23 replies to this topic

[Anthony Tosie]

There's about 4 songs I have that Xbox Music for some reason refuses to recognize the album art for on my Surface. The problem is all the album art and metadata is correct, but Xbox Music refuses to accept them for some reason. Even in the desktop the album art shows up on the file icons.

Since there's no music app on the desktop you can use, I've tried going back to my PC to clear the art and input new art and it's not working. I went as far as re-ripping one of the CDs that had a file with missing art and making sure the art for all the files was proper, but it's still not accepting it. I cleared the music library, thinking maybe if I took the location of the music out (it's on a microSD card) that it would re-load everything and see the correct info. Except it's giving me the same stuff when I add the folder back to the music directory.

Anyone have any tips? I'm guessing it's caching the info somewhere, which is why it won't recognize that the files and art have been changed. But it's odd it didn't accept the correct art to begin with.

[HawkMan]

Run it through foobar2000 and use the rebuild function and rewrite the id3 tag. It'll probably work after that.

[Anthony Tosie]

HawkMan, on 03 November 2012 - 21:28, said:

Run it through foobar2000 and use the rebuild function and rewrite the id3 tag. It'll probably work after that.

Well I completely re-ripped one CD and yet it's still appearing with the same old metadata and lacks album art, so I think the previous data was being cached. I also already rewrote the id3 tags for the songs with missing art (forgot to mention that) before and that didn't work.

[WooHoo!!!]

In my case, it totally went to town on my music. Showed up losts of different metadata when it was perfectly fine on my PC through Zune, WMP.

I guess it updated the data as that setting was ticked on Xbox Music but there was nothing wrong with the metadata before hand. I'll have to double check but sure all tags were perfect.

So, how do you clear the cache metadata before I try and fix what it's showing somehow?

[Anthony Tosie]

WooHoo!!!, on 03 November 2012 - 22:06, said:

In my case, it totally went to town on my music. Showed up losts of different metadata when it was perfectly fine on my PC through Zune, WMP.

I guess it updated the data as that setting was ticked on Xbox Music but there was nothing wrong with the metadata before hand. I'll have to double check but sure all tags were perfect.

So, how do you clear the cache metadata before I try and fix what it's showing somehow?

Man, if I knew, I'd tell you I've done everything I can think of. I fixed the data and art that were showing up incorrectly, I re-ripped one of the albums completely, I removed my collection from my music library, I changed the folder my MicroSD card is mounted to and added the new folder to the library, etc. The app is caching the data from the songs somewhere, because by re-ripping at a different bitrate I created brand new files, and I also slightly changed some of the metadata so it was different from last time.

I had the setting unticked because when I do that it always screws up my data, but I even turned it on and nothing changed.

[+ViperAFK]

Check to see if those songs are tagged with id3 v2.4

MS software doesn't support ID3 2.4 tags (windows explorer, WMP, and zune don't anyway, I haven't used xbox music but I suspect it doesn't either).

[Auroka]

I've been having tons of sorting issues with Xbox Music. Everything was perfect in Zune but now half of my library is a mess.
Now all of a sudden nothing is syncing.





More info just leads to xbox.com and says "There's no Web Help topic specific to this error."
Hopefully you don't run into all the problems I'm having.

[Anthony Tosie]

ViperAFK, on 03 November 2012 - 23:05, said:

Check to see if those songs are tagged with id3 v2.4

MS software doesn't support ID3 2.4 tags (windows explorer, WMP, and zune don't anyway, I haven't used xbox music but I suspect it doesn't either).

Nope, they're not. They even show up fine in explorer on the desktop in Windows RT.

Now Xbox Music isn't finding about 100 of my songs for some reason. I took the collection out of my library then re-added them and now they're not all being found.

[GreyWolf]

The RT app doesn't use the same database as the desktop. It builds a new one in protected storage. Same goes for artwork - it downloads it again. You could try uninstalling the app and re-downloading it from the store.

They really need to get on the stick with their in-house apps. They're lousy.

[~Johnny]

Anthony Tosie, on 03 November 2012 - 22:58, said:

The app is caching the data from the songs somewhere,

If you want to know, it's database is located at : {User}\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.ZuneMusic_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Database as an edb file.

As far as I know, all WinRT music applications get their metadata and album art from querying the Window Search Indexer, so whatever happens you'll need to make sure that it can index the tags you're using properly. And of course, the Windows Search Indexer has a habit of routinely just not indexing some files for no reason in particular.

[jakem1]

GreyWolf, on 04 November 2012 - 13:01, said:

The RT app doesn't use the same database as the desktop. It builds a new one in protected storage. Same goes for artwork - it downloads it again. You could try uninstalling the app and re-downloading it from the store.

They really need to get on the stick with their in-house apps. They're lousy.

Yep, I'm not too happy with the music app in particular either. I've had similar problems with metadata, the performance is pretty awful (my music library is pointing to my home server) and the constant pop-up ads that interrupt my music are inexcusable IMO.

Has anyone tried an alternative music player from the store that they can recommend?

[Anthony Tosie]

~Johnny, on 04 November 2012 - 13:12, said:

If you want to know, it's database is located at : {User}\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.ZuneMusic_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Database as an edb file.

As far as I know, all WinRT music applications get their metadata and album art from querying the Window Search Indexer, so whatever happens you'll need to make sure that it can index the tags you're using properly. And of course, the Windows Search Indexer has a habit of routinely just not indexing some files for no reason in particular.

Do you think deleting all the files in that folder would cause the app/search indexer to look at the files again for their data when I add the folder back to my music library?

[~Johnny]

Anthony Tosie, on 04 November 2012 - 16:05, said:

Do you think deleting all the files in that folder would cause the app/search indexer to look at the files again for their data when I add the folder back to my music library?

I think the only sure fire way to get the app to ask the search indexer again is to uninstall it and then reinstall it. As for the search indexer itself, you should be able to go into the folders in File Explorer on the desktop and see if it's actually properly indexing the metadata for those files (i.e. searching artist:"Jason Mraz" should return only files where Jason Mraz is in the artist metadata tag, and any files it doesn't pick up aren't being indexed properly). You could force an entire rebuild of the Windows Search Indexer database, but deleting folders should do.

Try maybe moving the files into a non indexable location (like a memory stick), and then moving them back, possibly into a different folder?

jakem1, on 04 November 2012 - 14:46, said:

Has anyone tried an alternative music player from the store that they can recommend?

The one in my signature I made - it wasn't designed as a music player per sé but people are using it as such over Xbox Music, so your mileage may vary. There's no ads, but it doesn't play DRM'd files or open playlists either. Unfortunately I'd say the metadata pick up would probably be exactly the same though, because we both rely on the Windows Search Indexer to give us all that data quickly (which is frankly the only way to do it without waiting a very long time to manually scan all your files). It should at the least perform a bit better though.

[jakem1]

~Johnny, on 04 November 2012 - 16:27, said:

The one in my signature I made - it wasn't designed as a music player per sé but people are using it as such over Xbox Music, so your mileage may vary. There's no ads, but it doesn't play DRM'd files or open playlists either. Unfortunately I'd say the metadata pick up would probably be exactly the same though, because we both rely on the Windows Search Indexer to give us all that data quickly (which is frankly the only way to do it without waiting a very long time to manually scan all your files). It should at the least perform a bit better though.

Thanks Johnny. I'll check it out.

[jakem1]

jakem1, on 04 November 2012 - 16:35, said:

Thanks Johnny. I'll check it out.

Wow, that's a great app. Much better than Microsoft's effort and the performance is great. Thanks again Johnny.