I have a dot-mac account which is expiring soon, and my iTunes account is registered with my dot-mac email address. When it expires, will I need to change the dead email to a new one?

The most logical course of action would be to change it to another email address immediately.

Yeah, just change it now. What’s the big problem?

The problem, is that I’m not sure how to change it… (without making a new one)

You won’t need to change it, you just won’t be able to access support to that account. That’s why in the future you may want to only use free accounts for services to avoid the issue.

If you think in the future you may need to go through support with them, you might want to send them an email and see what they can do. But if everything is fine for you, you shouldn’t have to change it.

I had a .mac and a .gmail account using iTunes. The dotmac account died and itunes continued to word perfectly via the gmail account. I didn’t do anything. I have poor computer skills and trusted blind luck and it worked (at least for me).

You need an email address login and password to use iTunes, but the email address you use as your login does not need to be the email account that emails go to.

In iTunes, sign in, then click on your Apple ID (the whoever@mac.com email) to see your account information. Click on “Edit Account Info” and change your email address.

Aha! I knew that was there somewhere. I’m no help to anyone when I’m on painkillers. :’(

When your iTunes receipt email bounces for the first time, iTunes will automatically ask you to update your AppleID.

The fact that AppleID uses the email format convention for the “name” field, is only that, a format convention.

However, why not go ahead and change it right away at:

https://myinfo.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyInfo

Here you may change your AppleID to any email address you like. This will change your login across all Apple applications and services you may use.

One curiosity though, when you authorize a different computer to play content from your purchased library, you may have to log in with your “old” email address in the future.