Very unhappy experience with iTunes Store

Question

Hi I'm writing this piece to share my unpleasant experience with Apple.
Before this event, I'm a keen supporter of apple products especially its iTunes Store. Instead of buying music album CDs from music publishing companies, I prefer to purchase songs from iTunes Store. My reason is if my songs are bought from the iTunes Store, they will be in the Apple's cloud. So whenever any of my devices does not have a song, I can easily download it from the cloud.  I can also play the song from the cloud via Apple TV without the hassle of turning on other devices like ipad, iPhone or my computer.  It was a wonderful concept and a great experience.
However, all these good experience crushed to ground zero after this event happened.  I purchased a music album from iTunes Store a year plus ago.  Recently, I found this album was not available for me anymore. I could not download the songs in the album from iTunes Store. Finding this a bit strange, I went to check the iTunes Store. I found that the music album was still available but the cover was slightly different from the one that I had purchased before. However, the album's title, the songs, the names of the songs and the artist are still the same in this album. But this album was not under 'Purchased' in my account anymore.
I called the Apple support. They said the current one in iTunes Store was a 'modified' album. The 'old' album that I purchased was not available anymore. Although the songs are the same, there was no way I could access the 'old' album which I had purchased. If I wanted to access the songs again, I had to purchase this 'modified' album again!  They could not tell me the reasons why a 'modified' album had replaced an 'old' album despite the songs, the album's title and the artist are the same. They said I should be responsible to back up the soft copy of the songs in my computer when I purchased the songs last time.  Next, they gave me links that point to the legal policies of iTunes Store. The support also said I could not escalate this issue any further. He said there was no one to escalate after him.
After this event, I think through and come up with my own conclusion.  There is no more attraction  for me in buying a music album from iTunes Store over buying a music album cd. If I buy from iTunes Store, I need to store the soft copy in my local computer. If I buy a music album CD, I also need to rip it and save a soft copy too. Worse is, although I purchase it in iTunes Store, my access to it in iTunes Store may be taken away any time. However if I buy a music album cd, assuming I have not done anything illegal with the songs, I don't think, on any day, a music publishing company will knock on my door and ask me to return the CD back with no refund.
In that case, buying a CD has more advantages. I can rip the songs and store them in my devices for my own enjoyment. I have the lyrics of the songs which most albums from iTunes Store don't have. I have nice physically wonderful music covers that i can ask the artists to autograph on them.  Some CDs also have DVDs attached. And one last thing, music companies will not take back my CDs!
I'm not sure any Apple management staff will ever read this but that is ok. I just hope my friends are aware of this.
One last last thing, I think this is:
"A small back leap for me but a big back leap for cloud business."
An ex fan of iTunes Store
14 May 2014

Answer 1

There has never been any guarantee that anything will be available in the future.
You should never rely on this for your backup.  You should always keep everything on your computer and always back up your computer.
You seem to be over reacting a bit.