Apple Music crossfade isn't working at all on Mac

Question

Level 1

6 points

Apple Music crossfade isn't working at all on Mac

Hi all!

For a bit of context; I bought a 16" MacBook Pro about two months ago and I'm absolutely in love with it. Not long before that, I also moved all my music and switched to Apple Music due to the lack of support for lossless audio, Dolby Atmos and a whole host of reasons on part of Spotify.

Now, Apple Music works absolutely flawlessly on my iPhone, however, I've been having some problems regarding crossfade on macOS. Ever since I got my Mac, crossfade just outright refused to work. Whatever I did, I just couldn't get it to work.

What I tried to do already:

Turn off lossless audio
Turn off Dolby Atmos
Restart my device
Force Quit Apple Music
Disable and enable crossfade
Update to macOS Sequoia 15 (from Sonoma)
Try lots of the methods mentioned in other articles or community posts but to no avail

In all honesty, crossfade isn't all that important to me, but I like to turn it on occasionally when listening to my playlists, as I love how seamlessly one song switches into another and it's really bothering me, that I need to choose between either listening to my music on my AirPods with crossfade (through my iPhone) or on my Mac but without crossfade.

Any help is appreciated!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.0

Posted on Oct 13, 2024 2:56 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 15, 2024 8:27 PM in response to zsombp

I think I've found a solution. It seems that crossfade doesn't work with lossless audio. When I turned off lossless audio, crossfade started working. So, if you want to listen to lossless audio in Apple Music, it looks like you can't use crossfade. It's funny that it took me so long to figure this out.

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Answer 2

zsombp Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 16, 2024 3:03 AM in response to Alfweefwee

Happy that you found it a solution, however, that doesn't work for me. Plus, lossless audio is the main reason I switched to Apple Music to begin with.

I find it frustrating that there is no fix available for this problem. Especially since lossless and crossfade do work together on iOS or iPadOS, but not on macOS.

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Answer 3

bhite80

Level 1

6 points

Oct 16, 2024 6:49 AM in response to zsombp

I'm not sure if this is by design or a bug, but crossfade only appears to work when listening to owned music files only.

In other words, if you're listening to a song sourced from an owned music file, the next track will crossfade, regardless of whether the next track is another owned music file or sourced from Apple Music.

If you're listening to a song sourced from Apple Music, whether streaming or downloaded, the next track will NOT crossfade, ever.

Take this with a grain of salt, as this was the pattern I repeated a few times on my Mac mini running MacOS Sequoia 15.0.1, so there's a chance mileage can vary.

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Answer 4

Oct 15, 2024 7:06 PM in response to zsombp

I've been having the same problem for about a year now, and like you cannot find a solution.

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