Apple music stops playing music after 15 seconds.

How is this still happening? It happens on iOS and Apple TV for me.

I upgraded to Monterey hoping it would be fixed - but no. The problem is still there. Very very annoying.

Still having the same issue on Iphone 12 Pro Max since downloading all songs in Lossless-High Quality/Dolby Atmos Automatic. Songs stop playing after 15 seconds for more recently released songs but not all songs. Although the songs just stop, the music app has not actually paused the song and the song appears to still be playing as if trying to load the song. You cannot fast forward the song beyond 15s without it skipping the song.

I was not having issues with Dolby Atmos songs on my Iphone XS Max but Lossless was not enabled on that phone. Going back to the Iphone XS Max and enabling Lossless-High Quality, I am having no issues yet and the downloads appear to be playing fine. When redownloading a problem song in the same quality that would not play on the Iphone 12 Pro Max , it appears to play fine with or without wifi/cellular. Very strange issue but still an issue as I obviously want to use my upgraded device.

Hello everyone,

I think I figured it out if you go to << Settings -> Music -> Downloads and deactivate Download in Dolby Atmos >> after that just re download your songs again and everything should be working again when listening offline it worked for me

Was experiencing the same problem the moment I updated to 14.6 but found a solution to it

Completely delete the Apple Music app from your device and re-install it from the AppStore ,but make sure you keep your library linked to your account when you delete

also that means you have to re-download your music for offline play…

If you use Bluetooth headsets, they can’t support lossless listening due to Bluetooth bandwidth limitations. ALAC 24 bit/48 kHz is the best quality you can get for on-the-go listening.

in my ears I’d say AAC 256 kbps is good enough when I don’t connect to my DAC & loudspeakers.

Hello it took me sometime but I figured it out so I deleted all my music go to settings music downloaded music press edit on top left and delete all songs then go back to music in settings turn off the Dolby atmos and go to audio quality and set it to high quality and don’t choose the one with lossless it doesn’t work it worked with me

I’ve had trouble with my Apple Music only playing for 15 seconds offline, and tried signing out of iCloud, and uninstalling, then reinstalling all of my songs, and none of that worked. It turns out after updating to the newest software update (as of august 1st 2021 14.7.1) my music now plays offline. Mission successful, now I am happy.

I have had quite a bit of frustration around this. I downloaded 50gb of music before a week long trip out of cell service. As soon as I left cell service none of the music I had downloaded with exception to the music I had already played at least once while having service on the drive down.

none of the other downloaded music I had downloaded would play longer than 15 seconds.

the next day, still out if service, I open my phone and the music no longer works at all. We boated to cell service shortly and it after that it started to play 15 seconds again but only 15 seconds of everything. I assume this is because I didn’t listen to any music while I had service and it didn’t download the whole thing or something.

I have since then flown on 2 different occasions, 4 legs, where I’ve had this same issue. Music all stops at 15 seconds unless I had listened to it on the car ride over.

any music that is downloaded also takes much longer to load, and won’t allow me to move to a different time point in the song. Music that isn’t download tends to load quicker and smoother while in service.

I have tried I deleting and re-downloading music, as well as offloading the app and reinstalling it with no success yet.

im hoping for a fix on this soon, as it’s making the experience quite difficult as of now.

iPhone 12 mini

non-beta

14.6

***Fixing Solution***

This would happen to me too, I would just download songs and when I’m offline it’ll play for only 15 seconds! But to fix it, you need to work one song at a time, download a song, then you HAVE to listen to that whole song (yes it has to be the whole song you can’t skip through), then take yourself offline and try playing that song! It should play the whole song offline. Hope this helps! :)

I want to chip in here as well. I had an appointment with support, but as I can gather from this thread, it would probably just be a waste of time, so I cancelled.

This "15-second problem" is all over the place for me as well. Off-/Online, Apple Music/Owned music, iOS/macOS/tvOS, AirPlay'ing to Sonos stereo/on headphones through DAC/on MacBook/iPhone speakers, etc.

I even had a session in where I was listening to an album on my AppleTV (Dolby Atmos), then I purchased the album (on my iPhone), then switched back to the AppleTV, loaded up the same album from my owned albums, and then I ran into the 15-second problem! No issues whatsoever when I just listened to the album via the Apple Music subscription. Later, when streaming the album from my iPhone, I had no problems.

Clearly a bug somewhere. I hope Apple will resolve this soon.

iOS 15 seems to fix the problem.

I just went to Settings>Dolby Atmos>Off

it worked for me

Except for disable the lossless audio, there’s nothing you can do about this. And even without lossless, it still happens from time to time. Let’s pray…

You are still on 14.6? 14.7/14.71 has the fix. At least for me.