Am I the only one having this problem?
The Music app on iOS 17 beta does not cleanly seque between songs that are intended to have no gap between them. When gapless songs are played (e.g., Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", The Beatles' "Abbey Road"), a noticeable gap is heard between songs. These are songs in my music library that I sync from my computer, not Apple Music streams. It should be noted that this bug also exists in iOS 16.6, and I've verified that the problem does not occur on a older phone running iOS 15.7.8.
More importantly, when I put the device in Airplane mode, the songs seque correctly, without any gaps. I suspect that the Music app is phoning home to Apple (a bad practice in and of itself) and something is interrupting playback queuing. Even when I have Cellular access turned off for the Music app, and am not connected to Wi-Fi, the problem persists. The only way to make gapless playback work is to turn off all of the device radios via Airplane mode.
Understand that this is NOT a cross-fade issue. It is a gapless issue. And it's not an Apple Music streaming issue. The problem seems to be more prevalent for songs encoded as 128 kbps AAC.
In comparison, the Music app on macOS (Ventura, 13.5) operates correctly. It's only iOS that no longer performs gapless playback.
I've filed bug reports (FB12992049 and FB13019931), but have not heard anything from Apple.
Like I asked at the beginning, am I the only one having this problem? It's extremely maddening that Apple can't get this right. I can't play my Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, and my other AOR playlists, including my late 60's Beatles. Steve Jobs would be rolling in his grave.