Music app freezes when trying to play Apple Music tracks on macOS

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Level 1

11 points

Music app freezes when trying to play Apple Music tracks on macOS

Hello,

I'm experiencing app freezing issues when I try to stream a song from Apple Music using the Music app on my MacBook Pro running macOS 10.15.4.

Here are my steps:

Open the Music app
Click on the "For You" tab
Find an artist or album to play
Click the "play" icon on the album or song
The app freezes and the infamous beachball starts spinning

Once the app is frozen, I am forced to force quit the app each time. I have restarted my Mac multiple times and signed in and out of my Apple ID, but the issue continues to occur.

These issues do not affect my Apple Music experience on my iPhone XS with the latest iOS.

Not sure what to do. Can the community assist me?

Cheers,

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 31, 2020 7:14 PM

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Answer 1

raina_b22

Community Specialist

Apr 3, 2020 5:56 AM in response to mikehermary

Hey Mike.

Thanks for the great description of what's going on. I'd be glad to see how I can help you get the Music app working again on your Mac.

Is that the only app having reliability issues that you've noticed? In either case, something we may want to do is use Disk Utility to run First Aid your disk, which can clear up any issues you might be having with apps not really acting quite like they should. Learn more about that in Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac.

If you've completed that and the issue remains, let's then do a bit of testing in a second user account. This will help us determine if the issue is specific to a single user on your Mac or if it affects all users. Knowing this will be a big step in how we combat it moving forward. Check out How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac for the steps to make sure that things are working great in another user.

If you notice that Music exhibits a similar behavior in both users, we might need to reinstall the Music app. The steps in Reinstall apps that came with your Mac will lead you through that process.

If you notice that the issue is specific to your main user, you may want to remove the Login Items from System Preferences > Users & Groups and test. If it works after everything is removed, add them back one at a time, testing in between.

Hope this helps!

Have a great day.

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Answer 2

mikehermary Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 3, 2020 6:35 PM in response to raina_b22

Hello Becky,

Thanks for your assistance.

The Music and TV apps are both having issues. Music with the issues described above and TV with downloaded movie rentals not playing. The rental download issue also applies to my iPad Air 2. I have attached a screenshot that shows the error the iPad has while trying to play a downloaded rental.

I have run Disk Utility in Recovery Mode and no errors or warnings were displayed.

I created a second user account and it exhibited the same issues, though I believe I have narrowed the bug down. I tried playing tracks that I have not downloaded or streamed before and they played correctly and the app did not freeze. When I try playing music that I have downloaded to my iPhone XS or streamed on that device before, Music on my MacBook Pro freezes.

I can try re-installing macOS, though I am not sure if it will solve this unique bug.

My admin user only has Dropbox set as its sole "Login Item".

Cheers,

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Answer 3

Teddy_B

Community Specialist

Apr 4, 2020 5:53 PM in response to mikehermary

Thanks for the great info, Mike.

One thing we notice on your screenshot from your iPad is that you're connected to a VPN. Is your Mac also connected through a VPN, and if so, do things work normally for downloading and playing that streaming content if you turn the VPN off? This is an important distinction as VPNs can block necessary ports and there is definitely potential that such a setting might at least be partly at fault.

Give that a test and report back what you find out.

Be good!

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Answer 4

mikehermary Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 6, 2020 8:21 AM in response to Teddy_B

Hello Jameson,

No, my Mac does no use a VPN of any kind. On my iPad, I am using the free Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 Warp VPN. I will try disabling the VPN on my iPad to see if downloads work correctly.

Cheers,

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Music app freezes when trying to play Apple Music tracks on macOS

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