Comments on: iTunes Pre-Order Shenanigans

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:23:46 +0000

Thanks folks. I was going to pre order the upcoming La Coka Nostra album but I think I will wait.

By: James

James — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:00:24 +0000

I pre ordered Springsteen’s magic in August. The album came out over 24 hours ago and is pushing 48 hours. I still haven’t received an email. I’ll never preorder from iTunes again.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:34:05 +0000

I pre ordered for the first time on iTunes for the new 50 cent album. Here’s where my issue comes into play…. The album has been out almost 10 hours now and I’m still not able to get it. I’m told I have to wait for an email to come saying it’s ready for me to download. I don’t understand this, why isn’t it ready at midnight? I really wanted to get this loaded on my iPod today so I could listen at the gym but now who knows when I’ll be able to get it. I should have just waited till this morning to order it and I could have had it right away.

By: david

david — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:43:38 +0000

I’ve had no problems updating the single that downloads first and appearing in the correct order when I sort by album or album by artist, maybe you’re doing it wrong are you updating the total track count on the other tracks as well, so if your song is 3 of 14 do the other songs say “# of 14”? And also make sure that under album artist it should be the same for all the songs on the album, I’ve never had a problem with 30 something preorders

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:43:21 +0000

The problem appears to be with Apple’s custom “plID” atom. I had this problem with “Inside In / Inside Out” by The Kooks. Track 5 “Ooh La” was the free song of the week, and I bought the album at that time. It changed the download such that this track was different.

I used AtomicParsley (http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/) to figure out which atoms were different.. about 4 of them stood out but plID was the one that actually affected this. Unfortunately, AtomicParsley doesn’t support editing of arbitrary atoms, so I had to use a hex editor to change it. Once the value matched the other atoms, iTunes sorted it by “Album” in the correct order.

By: Anson

Anson — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:21:24 +0000

I am having the same problem with Maroon 5’s “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long”. I’ve downloaded pre-orders before without this problem. This actually bothers me very much.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 17 May 2007 11:18:07 +0000

This was my first iTunes pre-order and the experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’m sure if the pre-order doesn’t contain a pre-downloadable single, everything works great. I’d expect the entire album would download when it became available. Unfortunately more and more pre-orders are featuring the single download. Which is unfortunate since a lot of them also contain bonus tracks you only get when pre-ordering. Overall, I’ll be waiting till the album is released should I want to purchase it because it’s just not worth the potential hassle should this happen again.

By: zerock

zerock — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:51:25 +0000

I have actually bought a couple of pre-ordered albums thru iTunes, and the only ones that give me this problem is when the single doesnt download with the album when it comes out. i have possibly bought 2 preordered album.. Year Zero would make the second for me with this problem.