Apple Music stopping after 15 seconds. Error code 16833

That happened to me too! I had 7,000+ and I literally cried.

mom for sure switching to Spotify at this point, I’ve been dealing with this for months and still have no answers.

Its sad because I expected more from

apple, idk maybe I’ll chalk it up to being naive but I’ve paid thousands to Apple and still have issues like this.

I’m done.

I've also had this problem, but it appears to be only with downloaded HLS files. I removed all downloads and haven't had the problem today.

After reading this I have also turned off ATMOS.

Apple really messed up the transition to lossless and hi-res.

Been having this problem on my iPhone X, iPad (9th), and while using CarPlay. Everything is updated, and I've tried the sign out of iCloud, etc trick and it still won't work. Agree with others that this should be a quick fix, especially because its a pay service...seems no one has a solid solution....unless I missed something...

I assume the problem is because Music needs to ping the Apple servers from time to time to review if these kind of DRM music need to review if you still have a subscription or if the title is still available. If you are offline and having a large playlist possible not all are played the last x days.

On my device I got that fixed by having mobile data usage allowed for Music, but disabled mobile data use for downloads. And I have only used some 5-10 MBs a week.

Michael

this is still happening to me every 15 seconds even with lossless audio , it pauses every 15 seconds , sometimes it happens , sometimes it doesn’t , it’s annoying though , ever since lossless came this started happening & hasn’t stopped since , hope apple can fix this because it’s been going on for so long

For me the 15-seconds lossless/atmos stoppage tends to happen on songs I had uploaded from CD many years ago. As a workaround after a song stops at 15 secs I searched my personal library for the song and deleted it (or the entire album) from my library. After I did this, Apple Music had no problem playing the lossless/atmos track. I then re-added the lossless Apple Music version of the song or album to my library (not sure this is necessary but I like my library to contain my music).

I have a fairly large personal music library and this is a cumbersome process for every track that is effected. So I consider it a workaround and not a solution. I’ve been using this process effectively for the past couple days so I’m not sure if will always work but it has so far.

Hope this helps someone and I hope Apple comes up with a real solution sometime soon.

I also thought that was the problem, but I isolated to only Apple Music and it persisted. I found streaming, rather than playing downloaded music, even though all Apple Music, almost eliminated the problem. Try experimenting with different playlists of just streaming and just downloaded.

So, here's what worked for me. In Music, I turn off Atmos, and in Audio Quality/5G & Streaming, I changed the streaming to High Quality. All good! I guess Itunes discriminates against my older tracks with lower audio quality when Lossless is selected. But, no worries. I listen on my iPhone. It's not like I listen to these tracks on some mega stereo system where fidelity really matters.

I think this is my problem as well… so very annoying. I took a week of vacation to rip all of my CDs a few years ago, I’ll have to listen to those on my streamer and start purging them from my Apple library.

There is a Bluetooth setting icon on the top right of the Music main menu (a triangle with 3 sound arcs coming out from the top). It may have an alert, because it is set to send audio to a device contrary to the Bluetooth setting of your Mac. Setting the preference to match the Mac BT preference fixed it for me. Good luck!

This isn't a solution to the problem.

The issue is (probably, like it was on my Mac) the encryption is bad in the file. If you open up the MOVPKG file it makes when you download HRS audio there (hi-res), you'll see it's made up of multiple files of small segments). My guess is that it's not a surprise it's at 15s each time... and probably this is why.

When you download at High Quality, you're download DRM free 256kbps music which is why it suddenly works.... because high quality 256kbps is not encrypted like these files are when you do lossless.

So basically, yep... it's another reason why DRM is evil.... seriously evil. A necessary evil.... but one that snags a lot of us innocent users in it.

I agree! It's a bug in their encoding of the files when you download. I removed all downloads and only stream, at home, over a wired connection and I'm not having the problem. But that's doesn't work for when I'm traveling, on a plane, etc.

There are bugs in the lossless product. They need to get fixed!

Yeah.... :) Not laughing at you, but more at this situation. I got a Mac M1 and had more problems with my iPod Classic under it than my old version of iTunes on PC. If I don't upgrade iTunes on the PC, it never stops working. But Mac has it baked in the OS and they make changes... then things break.... and then they get fixed... then the new version comes out and they break again.

I gave up after a bit and only sync again with my PC.

They have a bug here and just need to fix it. And if they let me have hi-res iTunes Music Match, I could get them all DRM free... and then I'd be fine. Most of my issues are on files that are Matched in the store... that I own. It's only hi-res audio and not all of them either. Something's up on their end with producing the file and giving it to us on the devices.... until they straighten that out, I'm just downloading in 256kbps for a bit.

Well.... for some reason, I turned on cellular downloads and all the options to download from cellular.... while on wifi, I started downloading lossless music (up to 24-bit/48kHz since my stereo in my car can only do that much anyway).... Now, it plays the songs past 15 seconds.

Not a fix... not saying it's a fix... but mine seems to be working now... hopefully it continues to.

I think this worked for me, the 15 second stop error hasn't happened since I did this:

1 Go to Settings > Music.

2 Turn off Sync Library.

    3       Restart the iPhone 

    4      Turn on Sync library again