Apple Music skips about 2 seconds into track on macOS and tvOS

This is a real problem. Happens on every track when streaming on lossless. You can’t call it lossless if you lose a whole beat! The beginning of the song is the most important part. The skipping just takes you out of it and ruins the magic. Please fix this, and thank you for the in depth analysis done by @philfnyc1

Well I removed lossless from everything and guess what the skipping has stopped. I also submitted another feedback notice to Apple. I think this problem deserves proper attention from Apple. People are paying for this service and it’s not being delivered.

This. I can absolutely confirm this has been a problem for YEARS and was the reason I went to Spotify long ago. Within the 3-Month free testing period of Apple Music I had this exact problem all the time. And this was before lossless was even available! I am only back with Apple again due to their Apple-ONE pricing model. It’s the better offer for me and my family compared to Spotify. However, this skipping within the first 2-5 seconds of almost every song on every platform is VERY annoying to say the least. Apple has to fix this and it is unacceptable. It happens less when lossless is disabled but I can confirm it sometimes happens even with normal quality settings. On cellular, on wifi, on any network even with very fast bandwidth. This problem is 100% on Apple’s end and it needs to be fixed. It’s a complete joke having to deal with this kind of issue in 2022 while every other streaming provider runs smoothly without any problems at all. Why this issue has jot been addressed yet is beyond me.

I'm making tests, my results are as follows:

1. It only happens with Lossless AND streaming. I tried downloading some songs and I never get skipping with downloaded songs. I also tried disabling Lossless and it doesn't skip with regular AAC when streaming.
2. I tried reproducing the problem (using Lossless with Streaming) with a playlist in both normal and random order, in both cases I advanced to the end of a song (about 10 secs before ending) and when the next one is played the skipping doesn't happen.

This only points to caching, the Music app must be loading a lower (or different) bitrate song before loading the Lossless stream version (just like any streaming video) when a song is requested on demand and this is causing the skip, hence when playing it on an ordered manner it doesn't skip. A list wether random or normal is still an ordered list, the random list is generated when the first chosen song is played, and we can go forward or backwards through the songs in that "random" list.

I FOUND THE PROBLEM and a work around.

As soon as the song starts playing it detects whether its a Dolby track or regular. If its dolby it will skip a beat and turn on Dolby on the song, hence the skip beat.

If you want to work around the issue is easy, remember those hidef - highly boasted speakers your MBP has? we'll just turn off DOLBY sound. It doesn't solve it, just work around it, so you just have to settle for mediocre sound on you $3K computer. And let's hope it gets fixed sometime in the next 30 yearly updates.

Happened on every iPhone I’ve ever had and I’m currently on the 15PM. Beta builds, stable releases. Doesn’t matter.

I absolutely agree with that diagnosis. It looks like Apple Music is changing bit rates or codec and as it does so, a buffer is lost. This needs fixing please Apple

Given that I’ve had opportunity, I can confirm the following

• It occurs on latest macOS (M1 MBP) and tvOS (4k 2G and 4k 1G)
• It occurs over wired or Wi-Fi connections
• It occurs over any WAN connection I tested (50Mb, 150Mb, 2Gb, 10Gb from multiple ISPs)
• It only occurs when using the lossless codec
• It is agnostic to output type — including a brand new set of HomePod 2’s
• I also tested bufferbloat as a *just-in-case* — results were between 40-50ms where I had opportunity to test

I would find it hard not to characterize this as a problem in software (music app, macOS/tvOS) or protocol (apple’s servers and how they are handling streaming the lossless codec).

It’s mid-2024 and the problem STILL PERSIST. I don’t get it Apple. Latest products, latest updates, different networks. Same problem. FIX IT.

2 more years later and this is STILL happening. Most noticeable when in the car over 5G streaming lossless via cabled iPhone to CarPlay. Skip normally occurs about 10-15 seconds in.

grrrrr

Another workaround is cancel Apple Music, subscribe to Spotify (or whichever you like). I cancelled my Spotify and signed up for Apple Music because Spotify doesn't offer lossless, and I spent a bunch on my audio equipment, so it's extra frustrating that Apple Music skips like this. I went to them for their alleged high quality audio.

Oh, I'm on the latest iOS 15.6 iPhone 13 mini.

This also continues to happen on iOS iPhones including my iPhone 13. Happens on WiFi or cellular.

Same issue, on iphone 13 pro max Apple music on iOS 16.5.

No issue on AAC and Atmos.

Only with lossless.

A true issue for music lovers ...

It is just Lossless, I just checked. Happens with streaming and downloaded Lossless on my Mac. Pretty consistent and annoying.

I think I have a pretty good workaround: turn on crossfade. The minimal amount works fine, even for hi-res losless.