Itunes not responding, running extremely slow

Same problem - spinning wheel if I attempt to do anything. iTunes essentially inoperable.

Same problem - after the 12.3.1 update almost every action I've tried yields the spinning beach ball, usually for a few seconds. CDs seem to be ripping more slowly too. Running OS 10.10.5 with a very large iTunes library.

Same issue here. iTunes was running sluggish when I initially updated to El Capitan a few weeks ago, and with yesterday's update to 10.11.1 (and iTunes), it's now running incredibly slow, with spinning beach balls whenever I try to do anything -- just switching back to the application gives me the beach ball for the minimum of about 3 minutes.

I'm running 10.11.1 on a Mac Pro (mid 2010) with 64 gigs of RAM. I keep my iTunes library on a separate internal SSD drive.

I did another experiment. (I have a bunch of albums that ripped with "disk 1, disk 2" in the titles). I opened a finder window for the files, selected a batch in iTunes and then hit ok to rename. The files move/rename nearly instantly in the Finder. iTunes still beachballs for a minute with 100+% CPU App not Responding.

For me at least, it has to do with Music operations. I just played an entire TV episode with zero lag or trouble. My Apple TV plays movies from the Mac fine too. (I'll test streaming audio next). Also weirdly, iTunes seems to play songs fine for me.

Hoping Apple techs check out these threads. 😕

Interesting additional find. Console is logging Spotlight errors that seem to correlate with iTunes choking:

10/22/15 9:27:03.320 PM SpotlightNetHelper[423]: tcp_connection_tls_session_error_callback_imp 194 __tcp_connection_tls_session_callback_write_block_invoke.434 error 22

My iTunes media files are on an external LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk raid. Boot drive with the iTunes Library.itl file is an SSD. Earlier today, as a troubleshooting step, I added the external drive to Spotlight privacy, then removed it to trigger a re-index. Guess that wasn't it? 😐

Nightmare evening here, too...all because I ran an update to iTunes and to El Capitan. Tonight I upgraded to OSX 10.11.1 and to iTunes 12.3.1...and then the nightmare started. It took forever to even "launch" iTunes after the restart, and even the slightest action (jumping to a new album, skipping a few tracks, trying to jump to movies, created the "spinning wheel" which lasts for an eternity before the action you tried to do kicks in...providing you have the patience to wait... after a long, long, aggravating wait. The program is basically unusable.

Why in **** wasn't this tested better before its release to the public? I regret ever running those two upgrades.

I hope Apple is REALLY investigating about this bug ...

Me, too. I was going to call Apple Support about it, but dreaded paying $29 to discuss it.

I believe if the issue is related to a system software update, Apple Support waives the fee.

I removed the .itl file. iTunes opened (with no playlists, of course…) and created a new .itl file. But the beach ball quickly returned. So I deleted the "new" file and replaced the old one. Beach ball again; % CPU running 100-148%. Oddly, enough, every once in awhile, iTunes acts more or less normally and I can navigate through the files. But the beach ball usually returns along w/ the 100%+ CPU usage. Oy.

I spent all day trying to fix this same issue on my Macbook after running an update, which only has a fraction of my entire library on it (480GB). I tried deleting preferences, I tried re-installing iTunes. I tried disk utilities and repair everything. I reset PRAM. iTunes wants to run 100% and give me spinning beachballs all the time, making it useless.

The only way to make iTunes responsive was to hold the option key while launching iTunes and choosing to create a new library, then moving the new database files to my old itunes library folder, and then dragging my 480GB iTunes media folder from the finder into itunes to get back my music and movies. The files stayed in the same place in my iTunes folder, but got added to iTunes this way. Unfortunately I also sort my music by date added and this screwed that all up, along with losing my playlists.

But if I try to import ANY of my backup copies of my playlists (e.g. import from an old itunes.xml file from 1, 2 or even 3 weeks ago from my time machine drive) then I get the same 100% usage, freezing, lagging, beachballs, with even just moving the cursor or trying to scroll. I have 1700 playlists to help me separate my MP3 versions of albums from ripped ALAC albums, and for syncing groups of artists, and I can't get them back. 10 years of playlists gone forever! (^*&%

I also can't turn on iTunes Match to pull my playlists off my iMac, which is the only computer with match typically turned on, done that way so that I can access all my music on my Apple TV. If I turn on iTunes match (or iCloud Library) on my Macbook, then iTunes on my Macbook is ruined again and I have to start over. This is with a 9 month old 15" Retina MBP with OS X 10.10.5 that ran fine before updating last night.

So, now I am afraid to update my iMac's iTunes due to fear of this happening to it too, as that has a 6TB thunderbolt drive with a 5TB iTunes library attached, and about 3000 playlists that I sync to all of our iPhones/iPads.

It seems to me the old itunes.xml file isn't compatible with the new iTunes if you have certain playlists in it or use itunes match. I did try creating a new blank library, and selected show all purchased music, movies and TV shows. This worked without lagging, until I turned on iTunes match to access my iMac playlists and ripped CD's. Once all my playlists uploaded to match from the iMac showed up on my Macbook, even before importing any of my local music from the iTunes Media folder, the freezing and beachballs came back.

iTunes Match -- that's interesting. I've tried to enable that feature in the past, but it wouldn't work (I had over 25,000 songs -- this was before the limit was raised to 100k -- and I have over 100k songs, so I've always left it off).

So I was never an iTunes Match customer and my iTunes is still completely broken since I updated El Capitan yesterday.

iTunes was working pretty slow before the update, though -- but not as bad as now. Here's a thread from late August where I tried all sorts of things to try and get it to run faster... it eventually improved to where the beach ball lag was just a couple of seconds, instead of minutes, so I had given up on trying to fix it: Updated to iTunes 12.2.2.25, now get pinwheel all the time - help!

Echo for this problem. I have a MacBook Air, 8Gb ram, i7 processor, so I don't believe it's caused by lack of hard ware. My library is relatively large (300Gb), and access via my home network, but with iTunes 11 it was ok (I wouldn't say fast, but it was useable) now with iTines 12 it is pretty much unuseable - 35 minutes to add tracks to the library, 17 minutes to add 10 tracks to my phone...

I am extremely unimpressed, but have not found a good solution so far.

Similar issue: yesterday I upgraded to OSX 10.11.1 and to iTunes 12.3.1 and troubles with Apple Music started (I'm on the free trial and everything worked fine before the upgrade). When I try to play a track in Apple Music it does not start: the process bar of the song is suddenly blue and you have to wait seconds and seconds before the buffer, very very slowly, starts. then, lags and interruption. annoying.

Well, fellow users...after spending six HOURS on this problem, and going to bed at 3:30 am, my iTunes is not performing any better.

I contacted Apple Online Support. I sat at the computer, iPad at the side, getting instructions from them (three different operators, none of whom seemed to want to admit to the problem being more widespread than just with my computer.

They had me delete anything appearing in "Login Items" under my name in Users&Groups. (did nothing)

They had me try iTunes in Safe Mode. (problem remained exactly the same)

They had me completely reinstall iTunes. Problem was still there.

They had me reinstall El Capitan. That took 90 minutes. When I restarted...the problem was still there.

This is incredibly frustrating. I hope others are letting them know, so they realize how widespread an issue it is.