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

Thursday June 23, 2016 9:19 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
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.

Tags: Apple Music, OS X 10.11.5, iTunes 12.4
[ 83 comments ]


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konqerror
35 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.
Rating: 21 Votes
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kevinkyoo
35 months ago
At a point where I'm just not surprised about these bugs
Rating: 4 Votes
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thejoshhoward
35 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.
Rating: 4 Votes
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Kebabselector
35 months ago
Thats most of the 70's punk albums knackered then.
Rating: 4 Votes
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Ploki
35 months ago
Huh, wow. I'm kinda amazed that this happened to software with such a large developer support.
Rating: 4 Votes
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B/D
35 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.

:)
Rating: 4 Votes
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dannyyankou
35 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
Rating: 4 Votes
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Bubba Satori
35 months ago

It will be fixed. Don't get your panties in a bunch.


Wazzup Eddy.

Rating: 4 Votes
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villicodelirant
35 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.


I very much doubt so.
There is no evidence in support of this, which would be a rather extraordinary claim for a major software product in 2016, let alone iTunes.

No matter how many automated tests you have in place, you would have to have the correct test to catch such a bug, and if nobody thought of it...

After all, unit testing, Dijkstra loved to stress, can only be used to show the presence of a bug, never its absence.

What would have probably helped here is monkey testing ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_testing') (named after MacPaint, no less).
Rating: 3 Votes
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B/D
35 months ago
And conceptual albums too!!!

Is far more annoying for me i guess because I don´t use playlists, just listen to complete albums from start to end (old school, I know), and when an interruption comes, is destroys mood and listening experience completely .
Rating: 2 Votes

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