downloaded music stops after 15 seconds

Hi petroschoulis10,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

We are happy to help with the issue you are having with you songs pausing after 15 seconds. We see you came from Add and download music from Apple Music. Are you using Apple Music? If you are, you want to make sure you have a good internet connection. Does this happen in multiple locations? Are you getting an error message?

Do you have a second device you can test? Does the same thing happen?

You want to make sure your device is up to date. Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch here. You might want to force quit music, restart your device and try again. Learn how to Close an app on your iPhone or iPod, or iPad, here. 

Look forward to details.

Hi petroschoulis10,

Thank you for your follow up. Are you using Apple Music? If you are, disable your Apple Music and then enable it again and re-sync your library. You will have to sign out of your Apple ID and then sign back in. Test only lossless music while disabling Dolby Atmos. You will also want to test this with your built in speakers as well as with wired, or wireless speakers. It would be best to write down what happens after each step.

If your music still stops at 15 seconds after trying these steps, you will need to Contact Apple Support.

Have a nice day!

Same here. On the iPod touch (current gen, iOS 14.7). Lossless enabled, atmos disabled in the settings. Whenever I download the playlists or albums a lot of songs just stop at 15 sec. Couple of songs were corrupted when downloading, heard audible artifacts when trying to play them back.

One workaround that seems to be working for me so far (I think) is to seek through the songs while still online. Basically you download the playlist, then you start playback while online, wait until the sound starts, then you scroll to the middle of the song, wait until the sound starts. Switch to the next song etc. Go over each song, starting the playback, scrolling to the middle of the song, etc. Only after this "warm-up" it works, the next time I go offline and try playing the music from Library->Downloaded then it plays fine. Pretty inconvenient.

Also seems to be happening on the same songs a lot of time. Like if I download the playlist, few songs fail, I remove them, then re-download them. If I go offline without listening to them first, then most likely they still won't play. Only if I play them first while still online, only then they will work when I'm offline.

I experience this a lot in "essentials" playlists ("gojira essentials", "animals as leaders essentials", "led zeppelin essentials", "metallica essentials" etc), haven't tried a lot of other approaches. And haven't checked lossy music.

When online everything plays back fine all the time. Sorta. Sometimes scrolling to the middle of the song takes a few seconds (5-10), I assume it downloads something. Sometimes the progress bar switches back to zero for a few seconds and then back to the correct location. It feels like there are errors or timeouts happening in the background and the thing fixes itself if it's online.

I agree. This problem started with the recent upgrade to lossless music. I constantly have songs that stop playing any audio 15 seconds or so into the song. But the song keeps on playing on the phone.

I too have been experiencing the same problem on my Macbook Air M1!! After about every 5-6 songs it just stops playing, and what I've noticed is that the display shows the song that was previously heard is the one that actually playing but there is no sound coming out at all. I called Apple Support and they had me do a Safe mode reboot and after a while I thought that was the fix. Then a few days later it started doing it again! WTF?!!

Hi petroschoulis10,

Sorry to hear that. If you have tried all the steps we recommended, you will need to Contact Apple Support for further assistance.

Cheers.

yes, me too. After update my iphone to IOS 14.6 and listen to dolby atmos music. My music are always stop at 15 second when i'm hear it offline instead of that music i've downloaded.

Hi petroschoulis10,

Thank you for your follow up. Great news! Thank you for using Apple Support Communities!

Have a nice day!

what happens if i disable my icloud? everything stays the same or there are things that will be erased from my phone?

I have the same problem. It’s very frustrating when I’m commuting underground on the train because Apple Music is essentially useless.

Me too. Why am I paying for this apple product that doesn’t work.