itunes

got i tunes on my imac, os 10.7.4

so i open itunes, click on a song. i see a little box says "you are not authorized to play (this song). as it happens i am the sole owner and user of this imac and these itunes. plus i am what apple is pleased to call the "administrator" here. so who says i can't play my tunes?

it happened often enough with my old imac, but then i could go get info and give myself permissions.i tunes does not offer this option. i actually tried to change my password, even though i been using the same mac password for my wole mac life. they sent me an email, said i could change it. just click this link. i clicked. got a message "safari cannot find page"

this looks to me like one stubborn bug, and very annoying.

ps. "repair permissions" does not work.
oh yes- this problem so far only happens with that one song

bought from itunes

What user ID did you use to buy the song from iTunes? Is it different than the ID you are now signed into the store with? Did you perhaps buy this song on another computer?

same i.d. but we could spend days doing questions like this.
it seems clear to me that we are dealing with an aberration of some sort,
a freaky mess up. iMac should never tell me i can't listen to an iTune.
iTunes should never do this either.

i guess i basically wonder if anyone had this experience before

zwazo said:

iMac should never tell me i can't listen to an iTune.
iTunes should never do this either.

Click to expand...

Yes it should, and yes it should.

You don't say when you bought it, but it's quite possible you bought the song when iTunes had DRM (several years ago) and never upgraded it. You should upgrade it to the iTunes Plus format (DRM free and double the fidelity, plus other more minor upgrades).

If the song is one with DRM on it, that would explain the problem. You haven't authorized your new machine to play songs from your account. Again, upgrading the song (hint: visit iTunes and try to "buy" the song again) would fix this issue.

As for WHY it certainly should give you this message, imagine that you've stolen this music rather than owned it, and got it off someone else's machine (ie you didn't pay for it). As part of the permission from copyright holders that allows iTunes to exist at all, you most certainly WOULD and SHOULD get a message saying you're not authorized to play that music (because it doesn't belong to you and the owner hasn't given permission). Simple enough to fix in a household situation -- the person who bought it can authorize up to 10 machines in the household to play the music. If you had stolen it -- why should iTunes help you pirate music? Of course they shouldn't. The files may not have DRM on them but you still need the owner's permission to play them. Protects YOUR investment, protects THEIR investment.

Of course as you say this isn't the case here, I'm just demonstrating a situation where iTunes should refuse to play something. As I say, I think the song file you have is old and DRM'd, so you can replace that with the iTunes Plus copy from iTunes (may cost you a few cents -- literally, like 30 cents -- for the replacement).

I have had this problem myself and went through the rigmarole of downloading the latest version of iTunes, repairing disk permissions, etc.

To fix it, you need to delete the affected songs from your iTunes library (remove to trash), go to iTunes Store and buy those songs again. You won't have to pay, if the song was purchased on the same account you're using, iTunes will know this and will prompt you with that information, and ask if you want to download again. Click download, and voila.