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iPhone music app freezing, throwing me out, misbehaving

This is on an iPhone 6 with the latest iOS 8.4.1 as of today, running the music app with an account for the family. As I'm browsing and listening to music, the app threw me out after an hour or so complaining about an authentication failure, unable to log me in. Quitting and restarting the app didn't work. Getting to the iTunes and app store section was impossible as the settings app would freeze when I pressed this menu item. Rebooting the phone got it working.


I am seeing the app misbehaving at irregular intervals, with the screen just going blank with no music list or albums, but it doesn't stop playing what's already on.


At other times, selecting a song doesn't play it. The app appears to "think" about it for a while and simply gives up. Retrying 4-5 times gets it playing.


There's really no problem with my WiFi or net connection and I'm on a 200Mbps fibre line here. Just to test, spotify worked just fine with no glitches.


Are there any tips & tricks you have used to resolve these problems?

Posted on Aug 21, 2015 8:50 AM

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Posted on Aug 21, 2015 9:54 AM

I have similar problems on my iPad air 2 .. it´s a 4g capable 128gb unit, and after 5 or so songs relayed via airplay the app stops responding. It hoggs resources like mad, notes app is lagging for example when this happens.


Takes up to 1 minute to recover from this, only sollution so far has been to reboot the ipad to be able to play another 5 or so songs.. Doubletapping home and ending the app does not fix it.


Also if I try to access music tab under settings, after freeze - and before reboot, the same thing happens. Settings app freezes, and music tab is unaccessible.


Streaming via Wi-Fi, or offline songs.. doesn´t matter.


Holy crap this last update has made a mess of this app.


THIS IS A RED FLAG BUG.... Should have been a showstopper in beta already 😟 😟 😟

178 replies

Sep 2, 2015 10:31 AM in response to mitchejones

Everything working as it should the last 24 hrs. No freezing, Apple Music and iCloud Music Library playing fine over cellular and Wi-Fi, links opening in Safari from Mail. Best of all...no more resetting!! I had literally tried every single thing suggested, even restoring my device, once from back-up and once to new.

Something Apple Support said triggered me to check my wife's iPhone settings. Since day one, I had my wife added to Family Sharing in iCloud settings. But...I had been using my own Apple ID in the iTunes and App Store section in Settings on her iPhone 6 Plus. This configuration had always worked before, which is why I'm not entirely convinced the issues I was having or subsequent steps I took below were the "fix", but I will share because ever since everything has worked flawlessly.

1) On her iPhone 6 Plus, I replaced my ID with her ID in the iTunes and App Store settings section. 2) I subscribed to Apple Music Family plan from the Individual plan (which I had always planned on doing after trial period). 3) When I launched her Apple Music app I clicked the enable Apple Music option and it signed her in automatically. 4) Logged into Apple Music on her MacBook using her ID.

I did not change any settings on my own devices (iPhone 6 and iPad Air).

Sep 3, 2015 4:50 AM in response to Zazou

Well after about 4 or so days I noticed my phone went a bit crazy when trying to pause a podcast. Sure enough, once I'd force quit the app, I checked App Store, Apple Music and saw that all the usual issues had returned.


Have restarted now, so will be interesting to see if it screws up within the hour like it used to, or whether I'll get another few days without issue.

Sep 3, 2015 9:33 AM in response to mitchejones

JUst an update:


AFter deciding to try 8.4.1 again, I restored in iTunes and immediately made sure that "Show Apple Music" and "iCloud Music Library" were disabled. As some have speculated, it seems that it is a server related issue. Been a couple of days with no freeze whatsoever. Maybe I just got lucky and the options I disabled had no effect, but I am definitely not taking the chance of enabling them to see. Word of caution, disabling these settings will remove your Apple Music library from the device and only leave you with the connect feature. For those that already plan on leaving Apple Music after the trial, this is worth a try. To get music on the device this way you will have to either sync in iTunes, download your purchased tracks from the iTunes app or use an alternative streaming service.


FRom an update standpoint, it makes sense that they may have messed up something with the device communication with Apple Music/iCloud as that is all this update essentially updated. Given the relatively low current (trial) subscribers compared to number of iOS devices, it makes sense that the issues aren't as widespread as they effect only a percentage of users.

Sep 3, 2015 10:06 AM in response to mitchejones

I more or less did the same except a full restore. After logging back into Apple Music, leaving iCloud Music library disabled everything was working OK again. I monitored this a couple of days on all devices and no further problems. Two days ago I decided to give it another try and switched on the library again and to my surprises everything is still working. Might be that Apple slowly fixed things in the backend?! Still too early to fully trust the system it feels.


In any case I opened a case and reached a senior supervisor who told me that he is forwarding my issue to engineering. Never heard from anyone again but things are working for now.

Sep 6, 2015 3:47 AM in response to ssgp

A few days ago I have reached out for Apple Care on these issues. Together, we have once again set up my iPhone as new over the past days, re-installed apps, re-enabled most iCloud services, re-enabled Apple Music and iCloud music library, and tested the whole thing one by one. Very time consuming - but until today none of the issues has occured again. Right now everything is running smoothly.


However, two new questions arose for me:


1.) A number of titles show up under "Added recently" in Music app on iPhone, which I certainly have not added by myself, at least not intentionally. Where do they come from? And even more irritating: Why don't they show up on iTunes on my iMac? All other titles or albums are being synced between the devices perfectly. Very strange.


2.) It's absolutely mysterious to me where iTunes Match has gone. I don't see it anywhere on my iPhone. I have no idea if I'll still need Match at all? Seems I'm not the only one who is confused by how iTunes Match and iCloud music library play together, see here.


For the original issues, however, they seem to be gone by now - vanished as magically as they had appeared. I too get the impression that Apple in the meantime might have done some magic in the background.

Sep 24, 2015 7:07 AM in response to ssgp

I'm still having trouble. Wonder if iOS 9's music app works. Since the update to iOS 8 ruined that experience for me.


Ever since the release of Apple music I've been having trouble non-stop. I tried every measure I've ever found of sorting out problems in iOS. I've tried closing the app starting it back up. I've tried restarting the phone. I've tried restoring the phone some months ago. But after all the problems always came back.


I've had iPhones ever since the 3GS but I'm starting to wonder if my next phone will be one.


I'm living in Brazil, Apple music is expensive for us brazilians.

To pay for it and notice that when you ask a music to be available offline it doesn't always happens, or when it does and the music is playing it sometimes pauses the song in the middle with no apparent reason.

Or you notice it is actually accessing the network, which it shouldn't since the song should be offline.


Connection services in brazil are horrible and completely NOT dependable. We need a solution for this.

If you say the song can be made available offline, don't jam the songs that were made available offline in the middle of playing time, just because you realized you have connection to the internet.


PS: When I started writing this post it jammed. While i was writing this post it jammed again. And just before this update (at 7:05 according to the auto save time) it jammed again. It's becoming unusable.

iPhone music app freezing, throwing me out, misbehaving

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