"An error occurred while contacting the radio tuning service. Check your Internet connection, or try again later."

Ok, it literally just stopped. I didn't install any software, update anything. It just stopped working.

I was listening to radio, call came in so spacebar to stop. Tried to spacebar to restart and nothing. Quit and relaunched iTunes, nope. Rebooted the Mac, nope. Upgraded to latest version of iTunes, nope. Tried resetting the cache & warnings, as well as making sure Apple Store (where I do purchase lots of sound) was enabled, nope.

So I'm out of options here.

Anyone got a suggestion for an internet radio player? I don't mind paying and I won't waste any more time with iTunes.

Just happened to me this AM, I stopped iTunes radio to take a call, tried to space bar to restart and I got the error message. Tried all the fixes noted here and in other threads, upgraded, rebooted, reset, etc, no joy.

Since I noticed this thread has been open so long rather than wait for a reply I went looking for a player. I only listen to Soma anyway, and they have a dedicated player so I downloaded it (free no less!) and now I've got radio again.

iTunes was annoying me anyhow, overengineered, slow, too many features that I never have nor never will use, I probably won't be using the program again since on this Mac I only listen to radio, and use my iPhone for MP3, etc.

My time is too valuable to waste "trying" things. I've been using their products since the Apple II days, and we've moved far away from the "it just works" days. My advice to anyone having the same problem is don't waste any more than 15 minutes or so "trying" things. Just download another player.

One thing is for sure: we'll never hear from Apple about this problem.

It's not unusual to experience an occasional glitch with iTunes. I've seen posts where several users had issues loading the lists of stations. But although I've had issues with connections, they usually don't last long, from a few seconds to a minute or two. First, I would keep in mind that iTunes looks out on the net and manages the feed in. You will find several of the stations on iTunes available on individual websites that you can stream for free. This is one way you can test to see if the problem may be other than iTunes, such as your router, firewall, etc.., although I'm not saying it is because the glitch occurred right in the middle of your using iTunes, but I would start there anyway. Try streaming off sites that offer streaming right through your brower, see if the connections are reliable. Try Bandcamp, try Stillstream, Grooveshark. If they all work without a problem, there's something up with iTunes. At least this way, you can narrow down your problem. If you can't solve it, and you think it's iTunes, there's Apple phone support. They'll go through the whole thing with you, but I'll cost you. There's probably a lot of stuff out there on the Mac forums regarding your issue. I often find what I'm looking for using those resources.

I agree that you shouldn't spend too much time on it. With that said, you might give VLC Player a try. It's open source and free, can use your iTunes music library, and streams a bunch of stuff in off the internet. I've also found VLC to be very robust in handling some types of corrupted files that QuickTime gives up on. Good luck.

Anyone got a suggestion for an internet radio player? I don't mind paying and I won't waste any more time with iTunes.

Get VLC from videolan.org

Get streaming URLs and/or playlists from sites that offer streams such as dir.xiph.org or shoutcast.com

Many of the radio staions on iTunes also have their own site where you can grab the streaming URL. Search for it. Sometimes their name is their homepage, e.g. Trance.fm - just go there, look for the Winamp logo or a .pls .m3u or .mp3 link and get your stream. Never need iTunes again.

Yes. I've got my eyes and ears open. I've been an Apple user since my black and white Powerbook 160, system 7.6. Apple has done a lot of good things, but lately, some of it annoying. I don't like that iTunes won't stay in list view. I don't like that jumping to the song on your list has become a three step instead of a one click process. I also don't like that they no longer support Ogg Vorbis. They are starting to 'churn' their products. Mavericks got turned into a shopping OS. No wonder it's free. Mistake. I'm not afraid if they annoy me enough to build a Linux box. Thanks for your info! 🙂