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Copy links from iTunes Store (or send by email)

While you use iTunes to browse through the iTunes Store, it is actually an e-commerce website, behind the scenes - which makes iTunes a web browser with restricted functionality and website destinations. As such, each "page" in the store, each song, movie, and TV show is accessible through a link, as are search results. In this tutorial, we will show you a few ways to copy, save, and email links you want to keep or share. Apple has started duplicating a portion of the iTunes Store to make emailed links (or those shared on Facebook or Twitter) accessible to those without iTunes installed on their computer, or not using a platform that supports iTunes (including Linux and non-Apple mobile devices), in a standard web browser - here's an example of an iTunes Store page in Internet Explorer on Windows 7:

iTunes Store link accessed inside a standard web browser on Windows 7

Copy a link from the iTunes Store

Open your copy of iTunes and navigate to any page you like in the iTunes Store:

  • To copy the "URL" (internet address) of a particular page, right-click on the link that leads to it. In the example below, we right-clicked on the artist's name: choose "Copy Link" from the context menu, and iTunes will add the target page's URL to your clipboard, from where you can paste it in a text editor, an email, a Facebook post, a tweet, etc.

    Copy a link URL in the iTunes Store
    Note: each portion of the breadcrumbs in the top left corner of an album's page is a link with that same behavior.
  • Thumbnails in search results can also be right-clicked to get their page address - here's the same context menu appearing when you right-click on an album cover in the search results in the iTunes Store:

    Right-click on album cover to get URL of page URL
  • List results contain two "hidden" links: album names and artist names can be right-clicked as well, as can the "See All" link shown below, which you'll find for most result pages:

    Copy links to album, artist page, or all search results from the iTunes Store
    The screenshot above shows that you can click these artists / album names to go to a search results "sub page" - listing all albums on the "Artist Page", or the album homepage itself.
  • Finally, any of these linked objects in the iTunes Store can be dragged and dropped into applications that support dropping links, like a text editor, or even the Windows start menu!

You can even navigate a limited-feature version of the iTunes Store from a web browser by using a certain "Google operator" that restricts your search to the domain "itunes.apple.com", which is where Apple stores the "website" copy of the store items: click this link for an example, and replace the sample artist's name with anything you like - album, song name, etc. Once you have the result you were searching for, you can bookmark the page in your browser ("Add to Favorites"), for example - on any of these pages, click the blue "View in iTunes" button, and the corresponding page will load in iTunes (assuming it is installed on that particular computer).

Save a link by adding it to your iTunes wish list Tip: if you're only saving a link for personal consumption, the easiest is to use iTunes' "Wish List" feature - but heavy users will quickly run out of allowed items (Apple gives you a maximum number of saved items regardless of media type - in other words, you may have filled up your allotted amount of movies saved yet zero song, and find yourself unable to add any single one to your wish list).


Tutorial last updated on December 11, 2011

iTunes Tutorial

Unless specified otherwise, our free iTunes tutorials apply to both Mac OS X or Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

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