iTunes constantly pausing

Hello! I have brand new MacBook Pro Silicon running macOS Monterey. I've shifted everything from my old MacBook across and everything seems fine except... every time I try to play a song from my iTunes library the song stops. It's usually between 5 and 10 seconds in regardless of whether I own the music (downloaded from CD back in the day) or from my Apple Music catalogue. I unpause the song but it keeps happening. Also, when the song stops the little equalizer bars next to the track continue wiggling until i scroll my curser over them, then they turn into a speaker symbol. Digging in it seems something is happening with Airplay, considering that's what I understand that speaker symbol to mean so I have been following each prompt to disable Airplay which all lead me to the screen mirroring section of my Mac in Display settings. The problem is there in no Screen Mirroring or Airplay window in the Display settings at all. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Please advise, thank you.

Sonny