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

Perhaps it's because I'm a PC user and I have a really old iPod (5+ years), but the following approach works for me.

Whenever I identify a song that crashes early, here's what I do.

1) Go to the iTunes folder in My Music (on a PC); 2) Locate the folder the song is in; 3) Copy the file with the song and paste in same folder to create a second file version--it will appear with same title but say "Copy" 4) Go back to Library-Music; 5) See the second listing for same song--it will be identically labelled as original, but not say Copy; 6) Click the second one to start playing and click on progress bar (in iTunes) to last 10 seconds of song; 7) It should play to completion. If not, try the first version and see if that's the copy. (On my PC, the copied one that plays completely is always the second one.); 8) Delete the faulty song from library; 9) Re-sync device with iTunes library.  Song should play to completion on device.

Hope it helps. I would be interested if Apple users experience success.

Chris

Chris, I'm a PC user too, and my songs were starting to truncate not only on my iPod but also ON iTunes. Oh, and I'm not using Match, iTunes just does this regardless. I have tens of thousands of songs, so the "Find them and burn them to a CD" option is not an option for me. So far, your fix is working great. It's a bit time-consuming (but far less than a lot of the other fix options), but because I always have the "recently played" option viewing, it's reasonably easy to spot the songs that don't end, because they don't show as being played (leaving a gap or an incorrect last played date).

Thank you so much for figuring out and sharing the fix for PC users! I haven't tested to see if this fixes truncated songs on my iPod, but I'll settle for iTunes being right first. :-D

I am having the issue on my iPhone, while in iTunes the songs play fine. In my case the songs are stopping with some length to the end. The music stops but the track keeps playing (time is still counting down in my player). When it gets to the end of the song it moves on to the next track.

I started to use the software at the link above to convert my files and when browsing for a couple of the files I knew were cutting off early, I found that they had additional punctuation in the file name. For example, one was called Dead!.mp4. Another was The End..mp4. I tried changing the filenames in Windows Explorer, but since I have iTunes set to control my music library, it simply put the names back the way that they were. I then used iTunes "Get Info" on each track and changed the name of the track to remove the redundant/unnecessary punctuation. These are the actual song names, confirmed via iTunes, though I think these particular files in my library are ripped from a CD. I'm ok having the track names be off if it fixes the playback problem.

I've now synced my phone with the updated songs and both of the above play back through the end. I can't say if all of the songs I've had the issue with have this punctuation problem, but in at least two cases it did, and removing the punctuation from the track name fixed the problem.

Any news on that? I do have the same cut-off problem, too.

When I convert from mp3 to aac in iTunes some songs are being cut others not. Using another computer and the same(!) input files, everything is just fine.

This is a nasty bug that Apple has apparently decided to simply ignore. Not a first with iTunes.

I can't rebuild my library to fix this- there's metadata that exists in itunes library.itl, but not in XML - "itunes library.xml". I want to keep it. So rebuilding is not an option for me (and it's a crazy brute force hack anyway). My answer is a nasty one, but I finally decided to wash my hands of this. Batch convert the problem files to AAC. This will fix it. Note that you can't convert with iTunes, because iTunes will just "bake in" the problem. You MUST use something else. I use XLD:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder

Of course, transcoding between lossy formats is complete anathema for people who pursue maximum quality audio. It's another "crazy brute force hack." But waiting for Apple to fix this — after YEARS — appears to be futile. I can live with this hack, and life is short. Really sorry to have to say that.

I haven't signed up for match, but I have experienced this issue.  Downloading the tracks one at a time seems to help. 

Hello,

first post here, but I was strugling a lot with old .m4p, DRM protected files. Some files were chopped off, on other songs seconds and minutes of silence were added.

Until I came up with this thread, the solution here worked for me, why? That's not clear but any way I'm happy, I can play all my .m4p songs on every medium I like.

Re: Problem burning playlist - wrong length of songs

Having similar problem. I'll play a certain song, and it will stop making sound part way through. I go to check on it and the screen still shows that it is counting down. it doesn't happen to all songs just a few here and there. As far as I can tell it only happens to music bought from iTunes. Although it happens so infrequently, it's hard to tell. All I know is that it happens to the same song(s) every time.

This seems to be a big enough issue, 32 pages, 5 years of pain here.  What gives Apple? I have done these changes and once again it corrupts the same dang song again. I have removed my library in the past, added it back and again Apple forces some bad eggs (like 20 songs now going strong) where the song cuts out and it's dead air for a minute and a half. I'll go through and just replace those bad eggs and again Apple ruins my experience. I don't use any of Apples services besides buying the songs and having them be on my computer and my iPhone, yet I still get immensely angry when Apple changes something with Music to "fix" something else, because that's when it takes a poo.  Dont get me wrong, I love some of the changes but I don't need most the services and there should be a way, an easy way, to disarm all of these services in one area. 

I have had the same issue for almost 6 years now. It all started on my iPod 4th Gen. I had about 400 songs then. It only happens on a few songs but I also noticed that the Album Artwork was of The wrong album (sometimes albums from other Artists were displaying).

Sonce then, I have about 1000 more songs, and this happens more frequently than before. They have fixed the Artwork Bug but not the track skips.

Sometimes the song will stop playing audio and be silent until the timer hits zero, sometimes it will start fine, but skip to later in the song after a few seconds.

I have noticed that it was different songs with each Update and/or Sync. I'm guessing that the new files somehow corrupted the unlisted files of the music and just randomly effects the songs fate brings upon them.

IT would be nice to finally have a fix to this. I'm a very musically oriented person and it annoys me to get into a song and have it just stop playing. Like I said, this problem has been occurring longer than the reports suggest. People just either didn't realize it, or didn't say anything until now.