New iPod randomly skipping songs

I finally called Apple about this issue. Both my iPod and MacBook Pro are beyond the warranty, but the Advisor told me try re-downloading the song, by deleting the song from my library, going to the Store and clicking on Purchases, then choosing the song and download it again.

I am happy to say that this solved my problem. Apparently during a sync the file was corrupted, and so could not play completely. The newly-downloaded track plays fine.

Just thought I would pass this along. Worth a try!

I have an iPOD Video 5th generation and an iPOD Touch 3rd generation with the same problem. There hasn't been an iTunes update for the iPOD Video in quite some time, so I can rule out later versions of iTunes as the culprit. However, I do sync both iPODs to iTunes regularly. The skipping over certain songs problem is probably occurring each time the iPODs sync to iTunes, but I don't notice it until I try to play a specific song and it is skipped over, even though it played fine many times before. The songs will play from the iPOD from within iTunes when the iPOD is connected to my PC, but they will not play when the song is clicked on from the iPOD touch screen or wheel.

On previous occasions, I have found that if there is an ampersand (&) in a song title, it will be skipped over. On one occasion, I converted an MP3 that was skipped over to an AAC and that solved the problem. I have also found that deleting anything in the comments section of the MP3 Info solved the problem. The most common solution I have found is to delete the skipped over song from the iPOD and then load it back on through my iTunes library. I think the issue is file corruption during the iTunes sync process, because all of the songs that are skipped over never had a problem playing on either iPOD previously. The problem occurred with two such songs again today, but it only occurred on the iPOD Touch, which would make sense if it was a corruption issue during a sync. The fix today was to delete the skipped over MP3s on the iPOD Touch and copy them back over to the iPOD Touch from the iTunes library. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing whether another MP3 was then corrupted during the sync, until you try to play that song and it is skipped over. This could be a never ending process, because we don't know the source (software, cabling, hardware, USB,etc.) of the corruption.

Quick update. This may help Apple Support with this problem. Both songs I deleted from the iPOD Touch and recopied from the iTunes Library today play fine now. However, now the song that directly follows one of the replaced songs in the song list no longer plays on the iPOD Touch and is skipped over. That song played fine today, until I replaced the song above it. I deleted this skipped song from the iPOD Touch and replaced it with the one in the iTunes Library--it now plays on the iPOD Touch and so does the song next in the song list on the iPOD Touch. Now the question is which other song won't play. As I said, this could be never ending. Only now, I'm beginning to think it has something to do with the directory structure and database pointers in the microcode within the iPOD itself and it goes back several generations.

120Gb iPod Classic here - seems like mine has stopped skipping after setting Backlight to 25% and auto-off after 2 seconds.

No skipping after nonstop playing for the last 8 hours. Prior to that it would either reboot or skip after about 15 minutes.

That's weird, others report always on with light level set as low as possible is a fix. Who knows?

Mine got much worse after I doubled my library. Went from 2000 to 4000 songs (also 120 Gb), so not at any limits. Not just new additions skipping.

Are you still seeing success? I'll try anything.

2 weeks since my last post, so time for a little progress update. The skipping has stopped at 25% backlight brightness / 2 sec backlight auto-off when I have the iPod sitting on a table plugged into a hifi system and plugged into the car. It has skipped a few times when listening to music with headphones and the iPod in my pocket, but nowhere as much as before.

I have also turned off Genius and Cover Flow just for the **** of it. So I would say that it's fixed the skipping / reboot problem for me about 95% of the time.

There seems to be many causes for the song skipping and multiple solutions that work most, if not all of the time. Mechanical hard drive heads can skip when subjected to shock and significant vibrations, unless the heads are properly dampened. It's the same concept as the Sony Walkman portable CD players that are designed for the shaking and shock of walking to prevent the head from skipping tracks (not songs). I thought Apple had such a mechanism in the iPOD hard drives. Keep in mind that hard drive heads do not actually touch the platters--there is an extremely thin layer of air between the two. Perhaps the hard drive is doing too much housekeeping/thermal recalibration due to heat within the iPOD that can cause the heads to drift from the target track. Of course, it also depends whether the hard drive used actually requires thermal recalibration during operation. I could see thermal issues leading to dropped data bits or possible skipping of an entire track.

I’ve come to believe it has something to do w/ the headphone jack, or at least for me. My iPod will skip forward or pause randomly. At first I assumed it was software related. But I also noticed my iPod would randomly come on in my pocket while locked. So then I thought maybe hold button. But after leaving the iPod to play w/out headphones it didn’t seem to skip. Isolating it to headphone (in MY case at least). If I twist or nudge the headphone connection I can cause it to pause and occasionally skip forward. I’m assuming the problem is the jack. There are headphones that have skip forward, back, and pause functionalities so maybe the connections that do this are gunked, corroded, or fouled up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXXgV6YNGkQ

http://www.irepair.com/ipod-headphone-jack-repair.html

Seems easy enough and only cost $10. I’m also mechanically inclined so that helps as well. My iPod is two years old so I’m on my own. I either fix it or buy a new iPod.

Keep you guys posted after the repair.

I tried everything including formatting my ipod, resetting, and then restoring it through itunes and nothing worked. I finally went into my library, deleted the most recent albums I had purchased, where the skipping began, and redownloaded them from the itunes store. No more skipping.

I am having similar problems. I have reimported my entire iTunes library, done numerous iPod restores and I am still having the same problem.

When I do the restore a different set of songs are affected, which would maybe suggest a hardware problem rather than library issue as if the library is at fault I would expect it to always be the same songs. Sometimes it is entire albums that skip and it doesn't sound like it is trying all the songs. When it has worked its way through an album and leave it, the iPod doesn't go to sleep after a while like it would do when an album finishes.

I have run the inbuilt advance diagnostics http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/index.shtml and run a hard disk check on the iPod, both give it a clean bill of health, which would suggest software.

I have 18,000+ songs in my library so restores etc take ages and obviously don't want to buy another iPod to check if it is a hardware problem as realistically that is the only way of ruling that out.

I did have the headphone/pausing issue a while back and bought some new headphones which resolved the problem however I don't think this is related as that only pauses it doesn't skip songs.

Does anyone else have further suggestions?

I have just recieved an iPod Touch 5th generation on Monday January 6th, in the mail and as soon as I got it, I imported all my 1,002 songs into my iPod and it was working fine the first day I played my music on my iPod just like normal. Then the next day I played my iPod again, it just started randomly skipping over songs and is ******* me off. Come on apple, my samsung tablet is getting updates every once in a while and you guys are taking forever to read these forums! Is not that freaking hard to read, are you guys in like 2nd grade or what? Please fix these updates soon, I'm going to best buy tomorrow to see if they had these people had the same exact problems with other people who have apple products with the latest iOS 7 firmware who are having this same song skipping issues! God we're just gonna keep on posting this issues until apple reads this. Apple are so slow and not reading forums!

Good luck. Sadly though there are plenty more sheep out there.

Do you have the exact same problem? I somehow deleted my songs on my iPod Touch off iTunes in my iPod and my songs in my iPod Touch 5th gen still shows gray and a box in the center of a circle and when I tap on a song, it just randomly skips over! This is p i s s i n g me off.

I have an old iPod classic. Does not skip as yours. Mine plays a song for say twenty seconds, then jumps to next song. Never happens to same song twice, so doubt it is the specific track.

If yours repeats the same song every time you might have a better chance. I have given up on mine.

Since I can not edit my reply...mine too started acting up quickly. About a week after I brought it. Apple did give me a refurbished model that did exactly the same thing.