Q: itunes chopping off end of songs now that i signed up for match

Found 2 more songs yesterday.  This is getting really old.  Why isn't Apple sorting this out?? 

Is there a chance this is a virus? I know that Apple claims to be pretty virus proof, but this seems to be spreading, and that doesn't make much sense unless iTunes somehow degrades as time goes on. For my library, there's no consistent origin for the problem -- some purhcased songs from iTunes, some from Amazon, some ripped CDs. It started before I signed up for iMatch -- I signerd up for iMatch to solve the problem, originally -- but the starting point seemed to be when I moved the library from a PC to a new Mac, but since i load everything from the Mac, it's on all my platforms (iPad, iPhone and multiple iPods). So maybe it's a virus that infects and multiplies. 

No, it's very unlikely that it's a virus.

To me it looks more like a problem in the "End of Song" detection that is used for gapless playback. After all, if you import a file and play it right after importing, everything is fine – only after some moments the end gets chopped off, i.e. after the analysis has run.

Most likely, this information gets corrupted and is then replicated on other devices.

Which brings me to the question: Does anybody know how to reset/delete the Gapless Playback information?

Linkin Park - Papercut.... The song was CUT in flipping half!!! Crap thing! Wasn;t before!

I changed my iTunes preferences to 'Crossfade' and downloaded fresh versions of effected songs and it seemed to fix the problem. Great notion, Kaspar!

Solved.

All of my songs purchased through iTunes store were chopped off when I did a restore into Lion from Time Machine.  So I deleted all songs and movies and did a fresh restore from Time Machine, but this time to the Desktop first (right click on the 'iTunes Music' folder in Time Machine gave me the option of where to Restore to). Then I used the iTunes 'Add To Library ...' command (under File) and browsed to the Desktop folder where the files were. 

It's worked.  Songs are all playing to the end. 

That's great that your solution worked. I just got off the phone with a very nice lady from tech support. The solution she gave me took 3 minutes and did not involve deleting any of the songs.

I'm on a windows so some of this may vary for ya mac users out there.

First close down itunes

Next go to your itunes music library.

(Turn on show file extensions)

Move iTunes Music Library.xml to your desktop

Move iTunes Library .itl to your trash/recycling bin

Now open Itunes

Go to File -> Library -> Import playlist   and then select the iTunes Music Library.xml (which was on the desktop)

Now depending on your library size/speed of computer this can take a few moments

I had numerous songs that I had issues with. I have not checked all of them, but the one I knew of for sure that was broken I checked before and while on the phone with her, and then tried it after her solution and the issue is gone.

NOW the issue is how to get all the problemed songs OFF my iPhone. Does anybody have an easier solution other than restoring the iPhone? Because i would imagine the iPhone snyc wont fix it as it doesnt see any difference between the affected songs and the newly cured songs?

AaaaaaaaaaaRubberDucky, I used the same method of forcing itunes to recreate the itunes library file from the xml. But I think what is happening is that the .itl file was corrupted and your music files are ok.If you still have your old xml file, you can verify this by searching it for the clipped song title and then look at the "total time" field for that song. This will be in milliseconds. Convert and compare it to the "Time" tag in itunes for that song. If they match, the xml had the right song length all along and the .itl file had it wrong. Your music file should be ok.

AAaaaRubberDucky, you're the one

Who made my ITunes much more fun

My songs are playing, playing all the way through

AAAArubberDucky thanks so much

I won't be throwing out my new Touch

RubberDucky, I'm indebt to yoooouuuuu!!!

That worked, and thanks a lot. It's been nearly six frustrating months!

Yea the song files are perfectly fine... you can open with quicktime (or whatever you wish) and the song will play no problem...it was def the .itl file....WHAT I WANT TO KNOW is how SOO many people got the same issue while another HUGE amount of people didnt get it...AND how this issue went so long without (still without) any official comment from an apple tech support person on how to fix the issue...or include the fix in a patch or something

I'm glad it helped!

Ducky - well done mate.  Thanks for posting this fix. 

I had a similar issue so I conducted an experiment and bought a track that was being cut off (about ten seconds) in the iTunes store. The new purchase played fine. When I got home, I updated Match and played both the 'new' and 'old' versions (the old version is ripped from CD). Both played through to the end on my computer. Looks like Rubber Ducky figured it out, but unfortunately the external on which I had my library is now kaput, so messing with the .xml files isn't an option for me.

This is an annoyance but I'm relieved I got 99% of my music into the cloud before the external hard drive died.

Ther RubberDucky fix didn't work for me. I'm kind of upset, can I get my money back or am I stuck with little snippets of songs I paid for? It figures, years of telling myself I won't buy songs off iTunes, the first time I do, this happens...

Hopefully this helps someone, but after an hour of fiddling around with things, this worked for me...

1) In iTunes, DELETE the song being cut off.

2) Select the option to SEND TO RECYCLING BIN.

3) Go back to iTunes store, select song in question.

4) Re-download (I think mine was in the cloud?)

It should play fine after this. Fairly quick and painless.