iTunes crashes when selecting certain artists

Question

Level 1

8 points

iTunes crashes when selecting certain artists

I have a MacBook Pro running 10.6.8 and have an iTunes problem (started in 11.0.4 but no change since a recent update to 11.0.5).

When I click on certain artists there’s no response. Then I get the spinning wheel of death for 30 seconds or so before iTunes crashes. This has happened for about 30 artists while the remaining 170 or so are unaffected to date. These are all albums mostly copied from CDs that I’ve been playing for months or years without a problem.

I can play those 30 artists’ albums if I go in through ‘Albums’ so I’m thinking it might be some kind of permissions thing. When this started happening I did get an error message that said something about not having access to something but that has not appeared since. (Also, today for the first time, while I was playing music in ‘Albums’ I clicked on ‘Artists’ and that caused a crash.)

I’ve removed iTunes and reinstalled it but that’s had no effect. I’ve also replaced a few of the problematic artists from my backup but, again, no luck. One other note is that one of the problem artists had a triple album that, in iTunes inimitable style, came in under two different names. One of those names caused crashes, but when I changed the name to match how it was for the other two albums the problem disappeared.

I suppose I could just play music from Albums or go into the problem artists and just change something in the name, but I’d really like to find out what’s wrong and fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

I did copy the crash report, which I can provide but it’s miles long. Here’s the first part of it:

Process: iTunes [20082]

Path: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes

Identifier: com.apple.iTunes

Version: 11.0.4 (11.0.4)

Build Info: iTunes-1104004001000000~1

Code Type: X86 (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [96]

Date/Time: 2013-08-16 12:05:55.578 -1000

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)

Report Version: 6

Interval Since Last Report: 8511256 sec

Crashes Since Last Report: 58

Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 300580 sec

Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 13

Anonymous UUID: C1F250F4-F0B5-4746-93C8-E124D2C11EFF

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x00000000bf7fff7c

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

0 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x94bfa0ac ___CFBasicHashFindBucket1 + 12

Thanks.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 18, 2013 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Drummerx04

Level 1

75 points

Aug 18, 2013 11:20 PM in response to AlohaG

Perhaps a low tech solution... Have you tried to remove the offending artists just from iTunes (keep the files).

Then just re import the files from your hard drive. The Exception Type says Bad Access so there is probably some faulty link causing the crash.

If this fixes it let me know. I love learning new things.

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Answer 2

AlohaG Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 19, 2013 2:17 PM in response to Drummerx04

I had removed a couple of those artists and later replaced them with backups from a separate hard drive and it didn't help. I was going to ditch and replace all of them today to see if that made a difference. However, before I did, I thought I'd check a couple of things as far as renaming the artists was concerned. So I added a number to one problem artist's name, then tried opening it in the 'Artist' list. It worked fine. I went back, removed the number, and tried opening it again. Worked fine again. So I checked the other problem artists, without altering the names. They all open just fine. Problem solved! Well, not solved but mysteriously gone away, at least for now.

I think you're right about a faulty link being the problem, and I suppose something I did reestablished that link. Don't know what it was though, so I'm afraid I can't offer a solution to anyone else with a similar problem.

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Answer 3

Aug 19, 2013 11:45 PM in response to AlohaG

Alright, I'm glad you got it working.

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Answer 4

Focai

Level 1

10 points

Apr 20, 2014 12:07 PM in response to AlohaG

Hey guys,

This might be because of a plugin issue, maybe something trying to fetch data for songs. Try safe mode and if it works then you need to discard a plugin.I had a plugin that fetched concert data and was causing the problem.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1717

Follw up with this link if songs play fine in safe mode:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3430

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Answer 5

nframeav

Level 1

0 points

Jul 15, 2015 3:52 AM in response to Focai

This 2 year old bug is still present in 2015 (iTunes v12.2.1.) Itunes would crash if I accessed some artists through the artists menu. The hack solution is to access the file through the Albums list, rename the artist, album, and album artist fields, then set them back to their original value. It is severely disappointing that a $750 billion company can't put some basic error handling in their flagship music application.

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Answer 6

Feb 29, 2016 8:54 AM in response to AlohaG

This bug just reared its ugly head today. An album artist I've had in my library for 7 years, just today started hanging and crashing when I selected it.

I tried removing all the files from the library and reimporting them. No help.

I tried adding a character to the album artist name. That fixed it. But when I removed the extra character, the problem came back. Sorry, but I use the album artist field to organize my files at the filesystem level. "1<album-artist-name>" just ain't gonna work for me at all.

Any other ideas? Thanks in advance.

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