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Apple Music Stops Playing Randomly on Mac Catalina

Problem just started in the last week or so. I play Apple Music on an iMac Pro running Catalina (10.15.6), playing ALL MUSIC ON MY DISK. (That is, no streaming involved)


I have several playlists. They used to all play properly. Now it will play 2, or 3, or maybe 5 songs, and then just stop. Same results if I press the Play button or the Shuffle button. Same results if shuffle is on or off.


Again, these are all songs on my local disk, so there is no network or streaming issue involved. I have rebooted the iMac Pro and the problem remains.


I see this same problem reported multiple times here in 2015, 2019 and others, mostly on mobile devices. I am not having it (just started last week) on an iMac Pro...

iMac Pro

Posted on Aug 13, 2020 1:43 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 14, 2020 5:50 PM

Hello MindStormPhoto!


We see you are having some trouble with getting music to play consistently on your iMac Pro. We frequently use Apple Music as well and can see how not being able to get a full playlist to work would be an issue. Let's try a few different steps here. First does this issue seem to occur when using your main library and not playlists? Or does the issue seem to be isolated to playlists you have created? Try testing the issue in another user account if the problem only occurs in playlists: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac


You may also want to make sure those songs didn't somehow get unchecked as options for autoplaying. You can see that by going into Music > Preferences > General > Songs list checkboxes, then go back to the playlists and make sure all of the songs show a check mark to the left of the track in the track list.


We hope those steps help! Have a great rest of your day.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 14, 2020 5:50 PM in response to MindStormPhoto

Hello MindStormPhoto!


We see you are having some trouble with getting music to play consistently on your iMac Pro. We frequently use Apple Music as well and can see how not being able to get a full playlist to work would be an issue. Let's try a few different steps here. First does this issue seem to occur when using your main library and not playlists? Or does the issue seem to be isolated to playlists you have created? Try testing the issue in another user account if the problem only occurs in playlists: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac


You may also want to make sure those songs didn't somehow get unchecked as options for autoplaying. You can see that by going into Music > Preferences > General > Songs list checkboxes, then go back to the playlists and make sure all of the songs show a check mark to the left of the track in the track list.


We hope those steps help! Have a great rest of your day.

Aug 14, 2020 7:44 PM in response to Nicholas_B2

Thanks for stepping in here. I thought the issue was already flagged as fixed, so I am sorry you had to waste your time.


No idea why, but after two reboots of the iMac Pro, this problem "just went away." It is now playing full playlists, just as it was doing prior to last week. After the first reboot, the problem still existed, as stated above. After writing this problem, I rebooted again in frustration... and the problem was fixed?


I still have a problem with the iTunes store not showing very many of my purchases, but that is a different problem (reported as a separate issue just minutes before I posted this one).

Apple Music Stops Playing Randomly on Mac Catalina

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