Playing songs downloaded to my hard drive on another console

[memlarryboy]

My brother does not have xbox live so occasionally he will bring his console over to my house, we'll hook up his console to my internet and download songs. This weekend we just swapped out hard drives, leaving my console hooked up on the network but using his hard drive on it. Everything looked ok (his gamertags, profiles, etc. showed up when we started the game) but when he took the hard drive home and tried to play the games on his console, he got an error.

Can I assume that you're not able to do this and that you must have your hard drive on your console for DLC to work? Is there a way to fix this without having to re-purchase the songs?

[davidshek]

Can I assume that you're not able to do this and that you must have your hard drive on your console for DLC to work? Is there a way to fix this without having to re-purchase the songs?

You're correct, DLC is tied to both the console on which it was purchased, and the gamertag that purchased it. If the DLC was purchased on YOUR console with his HDD, it cannot be verified by console when he's at his house. And since he's not on XBL, it cannot be verified by gamertag either. That means he can't play it.

Always always always buy DLC using the HDD and console that you will be playing it on. Never switch HDD's like that.

But there is a solution! You can perform a license migration so that he can transfer the DLC licenses to his console instead. Here's the webpage that explains it all:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/

(Note that XBL is down right now, so that website isn't working. Check it later today or tomorrow)

[memlarryboy]

Thanks for the quick reply. I figured it was something like that. I appreciate the link to the solution as well.