Q: iTunes song preview time is cutting off.

I have a Windows 7 64 bit with iTunes and a MacBook 13" with iTunes.  Both have the same problem.  With 194 replies, I too, wonder how long it will be before Apple fixes the issue.  I agree with a few others: this is an Apple side problem, not customer side.  However, my songs have been cutting off between 14 and 18 seconds.

For me it's about 23-25 second mark. It's so odd, it never did it before, the previews worked fine. Recently updated to 10.6.3, so likely that's it. But I'm wondering if I should check other possibilities. What iTunes should do - is have a message or dialog box that the preview is being cut short because ... this way I would be able to remedy it. Let's see what happens with their response.

I find it interesting after almost 200 posts that so many quirky fixes worked, and then didn't work.How can that be? I did turn on Genius, as suggested by one post, to at least try to find a remedy. It worked for over a week. Last night it stopped working. I turned Genius off and rebooted the laptop and then turned it back on, and I can play previews full length again. What a mysterious issue with maddening random "teaser" solutions.  I am disappointed that Apple has done nothing to fix this! It frustrates the i-tunes user, and hurts Apple's sales. I am not buying any song that I can't preview.

Well just popped in to see if anything was happening. Apparently not. I'm over at Amazon now. Still wished this would be fixed though.

Tried that - didn't work for me

This is so weird. Just like everyone else I have tried everything. So today, I saw they had some .69 cents songs and I started to sample them and they all played through. I didn't go on the discussion board to see if there was a fix and purchased some of songs.  I went on to sample some other music in the store and two songs .99 cents and one $1.29 one played through. Purchased them.  I was like WOW... Apple finally fixed the problem. Tried to sample more songs and whamo back to 10-15 seconds on some. 20-25 seconds on a couple and the world famous 7 seconds on others. I'm Windows 7 64-bit on one computer and Windows 7 32-bit on another. Have the latest update. (Yep that is when it started) The 32-bit did the same.

Went to the discussion board to see if anything new was happening just like barbpf says above. Apparently not. Yo Apple this has been going on for over two months now. We all just want help... Please!

Hi Johnny -- don't expect any response from Apple. This has been going on two months and nothing.

I did find this link which allows you to give online support feedback. Figured why not. Maybe if enough people use it they'll see a pattern and escalate but somehow I doubt it. I did point them back to this thread. http://www.apple.com/support/feedback/

Hm,

Well I toggled the genius on and then off again. My song previews are working now. I had to shutdown and restart. As I have mentioned before, I have a mac. If I'm following the thread correctly, I'll wait and see if the problem reverts.

Same problem and I have uninstalled and reinstalled. Nothing seems to be working. Sooooo frustrating. My preview cuts off anywhere from 5-7 seconds.

So, this has been going on for 2 months now and it makes ITunes such a frustrating experience that I'm starting to check out Amazon which I otherwise would never do. I've just been sitting around waiting for iTunes to fix the glitch which normally happens pretty quickly, but apparently they need to be hit over the head with this problem. Everyone who is having this problem, please take the time to send Apple feedback-- I did it at this link:

www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

and point them to our discussion thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3970684?start=0&tstart=0

Hopefully together we can get itunes to fix this!

I'm having the same problem and think it started with the upgrade to 10.6.  I contacted iTunes tech support last night.  They sent me a long list of things to do that was such BS, I can't believe it.  They even wanted me to shut off my firewall and antivirus software to see if that fixed it.  Really a good approach for your computer security. 

I agree that moving away from iTunes may be the best bet.  They are not interested in solving a problem that is losing them money.  I'm sure many people are not buying music that they can't preview to make a decision. If I can't listen to a song, I'm certainly not buying it.

I posted another question on this support group before I found this thread.  I'll do as you suggest above. 

  omg...today there was a new version of iTunes...I obediently did as I was told and  ... omg ...I actually got to play through MOST of the previews of  couple of albums.  then I had to go and have a glass of wine to calm down. I had contacted them - again - as you'd suggested, with the link to this forum.  Although I haven't heard back from them (yet) I'm sure they are just so busy trying to fix the problem, there has just been no opportunity.

Nah - turning off your computer security is useless...why risk it?

I had tried to download a new version of 10.6, but for some reason it just doesn't download.  This makes it difficult to upgrade to hopefully get a fix for the problem.  I should probably report that as a separate issue.

Ok - I replying here and have left a post on another thread as well just to let apple know there is yet one more user with this problem - samples of all songs stop playing after 5-10 seconds.  Never had this problem before, and I've had Itunes and the same computer, anti-virus software, etc. for at least a couple of years.  Problem just started recently, guessing when I downloaded an update to itunes.  I have version 10.6.3. 

Apple - just fix it already.