Apple's iTunes music store appears to have been experiencing major problems today. Since the app is in widespread use, the issue could have potentially affected millions of customers. At this time, Apple has not acknowledged the problem, but multiple instance have been reported on social media and in discussion groups, with many experiencing an error message that states “The iTunes Store in unable to process purchases at this time. Please try again later.”
Apple's music store iTunes was announced in 2001 by CEO Steve Jobs. It originally stored and organized each individual’s own music collection. Apple went on to sign deals with most major labels and offers over 60 million songs for purchase and download now. iTunes is preinstalled on Apple devices making it the default store for owners of iPhone and iPad devices, as well as Mac computers. iTunes is also somewhat necessary software if an iPhone or iPad owner wishes to connect their device to a computer for backup or transfer of images, music, videos or other data.
A short time ago, several Apple device owners started reporting trouble with accessing their iTunes store. The issue appears to have been limited to the US and UK. At this time, Apple is not showing the issue on its system status page although Apple Books is showing an issue that may still be affecting some users. It is not known whether this is a related issue, but being another Apple store, the connection is possible. Game Center and iCloud Mail apparently had issues recently, but they were marked as resolved with no disclaimer. Around the same time as the initial reports, Down Detector starting showing a sudden spike in iTunes-related complaints as well.
What Is Happening With iTunes & Why?
Unlike previous outage issues affecting other services, most of the Apple customers affected here seem to be echoing the same overall problem. That is, an error notification related to the iTunes store. While some note that the issue appears when trying to make a purchase through the iTunes store, others report the error message surfacing without ever opening iTunes.
Further adding to the frustrating nature of the event, some have explained that the frequency of the messages is overwhelming with the recurring error message appearing every few seconds.
This recent problem with iTunes has no relation to the other recent issue with Fortnite. The popular game can no longer be downloaded on iOS devices and therefore, users trying to download the game may be presented with a valid and unrelated error warning. Since the iTunes issue first surfaced, the frequency of reports have settled down, which might suggest that whatever the issue was, it has since been fixed again. For anyone still experiencing issues, Apple has a standing request to report the issue through its support site.
Source: Down Detector