iTunes question
 

Hi everyone - I'm moving from London to NYC in a couple of weeks and have no idea what to do about phones and iTunes. Hoping that some of you are far more technology savvy than me!

I'm still under contract with Vodafone so will annoyingly have to continue paying this off, but I'll be given a new US phone by my employer. I've built up a massive music collection with iTunes, which I listen to through my phone all the time. Should I switch the country setting on iTunes and will this lead to me losing all of my existing purchases when I start up my new phone? If possible I'd like to keep all old and new purchases in the same place. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Re: iTunes question
 

I have an itunes account with both countries, as my family buys my itunes gift cards in the UK and I redeem them here in the USA, but with my UK account.

So I know you can listen to music bought here under a UK license.

I'd obviously back them up onto an external hard drive just to be safe, but you should be fine.

Alternatively to worrying about the phone, just get an ipod

Re: iTunes question
 

I think you can sync upto 6 accounts on your iOS device, so you could have a US and UK account rather easily.

However--please note that some people have encountered difficulty and even "account lock outs" when trying to update their payment information from another country. If you are connecting from the US and try to add a UK credit card to your UK iTunes account, sometimes they do a geo-ip check to see where you are connecting from for fraud prevention purposes and get a bit scared when they see USA updating UK credit card details. I now use a VPN to connect to iTunes when doing any account detail updates, though I still buy and download apps from all over the world.

Re: iTunes question
 

If you want to switch your account from a UK to a US one, as opposed to having 2 accounts then you can do this safely. I can't remember the exact process but it was smooth for me with 1 exception.

Before you commence the switch, make sure you have all of your purchases on your computer. I did the switch while I didn't have a home computer with everything on and now I can't transfer the 1 album I bought directly onto my iPhone while I was in between computers. It's there on my 'UK' phone, and I can listen from there, but won't move to the computer and thus to any other iOS device. Note for apps this did not seem to be a problem, could also be an issue for video but I didn't have anything purchased in the same manner.

Aside from this issue above I have all my music, apps and videos I had purchased which were on the PC and they work just like before.

Re: iTunes question
 

This is all really helpful, thanks everyone!

Re: iTunes question
 

I've "moved" my iTunes from the UK to the US and didn't lose any UK purchases. Not that there were many anyway (95% of my music collection is backed by CDs) but both the music and the app purchases transferred.

The only annoyance is that I have to update certain apps via the phone because they were purchased via the UK app store and I can't be bothered to switch app stores.

BTW, have you asked Vodafone if they let you out of the contract if you pay an early termination fee? Might be worth considering.

Re: iTunes question
 

Welcome to NYC!:)

Re: iTunes question
 

Be careful switching between multiple iTunes accounts on your computer, only switch between accounts on Apple TV - you can end up getting locked out of one for 3 months if an item starts downloading, my advice? pick an account and stick with it.