Why does iTunes (11.1.2) radio streaming keep stopping.

Go into the "station"

There is a "play more like this" section where you can add any artist song or genre to any station you want.

Adding 10 is fine, 11 stops playing across all devices.

There's also the ads that stop the playback as well.

I think this is how it's supposed to work if you don't have iTunes Match. You are limited (10 it appears from your experience) to the number of skips you can specify in a 24 hour period, AND you get ads.

This is similar to the restrictions in Pandora... where there are far more obtrusive ads and a comparable limit to the number of skips you can request.

iTunes Match solved my issue of the ads killing the stream. And, for me, $30 a year isn't so bad as I listen all day at work. — C

This is NOT about skipping.........

11 artists/songs and the entire radio locks up after just playing 2-3 songs with zero skips.

Sometimes you can log out of iTunes and when you log back in it works. As long as you do not have more than 10 artists/songs added to the station.

$30 a year to "fix" the issue?

Sorry music doesn't mean that much to me to fix a coding problem.

Can't edit the post from the iPhone..

It does not always stop after a song/ad is played.. It sometimes stops in mid song.

It can stop after playing 2 songs with no skipping, or 8.5 songs played. It's random *when* it stops, but it will always stop if you ad more than 10 artists/songs.

Skipping, the next button grays out.. iTunes will allow you to add many more than 10. If 10 were the limit.. After adding 10 the + button would gray out.

When the issue occurs, I go into iTunes/Preferences/Advanced/Reset iTunes Store cache. Playback works on the radio afterwards.

Macbook Pro 13" Early 2011, i5 2,3 gHz, Mavericks 10.9.1, iTunes 11.1.4

Thanks. I'm trying this suggestion. It makes sense and I'll hope for the best. Another observation for me has been an announcement "You are listening to iTunes radio" just before a stall. Could this in anyway be connected? Establishing a pattern on this issue has been difficult, it seems.

I'm also using itunes match, so no ads. It's odd how different stations behave differently. My 'Frank Sinatro Radio' station this morning is stuck on one song. Plays the one song. Stops. I start it again and it plays that same song. However, a different station behaves just fine.

iTunes 11.1.4, at work, so fast connection.

I tried the iTunes Reset Store Cache method suggested by techbox, still no go.

Hello everyone... don't know if someone already said this, but I was having the same problems with iTunes Radio stopping after several songs. I went thru the suggestions of limiting the amount of artists on my list, etc etc. and nothing. But I'm pretty confident I found the solution: select the "i" in the circle right on top of the artist picture, then change the "Tune This Station" to "Discovery".... iTunes radio never stops for me anymore and I have a really crappy internet connection here in the office! I haven't tried to set the station to "Variety"...

like I said my apologies if someone already posted this, I didn't feel like reading all posts...

Ok. I've had this same issue or similar for quite a while now. I have found something that *could* be causing it. I have a radio station that I've been building for some time and the amount of "play more like this" has grown quite large. I went into that list and there were a lot of "unknown title" tracks in the list. I'm not sure if they were songs that iTunes removed from their library or if it was some other issue when I clicked play more like this.

Anyway, I cleared all these unknown tracks out of the list and so far it's fixed the problem with the station getting stuck buffering. I'm thinking it may have something to do with iTunes attempting to play one of those non existant tracks. Who knows, but I've had it going for a few hours and haven't had a problem. Usually it would be every 5 or 6 songs or so.

Hopefully this helps someone else.

Same problem here with Yosemite 10.10.1, iTunes 12.0.1.26 on a 2008 Mac Pro. I don't know about number of artists/likes contributing to the issue but I somehow doubt it since I experience the issue even with apples featured stations. The only factor that is always true when the music stops is an advertisement plays, most often it's a video advertisement.

Oddly enough the video adverts work fine if I'm at the computer and airplay doesn't stop, although it temporarily redirects to the computers speakers for the video and then it re-establishes the air-play connection. However If I'm not at my computer which is often the case when listening to music at home, I hear the first few seconds of the video advert over airplay then it stops until I come back, pause and play again.

It's not a bandwidth issue since I have a very fast internet connection capable of streaming full HD video and the only thing I am playing is iTunes radio.

I like iTunes radio, and might consider match if that fixes the issue (thought about match before anyway)... however if switching back to Pandora also fixes the issue I'm probably going that route if iTunes doesn't get fixed soon.

Has not solved it for me. My self-chosen radio stations sometimes play for a good while, sometimes only a song or two. Really awful for me, a writer who likes to listen all day.

I have had Match a long time and it fixed nothing.