iTunes Store Experiencing Massive Outage

iTunes Store unavailable status messageIf you’re experiencing trouble today with the iTunes Store, don’t panic. The iTunes Store is experiencing a major outage due to an internal error.

A check of the systems status page for Apple services currently shows that the App Store, iTunes Store and Mac App Store are currently unavailable.

Apple is aware of the outage and is working to correct the problem. In a statement released earlier today, Apple blamed the outage on an internal DNS error:

We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning. The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We’re working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience,

I tried to access the iTunes listing for the Podcaster News Show and my web browser returned a “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” error. I also tried searching for the podcast from within the iTunes desktop application. The search was successful in finding the show within the iTunes Store but when I clicked on it in the search results, I received this dialog box:

iTunes unavailable error box

There’s no indication that any black-hat activity lead to this outage. By all accounts, it’s just an internal problem at Apple. Also, there’s no current ETA as to when the iTunes Store will be back online and functioning properly.

The only thing left to do now is to wait for Apple to get this sorted out. If you’d like to ensure that new users can still subscribe to your podcast during the outage, consider placing an iTunes protocol link on your website until the iTunes Store is back up and running.