Apple Music stopping after 15 seconds. Error code 16833

I’ve been frustrated by this too, bug only seems to come out to play away from WiFi and crashes :( CarPlay.

Used the chat to speak to Apple last night, was told 14.6.1 is on its way, which they hope will address this.

Disappointing it’s likely in a couple of weeks, so just a case of waiting for the fix.

Except this is not cool. After you sign out and sign back in Apple has to re-download all the songs. For someone who travels a lot and doesn’t always have access to WiFi this is a big problem. This is exactly what people were talking about with apple monopolizing all their content. You pay for a product, you “download it”, and somehow that download doesn’t play. Then your only option is to inconvenience yourself. Oh yeah, initially I thought this was an old phone issue, so I bought a new iPhone last week…still an issue.

I’m almost afraid to post this as it could jinx my currently working setup but here goes-

after trying everything I saw a post about making sure your Apple ID and payments were up to date. I decided to sign up for  one which would put everything under one roof and also to transfer some money to my account for purchases as it has a zero balance. SO FAR- lossless that is downloaded as well as streamed is working. It’s been like this for nearly 2 days, cellular, WiFi, it’s been all good. I should say I’m not using Atmos nor the high resolution files, just standard lossless.

Thanks for the update but I think I will wait for an official fix. I have been trying many of the things on this forum and am really upset with Apple (I have better words but will refrain). As I said before this is a big black eye and I am investigating Spotify for my renewal.

Hi everybody. I went through two online chat sessions and a Genius Bar session today and finally came home and got to the bottom of it. On the Music section of Apple's website, it says that the new lossless mixes and Dolby Atmos will not play over Bluetooth. There was my problem, because in the car I would begin to play downloaded music, it would cut out at 14 seconds, and I couldn't figure it out. I redownloaded everything, re-synced, deleted my phone from my car's Bluetooth and reinstalled it etc. It WOULD play if I used cellular data, but it would use tons of data. Solution: connect your phone to your car with CarPlay via USB cable. The downloaded music will play in lossless audio/Dolby atmos (wow, sounds like the artists are sitting in the car next to you), and you won't use data. Hope this resolves it for everyone, and maybe down the line, Bluetooth will upgrade to be able to support these files.

Hi everyone,

thanks for everyone trying to find a solution.

i have the problem on my iPhone, CarPlay Crash and on Apple TV.

Even with reconnecting my account, disabling Atmos or usb câble through car, problem is still there.

we have then to be patient… this is clearly a complete bug.

i hope a solution will solve this quickly.

For me, this only happens when I’m offline. In the evening, I switch on airplane mode and listen to music, the I encounter this issue. It also only hope a to a few select songs from an album. If I encounter such a song and turn airplane mode off, then it plays just fine. So for me, it is 100% related to being offline.

This also only seems to happen for Dolby Atmos and Lossless tracks. If I sign out of Media & Purchases in iCloud settings, force quit the Music app, sign in again, disable Dolby and Lossless and then start the Music app again I see that some songs of some of the most recent albums are gone. These are the songs where I encountered the issue. I then have to manually start the download again for these songs of the most recent albums I’ve added. After that I can play the songs even when being offline.

I guess it has something to do with DRM and Apple is checking after 15s and one has to be online for that to work. Otherwise I don’t know why I have to be online.

For the record, I listen with wired headphones via a Lightning adapter.

I agree with your idea about the problem and the DRM issue.

Whatever, even online I am still facing the problem.

I have already tried all the solutions you indicated, and unfortunately, a few days after, issue is coming back.

I have simply erased my local files yet. We'll see if Apple creates a correction.

If not. May redirect my choice, even after a long time of full and happy life with Apple Services.

Bluetooth causes the issue...whether in the car on Bluetooth and/or when plugged into Apple CarPlay. Issue also occurs when at home, in WiFi using AirPods. The only time it doesn't happen is when I am home, in WiFi & airplaying to HomePods. This is truly getting annoying. I called AppleCare and the tech claimed ignorance and sent in a ticket to the engineers. He's supposed to get back to me; we'll see if he does. I've tried most of the fixes people have posted to no avail. Not paying for something that doesn't work!!

Like you say, it's the Bluetooth issue. It says on the website in the music section that the technology just won't work with Bluetooth. In my case, it will play all the tracks now but I'm not getting lossless/Dolby quality if I'm not plugged into the car using the USB. I have a feeling this will be upgraded at some point but I think it's Bluetooth that has to upgrade, not Apple.

That’s the same for me. There is no issue if listing wired while being online. I only have an issue if Airplane mode is enabled. And then it’s only selected songs. It’s about every third song or some such. But once I find such a song, I can reliably reproduce the issue and it instantly goes away if I turn off Airplane mode.

What worked for me was i allowed ALL of my downloaded music to play even for a few seconds using wifi connection. After that, even offline, all downloaded lossless music files played normally. Hope this worked for you all too. ✌🏼

As painful as it may sound yes, every single one. Weird that it worked that way. I just downloaded a full album and play each song from it for about 3 seconds. After i went offline and played them again, no more “15-seconder” playback.

Have been on the phone with Apple Support for 2 days. I’ve tried so many things I can remember them all. As of now, it seems like it’s working but I’m not convinced. In addition to things suggested here & on Reddit, their big work around was signing in/out of iCloud. But they did say engineers are aware & working on a fix🤷🏻‍♀️

Unfortunately the problems have returned for me- it happens no matter whether on line, streaming, downloaded, blue tooth, car play, using the iPhone speaker. iPhone 12Pro Max. Its a shame because the sound quality is wonderful when its working. Hopefully they will get this resolved quickly.