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

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Top Rated Comments

konqerror Avatar
121 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
121 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
121 months ago
It will be fixed. Don't get your panties in a bunch.
Wazzup Eddy.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
B/D Avatar
121 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
121 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
121 months ago
At a point where I'm just not surprised about these bugs
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)