Q: iTunes song preview time is cutting off.

Make no mistake about it - IT IS AN APPLE PROBLEM exacerbated by their bad customer support attitude. Do not assume that the DNS is at fault.  Apple has the issue with several large DNS providers who do not have an issue wih other applications and who literally do hundreds of millions of DNS lookups successfully every day. There are different ways to interact with a DNS and it is incumbent on the issuer of the DNS request to handle the protocol properly. I suspect there is something wrong in the handling of the response, timing, mis-parsing of an optional parameter, or something similar. It likely corrupts memory or erroneously flags the connection as not resolved causing Apple to stop the replay. The Google DNS likely responds quicker or in a way that is less likely to cause the issue in iTunes. This does not mean the other DNS providers are out of spec.  The symptoms, O/S, network components may vary. The one constant is Apple

                             . - wunbadapple

I have tried the DNS fix and updating to the latest iTunes version.  No luck.  Followed the uninstall/re install iTunes instructions to the letter (windows 7 sp1 completely up to date), no luck.  One thing I did discover that I thought was interesting is that if I go into the iTunes preferences, advanced tab, reset the iTunes store cache, exit and then restart iTunes, I can play 1 song preview start to finish with no interruptions and no cut off.  Try a second song preview and the problems are back.  Reset the iTunes store cache/exit and re start iTunes again, and I can play 1 song preview start to finish with no interruptions/cut off - second song problems are back.  I tried this repeatedly with the same results each time.  Seems to me that iTunes and the iTunes store is/are the problem(s). 

For those of you who have not had success with the DNS change, did you try it on your computer or did you make the change at your router?   I did it at the router (with FIOS and probably many other services, modem and router are the same unit), as I knew that anything I did on my Windows machine would not help other computers on my home network - including my wife's iMac which was having the same problem with itunes previews. 

I turned on genious and it fixed it. Too bad tech support isnt genious to tell me to try that.

Turned on Genius, didn't work. Can only preview songs for 12 seconds. So how many posts are we going to have before Apple has a fix? Why can't Apple put out an update with out bugs? Every update seems to have Issues.

Didn't have a problem until this upgrade ... I am extremely dissatisified with this product ... I hope you guys get this fixed ... I have apples throughout my home but use windows PCs ...this will stop altogether if this doesn't get fixed...

I am also having this issue. I have been able to temporarily resolve by releasing and renewing my router DNS. This problem began occurring with the last iTunes update. I am running Windows 7 64 bit.

Wait, scratch that, song previews still cutting out, apparently at random. Some songs I hear the whole thing, others i get 4 seconds, others 15. Get your act together Apple, this is stupid.

Well, helllooooo everybody....just when I thought I was the only one.  Yup, same problem..some back-and-forth correspondence with Apple...bless 'em...it was going to be referred to a tech supervisor.  Wonder what their day job is?  Nobody mentioned any of the solutions I've read about here...one did suggest that it was an ISP issue.  Yeah, right.  They were very polite, but I KNOW what they were thinking.  So...if a real, sure-fire, 100% works-for-all solution shows up, please, someone post it on CNN "Breaking News Alert".

I turned on Genius and held my breath.

Which was easy - no track played longer than 11 seconds.

I guess this whole scene would really suit someone with attentional difficulties.

I don't know if this is related or will help, but I started up the Console app and saw messages in the log something to effect of "connection reset by peer" and the process causing it was "proxy." Each time that messgae appeared, yet another iTunes preview got cut off prematurely. Coincidence?

I took a guess that this was my Avast anti-virus software for Mac. (Well, I have a bit of a Unix background, so it was better than a guess ["ps -ef | grep proxy" in Terminal showed processes owned by Avast]. I uninstalled Avast, rebooted, and now iTunes is giving me the full-length previews again. My results COULD be coincidental, but do have some evidence from the Console log and Terminal to support my theory (at least in my particular case).

FYI: I am running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) on a Late 2008 MacBook Pro. In Windows, you might be able to look at the Event Viewer to see what is happening. You could try (at your own risk) temporarily disabling your anti-virus software an see if that fixes the issue. If it does, that is information you could pass along to Apple if/when you decide to call support again. Or you could try using different AV software.

Now, I have to decide whether to install another antivirus app on my Mac.

I turned off everything - Avast, Defender, Vipre - and tried again....called up an album...the first track played the whole 90 seconds, but from then on, back to 9 or 10 seconds.  Tried again and then nothing would play for more than 10 seconds.   Plus no protection.  Good-bye iTunes, hello Anti-virus.

Well, my theory is for naught. I just had a couple of previews cut off, with no errors in the console log this time, although most are playing through. Obviously this isn't a Windows problem, as I am on a Mac and feel your pain.

Just one other point: I have three computers and they all run different ant-evil programs.  Doesn't matter.  And I wouldn't know a console log if it jumped up and bit me!  I have just sent another pleading note to Apple Support and am eagerly awaiting the reply and will be sure to pass along the Final Solution.

I'm a Mac User and I too have cutoff, it didn't happen a few days ago, but now with 10.6.3 iTunes, I have it. I wonder what it is.