Music collection is messed up - Please explain.

[berklon]

I'm new to WP8, but I'm having issues with my music collection.

My MP3 collection is very organized... ID tags are filled out, cover art always attached... very neat and methodical.

I don't do anything fancy... I simply copy over my music folders (1 album per folder) to my micro-SD card. I like to keep things simple.
I don't use the cloud, and I've turned the xbox cloud setting off before I did anything. I do have the "Connect with xbox music" just so I can get the artist background images.

Some CDs I add a little extra info to the Album title in my ID Tag... ie:

Norah Jones' CD "The Fall" album title I have set as "The Fall (SACD)" to indicate that it's ripped from my hybrid SACD/CD instead of regular CD. I do this for many albums.

Well I have 2 "copies" of this CD in my album collection on WP8 (as well as multiple copies of others). "The Fall" and "The Fall (SACD)".
And to make matters worse, not all the songs are in both Albums... some in one, and the rest in the other. This is happening to a lot of my CDs.

It's just a big mess.

Why is this happening? Is it because I have "Connect with xbox music" enabled?

Is there a way to just have it use why I've copied over, while it automatically assign artist backgrounds - all the while NOT touching any of my collection?

 

[troylytle]

Maybe because you didn't sync the phone with the application.

 

[travis_valkyrie]

You got that right. First, I would advise that you reformat your sd card and re-add the songs, as Xbox Music already has replaced the tags on these files from Xbox Music server. Then turn off all settings in music+videos, and put your sd card back in. Although you won't get fancy stuff like artist backgrounds and smartDJ.

EDIT: I just thought of it, on the other hand, you could manage your music files with Zune. Replace all existing metadata tags on your songs, and match them with the ones available on Xbox Music. This way Zune will correct all your songs metadata and replace them with the ones from Xbox Music, then you could start re-adding them to your sd card and leave the Connect to Xbox Music option on.

 

[berklon]

Thanks for the responses.

I wound up just deleted all the files in the Music folder on both the internal storage of the phone and on the SD card. Recopied my music collection back onto the SD Card, and put it back in the phone (after disabling the "connect with XBOX" feature). Everything is fine now. I hope I don't enable the feature accidentally down the road - since it makes such a mess.

Another question... I have some albums (soundtracks mostly) that have different artists set in the ID tag - and the Album view shows a different cover for each artist from the same album. Is there any way to only show the album once in the album view and not a cover for each different artists. My ipod had this issue, and I had to set those albums in iTunes as a "compilation" to have it show properly. Anything similar for WP8? I never understood why some mp3 players do it this way... it shouldn't matter that it's a different artist, the album view should show you all the different albums... a soundtrack should only be listed once as it's only one album. Wish they software would just pay attention to the ID tag and stop doing stupid things.

 

[thaman04]

Hi Berklon - Currently, Xbox Music is a mess... Since my music is very organized as well and got messed up all the time..
here's what I did to make it more pleasant and personal experience:

1. Plug your phone into your computer, and explorer your phone in File Explorer.
2. Go into the "Music" folder, and remove all the music from your phone or move it to another hard drive.
3. On your phone, go into Music settings and turn off "Connect with Xbox Music"
4. In File Explorer, copy/move all your music back onto your phone's "Music" folder.

Now your music is copied over and all the tags and cover arts remain as you originally set them.

For the cool Artist Backgrounds in the Now Playing screen and live tile, there's an awesome app in the Store called "MPAtool". Simply download this app, and it allows you to manually attach Artist Backgrounds for each artist (you can either select from their ones the app finds, or you can set your own).

Hope that helps