iTunes 12.4 Has Apple Music Playback Bug Related to Tracks Shorter Than 60 Seconds

A new iTunes bug has been discovered that causes Apple Music playback issues related to tracks shorter than 60 seconds. MacRumors was able to reproduce the issue on Macs running OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4.1.

Specifically, when an Apple Music track that is shorter than 60 seconds is streamed in its entirety, without skipping ahead, the subsequent song in an album or playlist fails to play and appears to be in a state of perpetual buffering.


MacRumors forum member B/D used backend file change monitoring tool fswatch and identified a plausible reason for the bug:

It looks like the way Apple Music handles streaming is when the current song is a minute from the end, iTunes signals the next track in the queue to start downloading so that it's ready to play when the current song is over. However, when the song is less than a minute long the next song's download is never initiated, apparently because some "one minute remaining" event is never triggered! This means the app just sits waiting for a download to finish that has in fact never started.

The bug only affects tracks streamed through Apple Music, with songs and albums that have been stored locally on iTunes unaffected. The issue was unable to be reproduced on a Mac running macOS Sierra beta, or on iTunes 12.3 or earlier, or on an iPhone running iOS 9.3.2.

The bug has been reported to Apple and should hopefully be resolved in a future iTunes software update.

Update: The bug was originally shared on the Apple Support Communities by user ivoisbelongtous.

Related Forum: Mac Apps

Top Rated Comments

konqerror Avatar
102 months ago
These types of bugs suggest that Apple sucks at test automation/unit tests. They just give it to somebody and they play a their favorite songs. What they should do is make iTunes play a huge number of randomly selected tracks from the service.

Google understands and invests a bit in this stuff. It's not about how much software you can write anymore, it's about how much software you can test.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dannyyankou Avatar
102 months ago
This explains why I haven't been able to listen to Lonely Island's "Popstar" all the way through. Guess iTunes didn't get the memo to never stop never stopping.
Hilarious movie
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Bubba Satori Avatar
102 months ago
It will be fixed. Don't get your panties in a bunch.
Wazzup Eddy.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
B/D Avatar
102 months ago
And life still goes on. How can that be?
Yes, exactly, life goes on. And like everything else in life, problems only get solved if we do something about it, which is what I´m doing right now. Granted , machine and technology issues are of little importance in grand scheme of things; but like I said, I have the same attitude in every aspect of my life. In this case would be: Instead of whining about Apple do something about it!. Well, I´m doing exactly that.

I have a Mac, Iphone, Ipad, Apple TV and Airport Extreme because I love the company high standards towards to achieve excellence in user experience, easy of use and design. If I consider that at some point software bugs don't allow to reach any of those standards , as a consumer I have the obligation to do something about it, and that´s not whining in forums, but politely and calmly report the bug to Apple (both trough phone and feedback website), and then share my case with the community, to see if anyone else is affected.

At least that the way I see it.

:)
[doublepost=1466702552][/doublepost]
And life still goes on. How can that be?
Final clarification. I just remarked that because it´s a paid service. Let´s not forget about that.

:)
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Ploki Avatar
102 months ago
Huh, wow. I'm kinda amazed that this happened to software with such a large developer support.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kevinkyoo Avatar
102 months ago
At a point where I'm just not surprised about these bugs
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...