How to fix the 14 second song playback issue on Mac?

It has happened to me, on and off, for the past too many years, and on Intel and Apple silicone gear.

I did contact Apple early this year, and the agent asked if it was iTunes content or ripped, and it's both! They said since I was using an external drive, it had to be a fault in the drive, but I've used both traditional drives and SSDs, and they all eventually do this. At one point, I thought it was only Apple purchased content, but two nights ago it started with an artist that I play a lot, and it spread to every song I tried to play, (even other artist tracks) yet just days earlier, all of the songs played completely fine!

And it will go away if I change drives, but will eventually come back. And it's on my iMac Pro, and several mac minis. I get the impression that the Apple Support people do not have a clue what's going on, or how to fix this, short of reloading everything. (I did try that: deleted some iTunes purchased content, re-downloaded it, and it worked for a while, but I've also had it STILL fail.

If it's a bug, it's a persistent one that Apple either can't or won't fix. I just swapped out the drives, and ran the manufacturer tests on the 'problem drive', and it passes all of them. (The only 'fix' seems to be wiping the drive, and rotating in another one until it eventually fails too)

Stumped, stunned...

As soon as it starts, it's unstoppable, it eventually spreads to more and more content and I can't listen to anything!

I believe it may have something to do with Syncing the library to Apple Music and having only the "preview" section of the tracks being downloaded instead on the entire track\song. Apple should be able to identify the issue by reviewing the log file to determine file, location, size.

I would fix it, and then days, weeks, months later, it would be broken again. I was advised to replace my iTunes 'collection', and spent days (A week) re-ripping CDs and it lasted for a while, but started again. The next tech laughed and said that was a waste of time. (NO KIDDING!?)

The last bit if advice was to keep (get) all of my macOS devices updated, and that did work. I had to reboot everything that was updated but it worked; until the next update. Now 14.1 seems to have stopped that happening, so far... I even updated all my iPads at the time too...

It seemed that I was getting the 14 second stoppage and after an update got the meaningless error message, and then got the idea to update. So in the beginning, I wonder if it was the same reason, and one update supplied the error message. It looks plausible to me, as the only thing that changed was I was getting the message. (It's hilarious that earlier consultations led to the comment that it didn't do that with 'Apple Silicon', until I said that was what I was using at the moment. Ugg...

So far, it *seems* to be fixed, as 14.4.1 did not provoke the meaningless error message gods. Maybe it's fixed. Hope so... At least for MY issue.

Yeah, no. An artist that played perfectly fine one day, and several songs stop on 14 seconds the next? Yeah, nope. Wrong idea.

But that does make me wonder if iTunes/Music is 'touching' those files and making them samples for some reason. I mean, why else would a full length song play like a sample? They are being zinged by some dark magic at the core of the Music app. It's not unheard of for 'ghosts in the machine' to cause issues. How much of the Music app were taken from old code, and how much was layered on top of that. That will make it harder to find for sure. Maybe Apple needs to completely rewrite the Music app from the beginning...

Yes, my experience is that one a song is 'touched' by the dark magic, it never plays through ever again. On my recent external, that happened on a shuffle for artists I didn't really like so I just hit next and moved on. Then it happened on an artist I had just played the previous day! And the next song from them, and the next, until one song played through. I was freaking a bit to be sure. Swapping the other drive, everything seems fine again, until...

I was thinking of recording the error logs to see if there is a message that emits when this happens, but since the raw error log is full of chatter, finding that one message, if it exists, would/could be a struggle. I've worked through error messages from macs before, and 'these aren't the droids you're looking for' has to be the most humorous and least useful message ever. There may not be a fix for it too. Yikes...

Regarding the type if output device, I would doubt that Music would know what the device was, or have any 'intelligence' to care. Seeing that it tripped out on a corded speaker gives me some comfort in the view of reality that I tenaciously cling to.

This has been going on for so long, for me, that I can't remember the exact day I first experienced it. It had to be pre-pandemic, but that's 4 years. If the mac mini had better speakers, I could see running it that way to see if it freaks out again.

One thing I have not tried is to disco the drive and reconnect it: do the tracks then play through. THAT would be really weird... Disco meaning ejecting and reconnecting while the system is running...

It appears to be a bug in Apple Music and macOS, for the most part.

What happens is I have 7 macs of various models, and keeping them all updated is a time consuming issue. So why are the songs stopping at 14 seconds? If ANY ONE of the macs I own are not up to date, Apple Music stops playing the tracks at 14 seconds. After one of the later updates I got a message saying to stop playing it on another system, so I opened a case w/Apple Support, and was given that diagnosis, with a laugh and an apology.

So I started having to update all of my current macs to the latest update, and nearly 45 minutes later, the music plays fine again. Until the next update. Although it appears that this last update, 14.4 or 14.4.1 might have fixed it. And I can say I certainly hope so!! This has been a major PITA, and should be somewhat embarrassing for Apple!!

Same issue, many play fine on my MacBook Pro but stop when streaming to an old Apple TV connected with optical out to a HiFi system.

Lossless files appear the killer…

A streamer / DAC may be the solution but would be mightily dissatisfied if it continued.

droopydog5000 wrote:

I have been able to overcome this by downloading the track.

That was suggested too, and it worked until it didn't. I started looking for something better at that point. When the previously mentioned meaningless error message popped up, I knew I had something that might point people to what the heck was going on. It's hard to get a solution when the issue is doing something that appears to be random. *shrug*

I have been able to overcome this by downloading the track.