iTunes Store downloads unresponsive for almost 48 hours
For many users (myself included), downloading purchased songs from the iTunes store has been next to impossible.
This seems to be a widespread issue as well. Covering multiple countries such as the U.S., Germany, Canada, Sweden, and others, there are people who haven’t been able to download purchased songs for as long as 48 hours in some cases.
What seems to be happening is users place songs/albums in their cart and when they click to buy the items the store throws an error and clears the user’s cart of any songs. It turns out the songs have been purchased but just won’t download.
Apple’s typical response has been to do Store > Check for Purchases… to download the missing songs, but seems no one has had any luck with that.
The error that we troubled users have grown to love is simply:

Have you experienced these issues? Have you been able to get a non-canned response from Apple on the issue?
UPDATE: After over 24 hours (for me, personally) I am now able to download my purchased items from the iTunes store. I never received any sort of real explanation or even any status update saying anything was fixed. I just tried downloading them again and lucked out. Maybe they’ve got things back in working order.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
I don’t buy any music but I do purchase a few videos here and there and since Saturday I’ve downloaded 2 without a problem plus a couple podcasts.
Yeah, I’ve got this error for the last few days after trying to buy a couple of music videos from the Australian iTunes Store. The weird thing is that I’ve also downloaded an album in between then and now, and that came through without a hitch.
My response from iTunes support was not very helpful. They just told me to check that my version of iTunes was up to date, then select ‘check for purchases’. Even though I’d told them that doing so did not work. They also asked what ISP I’m with, and what sort of connection I’m on. Seemed as if they still considered it to be a user error rather than something in their system.
I’m using the UK store in London. I bought the new Hard-Fi album the day before yesterday. There should have been a video, which never downloaded, though all the music tracks did. When I tried to redownload it I got the old “Purchases can only be downloaded once” message, then emailed Apple and got the “try checking for purchases” line before getting the “store is currently unavailable” message. All a bit annoying.
I’ve bought and downloaded both music and movies (in addition to podcasts) during the past 48 hours. Not sure what could be different about my setup. I’m in the United States.
No problems in the Finnish store. I downloaded a 41 track album yesterday and it seemed quicker than usual to me??
make sure your computer is AUTHORIZED under the Store menu in iTunes. Some how my two computers were deauthorized and I had to reauthorize in order to download some stuff. Hope this helps.
I bought the newest collective soul album yesterday from the US store, no problems.
@midloviking: Yeah, I just did it again to be sure, but still no go. This really has to be an Apple issue as there are a very large number of people who are all having the exact same issue as I am.
I bought a single song two days ago and had this problem. As of 9:47 on 9/13, I still get the error panel from your screenshot. What’s strange, though, is that I was able to purchase and download an entire album from iTMS yesterday. I just can’t get the single I bought two days ago. Very odd.
126 Items Purchased since Sept. 11, Still pending download, still unable to “Check Purchases”
The back and forth from Apple Support has been frustrating, and yesterday’s last response from them was basically “We know the problem, wait 4 hours and try again, but it’s probably your ISP”
I just want them to tell me what is actually wrong. Hell, credit my account for the purchases and give me my money back.
Now, this all started when I tried to buy the Kanye West album “Graduation” – Thank goodness I’ve been able to procure it by “other means” but I still want my purchase!