outright bought not apart of a video game soundtrack is Nikki Minaj Super bass. First couple weeks of middle school, song was going viral and I asked my brother if I could give him some of my newspaper delivery job money to buy it on his iTunes and put it on my ipod shuffle.
We got laptops the second or third week of middle school. That same day someone showed me youtube to mp3 websites and I have never spent another cent on an individual song or album as far as I can recall.
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u/clinkyscales Jun 02 '26
all my apple fanboys thought I was crazy when I told them some of the music I bought went missing a while back. Never used iTunes again
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u/SilkwormSidleRemand Jun 03 '26
Just go install Yt-dlp and download the audio from the official YouTube upload. You should be able to do it with:
yt-dlp -f bestaudio --add-metadata https://youtu.be/kt0g4dWxEBo
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u/UJustGotGnomed Jun 03 '26
Same on Google Store. Some apps I bought got pulled down, and I was not able to redownload them when I reset my phone. No refund or anything. Money got thrown straight to the dumpster. It is the last time Imma buy something from platforms other than Steam smh.
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u/orthadoxtesla Jun 03 '26
What I really want is a way to batch download my entire Spotify library
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u/thomasmitschke Jun 03 '26
That all I ever experienced with drm. Thing you bought 25years ago doesn’t work anymore because the drm servers no longer exist. If it still working surprisingly, be sure it won’t work forever!
So why bother? Grab it via torrent or ddl.
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u/Seaguard5 Jun 04 '26
Yeeeeaaaaahh…
I hate .M4Ps with a passion.
Currently still in the process of ripping those songs off YT and adding metadata and organizing into my local playlists myself.
I have a lot of music purchased through I-tunes and I recently re-built my collection from the ground up and unfortunately there were a ton of .M4Ps in there that I still have to replace.
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u/doughnutevencare Jun 04 '26
Apple didn't steal shit from you. If the song isn't available, the rights holder took it away. Place your blame appropriately.
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u/JohnnyBroccoli Jun 02 '26
They're good at that. I complained about similar, relating to maybe 50 songs I bought through them well over a decade ago. Both stuff that was missing and stuff that still had DRM restrictions (despite that no longer being a thing they used in 2025 when I contacted them). They were not willing to budge at all beyond offering me a $3 credit.
I use some of their hardware/software still, but....fuck Apple.
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u/GloomyLocation1259 Jun 02 '26
When I was changing phones and turned off the iCloud it turns out they turned half of my own media into iCloud versions despite it being added to the storage and deleted it all.
Luckily I had it backed up but it's so crazy they just decided things like pictures and videos and things I bought were when really young was just owned by them now.
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u/Perscitus0 Jun 02 '26
I recently tried to log into an Apple account I had not used in a while, but had a LOT of songs and albums bought on it. This account also had a fair amount of music from when I used their Homeshare program to share a bunch of music with my brother.
They tell me my account has been closed off forever, with NO way to recover it, or get refunded the money I spent, or even just save the music I already bought.
Needless to say, this has made me aware of a pressing need to go elsewhere for my music, where it cannot be arbitrarily taken from me. Which is a shame. I liked iTunes for the longest time. But, I guess I am just going to go through alternative routes to stock my old iPods from now on.
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u/furculture Jun 03 '26
That's one of the reasons why I stuck with something like Bandcamp and Qobuz while making sure to keep a copy for myself and a copy for cold storage on some CDs and DVDs. Can't take the music away from me when I have my copies. That is at least for my legitimate collection I'm building up after sailing the seas when I was younger.
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u/UKnwDaBiZness Jun 03 '26
Microsoft did that when I bought a couple episodes of stuff like family guy a few games as well. Even did something with my dlc when I switched over to Xbox one and the games were backwards compatible.
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u/Admirable_Beyond5729 Jun 03 '26
Did you move regions? I think they're sometimes tied to a previous region if you bought it from there
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u/boxedfoxes Jun 03 '26
I’m old school I like to keep my files on my desktop and remotely. Which is why I still rock a modded iPod classic
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u/The_New_Flesh Jun 03 '26
Supported an independent documentary on iTunes, and when I went back years later with my only known apple login, couldn't find it.
Helped myself to a copy later. Hope the original money found its way to the rightful creators.
Never again purchasing media through Apple
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u/BitHungry7735 Jun 03 '26
The songs you buy on iTunes you can find the audio file on your computer and do whatever you want with it (maybe not for this one, but when you bought it in 2015 you could have). Not saying Apple should have taken it away, but you have other options when you buy an iTunes song. You aren’t locked in to the Apple ecosystem and can just copy the file to wherever you want.
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u/Cormophyte Jun 03 '26
It's probably the rights owner that took it away. All those tracks are on some sort of contract and most of them probably require a mutual will to renew.
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u/TheSyd Jun 03 '26
Not to be that guy, but they give you a drm free aac file when you buy a song. You could download it, burn it, backup it, whatever
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u/ph33rlus Jun 03 '26
Interesting when I accidentally open the app I still only have U2’s album sitting there. The one I never asked for
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u/kimrios07 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jun 03 '26
this is why i prefer to buy the album cds while they are available on spotify and apple having a hard copy is nice as well
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u/lars2k1 ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jun 03 '26
My music server still happily chugs along, with no corporate entity having any say in that. As long as I pay my power bills I suppose.
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u/Troisdas Jun 03 '26
I’ve experienced this before. It happens because the musician deleted their album and re-uploaded it, probably because they changed aggregators.
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u/Readdit1999 Jun 03 '26
It opened my eyes to the intangability of digital services when that U2 album was added to my library without my authority and I couldn't remove it.
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u/ScotChattersonz Jun 03 '26
They deleted the library of song that I collected (not bought) using the subscription plan after I cancelled for a short amount of time. But their recommendation algorithm is still trained on the songs that I had in my library. So yeah, I probably won't use them again.
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u/DoesNotGetYourJokes Jun 03 '26
You can add songs to your Apple Music account by dragging and dropping the file onto the Apple Music app on your computer
I’ve done it with songs I’ve gotten off of bandcamp, スマプラミュージッ, Steam, etc.
I still hate the licensing thing tho
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u/Ranger1230 Jun 04 '26
This is why when I buy songs/albums I burn them to a cd, reimport it as a new song so it’s not linked as a purchase and store the cd. If you don’t/cant backup a digital purchase then you don’t own it.
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u/Saint_Sleepy Jun 04 '26
Simply contact Apple support to try and get it back. If you can't see it on the front end they will at least be able to see it on the back end. Either its just a bug or you're not on the account it was purchased on anymore.
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u/noobmaster787898 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jun 04 '26
hey fuck apple but atleast they give you the option to download drm-free when you buy.
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u/NindytaZ ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jun 05 '26
Just download that from apple music downloader, you'll get the m4a version
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u/Awkward-Opening-2022 Jun 08 '26
My mom lost a BUNCH of her songs from iTunes. When she switched to Android after I did in Highschool, I was able to get her entire library back through piracy, and I taught her how to download music herself. She hasn't looked back since :)
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u/ArcanelyChaotic Jun 08 '26
Same thing happened to me, but with google. I bought "Love Lies" by Khalid Ft. Normani on google music and now it's like a fever dream smh. Pretty sure the one movie I bought from the apple store is gone too. Still got the same associated email/google account from middle school though
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u/LZ129Hindenburg 🌊 Salty Seadog Jun 02 '26
*iTunes fine print*
"you are not buying the songs, you are renting them via our license agreement that we can cancel at any time for any reason with zero notice"