Why are My iTunes Downloads so Slow?

hey! i also disabled my antivirus (avast) and the download went a little bit faster! (still slow though..)

Before I updated my iPad to iOS7 I could begin watching rental movies as it was downloading. The whole iTunes 'experience' since iOS7 update has not been for the better I have to say. Going to give Netflix a chance.

Lately, my iTunes downloads have been stalling out many times during playback. Is Apple having problems? I checked everything on my end. It's not me.

I just wanted to reply to StumpyBloke. DNS has everything to do with it because the DNS server response you get from the server is what dictates what apple server you download from. I use my own DNS server which querries the 13 root DNS servers on the internet directly which gives me the best download speed. I tested this theory and did some packet sniffing analysis of DNS responses and I can see the DNS requests my computers make get constinantly differnet responses based on the DNS servers. I took the responses and traced them geographicly and can see a definate coorelation. I know not everyone is a network engineer like me but the best thing to do is to test using your isp's DNS servers and other public DNS servers while downloading the same exact thing everytime. I suggest closing itunes in between the changing of the DNS settings. Once you have a good result stick with it. Cheers and happy downloading.

This link helps fix a windows7 64bit issue that does pop up. If you run the diagnositic you will see itunes not enabled on firewall this link will help win vista-win 8 users. I did this on three PC's and they can all download fast. I did several test one PC downloading the same TV episode as the other and was able to reproduce results after disabling itunes after fixing it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2553

This issue frustrated me for some time. I decided to reset all DNS settings on my computers (PC and APPLE), Apple TVs, routers and servers to the ISP specified servers. After that, all DNS cache information was flushed and then for good measure rebooted the lot.

This has fixed all problems relating to speed of downloads for iTunes, Apple TV and Apple Store search and downloads.

I've noticed that on occasions tracks will download quite quickly on simultaneous downloads and then there is the odd one that says it will take over half an hour for just 10 MB of music. In order to speed the process up I've simply stopped downloading that particular track with the pause icon and then gone to the menu bar at the top of itunes that says STORE and checked for avaialble downloads.

These have then come straight through.

Don't know if this helps or not.

I'm having ridiculously slow iTunes downlodas too. I'm on Windows 8 on a FiOS 150/65Mbps plan, and changing DNS settings has done absolutely nothing for me. Has anybody else gotten any other methods to work? I know it has to be something iTunes-related because Steam gets me around 140Mbps, but i get 15-18Mbps on iTunes 😟

Apple caps all data transfer speed to any given IP address to about 50-60Mbit/sec during non peak times and 10-30Mbit during peak hrs

I'm on a 144/20 connection. Plus I used to work

For Apple just outside of Sacramento, CA... Tier 3 engineering support...

and have friends at sac and Cupertino that confirm stuff like this

I recently upgraded my Internet connection from 12 Mbps (bits/s) to 60 (and in practise I get 75 at most major sites). So I am now experiencing this problem as well. On Windows my TV show downloads now average 15.

What I've noticed is that (for me) the issue is Windows specific. I have tested with an iPhone 5s, iPad Air, iTunes on MacBook Air and iTunes on Windows 8.1. It is *only* Windows iTunes that has trouble downloading at my new faster connection speed. Other Windows applications have no trouble.

I have also noticed that during download (on Windows) it is almost as if the disk is thrashing, so that (maybe) the download is in fact I/O bound. This doesn't make a lot of sense, given other Windows apps don't have an issue, but since "64 bit iTunes" is actually a 32 bit process perhaps there is some iTunes specific I/O weirdness going on here.

Has anyone else noticed this too - that it's a Windows only issue?

Dave Ings

Exactly the same issue with me...and I mean exactly!

On my iMac downloads will come down at about 12MB a second (I do mean megabyte) but on my Windows machine no more than about 2MB. And, as you say, the hard drive is under 100% load constantly when downloading anything from iTunes...again, only on my Windows PC. My iTunes library is on a separate SATA 6Gbps drive too...so no hardware bottleneck there. Never have found a fix for it, but have always had the issue.

I'm desperate enough to fix this that I was on the verge of scratch reinstalling Windows 8.1 (on the somewhat thin theory that some sort of weird I/O configuration error only affecting Windows iTunes had crept in).

But given you are experiencing exactly the same error, a scratch Windows reinstall would seem to be a waste of time. So thank you for posting!

Dave Ings

You're welcome.

And yes I guarantee a reinstall will not fix it - multiple OSs, reinstalls etc and iTunes is complete crap!

Apple Techs. What's the problem with iTunes keeps slowing up and putting up that circle spinning thing for 30sec. every minute and a half? Please, this should be your highest priority.