iTunes Store

iTunes Movies and iBooks Store go offline in China without explanation

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 15, 2016

As of this morning, customers in China are unable to access Apple's content stores for digital movies and books, the iTunes Store for Movies and the iBooks Store, as both services went offline last evening without explanation. These stores are now inaccessible in China on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, as well as on computers with iTunes.

No reason was give for the downtime and Apple had not commented on the move at post time, but AppleInsider has learned that it has something to do with the government's pending investigation into Apple's business practices.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits iTunes as HD download ahead of physical release next Tuesday

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 7, 2016

Apple has been accepting pre-orders for J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the iTunes Store for a few weeks now.

Today, April 1 (not a joke), the movie released on the iTunes Store. The $19.99 high-definition download includes iTunes Extras like deleted scenes and interviews with the cast and filmmakers.

The movie is not yet available for renting. The SD version will follow on April 5 for $14.99, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens is scheduled to launch at physical retailers.

Apple enables redownloads of audiobooks, iOS 9.3 to add audiobooks to Automatic Downloads

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 10, 2016

Thanks to the iTunes in the Cloud feature, Apple customers have long been able to re-download apps, movies, TV shows, music, music videos, books, ring tones and tones purchased on the iTunes Store, but not audiobooks. As per Apple's newly updated support document, customers in 22 countries total can now re-download any audiobook.

This feature is available in iBooks on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 8.4 or later, or in iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. In addition, previously downloaded audiobooks, free or paid, are now listed in your Purchased history in iBooks and iTunes.

Apple recruits cable TV PR veteran for Apple TV and iTunes content marketing role

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 24, 2016

Bernadette Simpao, previously working at AMC and Viacom in public relations capacity, is joining Apple to handle the company's PR efforts for content and apps related to the new Apple TV, as well as TV shows, movies, apps, books and podcasts that Apple carries on the iTunes Store's virtual shelves.

According to Variety, Simpao spent ten years at Viacom in various communication roles, including Senior Director of Communications for Viacom International Media Networks, before joining AMC.

Multiple iCloud services experiencing downtime, App Store/iTunes purchases affected

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 4, 2016

Apple on Thursday morning reported a number of issues with various iCloud services. According to the iCloud Status webpage, these problems are preventing many users around the world from making purchases in Apple's app and content stores.

In addition, “new and recently changed content may not have updated across devices for iCloud Drive, Backup, iCloud Notes, iWork for iCloud and Photos,” reads a notice on the webpage.

UPDATE: As of 9:10am PT, all of the affected iCloud services had been restored.

How to set up carrier billing as payment method for App Store, iTunes Store and iBooks Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 2, 2015

In October 2015, Apple began rolling out support for carrier billing on iTunes in select markets, starting with Germany. This feature joins the existing payment methods accepted on the App Store, iTunes Store and iBooks Store and permits customers to have apps and media bought through these content stores charged to their monthly mobile phone bill or deducted from their prepaid amount.

If your carrier supports it, you too can opt-in to pay for your iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store purchases—and your Apple Music membership—through mobile phone billing.

In this tutorial, we're going to cover setting up mobile phone billing as your payment method in the iTunes Store, App Store or iBooks Store.

No, it’s not just you; the iTunes Store is experiencing issues [Updated]

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 19, 2018

If you're having problems downloading apps or installing updates from the App Store, you're not alone. I am not able to download apps or install updates, and another colleague has verified the same. Also, if you check Apple's system status page, you'll see where the iTunes Store is experiencing issues.

This issue appears to be affecting iTunes Store, App Store, and Mac App Store purchases and updates. Best advice? Just be patient until Apple gets things resolved.

Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks make their long-expected debut in China

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 30, 2015

Apple on Wednesday announced that users in China can now enjoy Apple Music, as well as browse and download their entertainment from the iTunes Store and iBooks Store, marking the first time customers in the 1.33 billion people market will have access to Apple’s entertainment ecosystem with music, movies and books right at their fingertips.

“Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “One of the top requests has been more great content and we’re thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts.”

Why are iTunes Store music links now redirecting to Apple Music?

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 7, 2015

It appears that Apple has changed the way iTunes Store music links work. Instead of opening the corresponding artist, song or album pages in the iTunes Store application on the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad (or the iTunes Store section within desktop iTunes), these links now redirect to the Apple Music section in the stock Music app or within desktop iTunes, as first reported by Kirk McElhearn.

Apple Music, Beats 1 & store services experience downtime during VMA nominee announcements

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 21, 2015

In what's become a norm for the company these days, another outage has hit a number of cloud-based services as users around the world report issues accessing Apple's content stores: the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iTunes Store.

We're also tracking issues with Apple Music and Beats 1.

Indeed, I'm currently struggling to stream my Apple Music songs and Beats 1 radio.

UPDATE 1: Apple has now acknowledged the outage on the iCloud status page. “Users are experiencing a problem with the services listed above,” reads the notice. “We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.”

UPDATE 2: The iCloud dashboard says all services have been restored after three and a half hours of downtime.

Apple partners with Red Cross for Nepal earthquake relief donations

Jake Smith ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Apple has setup a donation page to help aid those affected by the devastating Nepal earthquake that struck the nation on Saturday. Like with past disasters, Apple has partnered with the American Red Cross to handle donations, with 100 percent of the money going to the cause.

Apple issues an apology for iTunes/iCloud downtime, blames outage on internal DNS error

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 16, 2017

Chances are you've by now realized that Apple's content stores and other iCloud services are experiencing widespread downtime.

Earlier this morning, Twitter lit up with complaints from users around the world who reported being unable to download apps, music, movies, TV shows and books, as well as buy in-app content, with some even unable to sign in to online service like iCloud Mail.

In an official statement issued to CNBC, Apple's apologized for inconveniencing customers and said the multi-hour outage is caused by “an internal DNS error” at the firm. As you could imagine, they're scrambling to produce a fix.

UPDATE: following what became an eleven-hour long outage, the App Store and iTunes services are now back online.