Why does some of the songs in my iTunes library stop prematurely and go to the next song?

For the couple of weeks a whole bunch of the songs from my iTunes library stop early and skip to the next song (just as if it was at the end of the song). Although the point where it skips varies for each song (for one song it is 2:32, another is 2:46), it will always skip at the same point for each song.

A while back I ran BPMer and, although it crashed half way through, it did not appear to corrupt my music the way it is now.

A few days ago I backed up my iTunes library and reformatted my hard drive (for a completely unrelated issue) and reinstalled OS X from scratch. The problem was happening before and after the reinstall.

This problem also persists when the music is synced across to my iPod touch running 3.0. Listening to the same troublesome songs in my iPod causes them to end prematurely. However, I can listen to the whole song using Quicklook, so the problem must be with my iTunes library or something.

Music options in iTunes inlcude a stop time. Ctrl-click->Get Info->Options will show you if these have be changed, perhaps by BPMer.

If that is the case, you can change the stop time in the info box for each song. If you don't mind losing play counts and ratings, you can re-import your music.

I had exactly this problem. I checked the stop time. It was 1) not checked, and 2) it was the correct time for when the song should have stopped. The song was stopping about 10 seconds before. I had another song from the same album that also stopped short.

These were songs purchased from the iTunes Store, not ripped.

The same song played correctly to the end on another computer. I recently transferred my music to a new computer.

On a hunch, I wondered if something was corrupted in the iTunes library file (which is an XML file).

I deleted the songs from the library, leaving the files where they were (not putting them in the recycle bin). Then I dragged those two songs back into iTunes so they would be reinserted into the library.

Now they play perfectly fine!!

Maybe your files are not corrupted, and is this related to something completely different.

Could check the following:

in iTunes there is an option under preferences (tab 'playback') named 'Crossfade' See whether it is turned on. If so, turn it of and check again if songs stop early. I was confronted with this when I downloaded a new version of iTunes, even though the setting was not set before.

I've had this issue for a while now, can't even be sure when it started though my suspicion is it came with my upgrade to snow leopard. Since then I had a number of itunes updates and due to my older machine am stuck at 11.4 now. The problem always remained. The one thing i Realized though is that it only happens when performing group import. So if you have a new album and drag all the songs into itunes, each and every song imported has the problem that it stops and skips to the next song halfway through. time would be random between songs, but consistent for each song.

Deleting the songs and importing them one at a time without changing anything to the meta data or file, solves the issue. More time consuming, but it has become a habit of me to import my songs like that.

I've never found an answer that actually fixes the issue rather than using the workaround i just described. If anybody knows the real fix, i will be very happy to know.

Leon