12.7.1.14 iTunes stops playing after a few songs

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12.7.1.14 iTunes stops playing after a few songs

Note, continues to happen in iTunes 12.7.2.58 and MacOS 10.13.2

How do I keep iTunes from stopping after playing only a few songs?

Immediately after upgrading to MacOS 10.13.1 from 10.12.x (the last version), iTunes will only play a few songs at a time before stopping. It loads the next song on the playlist and sends notification, but stops. It starts again if I press play, use an IR remote, or use the media key on my keyboard.

I am, however, unable to contact iTunes from the Remote App on iPad nor iPhone when this happens. I've connected via Home Sharing and using PIN pairing, but Remote App won't connect if iTunes stops on its own.

I have deleted the com.apple.iTunes.plist file and restarted a few times without success. Signing out and back into the iTunes store (under Accounts) sometimes causes iTunes to continue for a few hours without stopping.

Looking at Console (iTunes process), I notice two odd errors happen every time iTunes stops:

Month 13 is out of bounds (this will often happen many, many times in a second)
Request: playbackQueue D73715CF-1B44-40AD-B956-536BF79BFB2B/M/R[0:1] for origin-1280262988/client-com.apple.iTunes-710/player-MediaRemote-DefaultPlayer is short-circuting

My computer is a Mac mini (Late 2014), 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM.

Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Dec 14, 2017 2:59 PM

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Answer 1

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Dan Neuman Author

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Dec 23, 2017 8:07 AM in response to Dan Neuman

The problem seems related to the sign-in timer. iTunes works fine with the screen saver running or if the display turns off, but when the timer for signing back in expires, iTunes stops before the next song. So right now I require a password after 8 hours of inactivity, which works but leaves my computer vulnerable.

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Answer 2

Dec 23, 2017 11:11 AM in response to Dan Neuman

Thanks, I had same problem; solution seems to work for me, too. In case others are searching: to set password timer to 8 hours, open System Preferences>Security & Privacy>General, and tick [x] Require password, and select '8 hours' from the drop-down to the right.

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Answer 3

Dan Neuman Author

Level 1

15 points

Dec 16, 2017 12:22 PM in response to Dan Neuman

Turns out the Month 13 error is unrelated and affects all processes that use plists with calendar events.

Still need to figure out the short-circuiting problem. iTunes does not respond to AppleScript Events during this time, either, so writing a script to restart is challenging.

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