iTunes authentication problems: affect media, iPhone apps

Users are experiencing problems with authentication for iTunes content. These issues affect playback/usage of audio files and iPhone applications.

The applications will work if the user goes to the iTunes store and enters authentication information again, but users must do this repeatedly. These problems seem to occur for iTunes users in both OS X and Windows, and seem to occur for free applications more than others.

In addition, some users playing purchased music are required to authorize the songs over and over again, and may have their songs, TV shows, and applications removed from synchronized iPods.

Per Apple Discussions users d2h: "Every time I try to play any iTunes purchased song it asks me to authorize that song. Over and over and over again. In addition all my purchased songs / TV shows / applications have been removed from my iPod touch."

Currently there do not seem to be any fixes for the problems; however, Apple support has suggested uninstalling and reinstalling the iTunes application, but so far this has not helped affected users. As a workaround, users can download applications to the iPhone itself from the App store, instead of managing them in iTunes. Additionally, users might try fully de-authorizing the iTunes application and then re-authorizing it, so the program goes through a full cycle of changing the authorization settings.

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