A skip occurs when a phonograph (gramophone), cassette tape or compact disc player malfunctions or is disturbed so as to play incorrectly, causing a break in sound or a jump to another part of the recording.
The locked groove gave rise to the expression "broken record" referring to someone who continually repeats the same statement with little if any variation.
In this case, the machine may make a series of audible chirping noises as the laser is moving from the faulty block to the data information area and back again.
When certain techniques were tested and failed, the most successful and popular method to date was to spin the disc faster in order to read a chunk of the data into memory while playing.
This meant that the player itself could concentrate on reading while the software controlling the buffers and memory distribution could also act as the audio feed.
Indeed, some early artists such as the Beatles deliberately rearranged the tape reels in order to produce loops used in their recordings.
Computer skips can be caused by lack of available RAM or processing power, damaged storage mediums (CD, hard drive etc.