So.......as stated yesterday, I started to get duplicate songs within Xbox Music again. Not all albums, but MANY of them...and I'm not sure if I see any reason or rhyme to it. I have *not* enabled the Cloud Collection on this phone, and I had not played those albums. It just decided to duplicate a bunch of songs -- many of them duped 4 or 5 times.
Annoying.
I started over and found some interesting results. Here's what I did:
- Go Settings > Phone Storage > SD card > Format Card
- When prompted for "Do you want to use this location for Photos & Music", don't choose anything -- just shut the phone down
- Removed the SD card and restarted the phone
- Launch Xbox Music, select Music, and see what Artists/Albums are still listed (my "Cloud Collection" is off and I have no music on my Phone Storage, so it should be empty)
- Choose an Artist, pivot to Songs, choose the Select icon, flip up the additional settings, choose Select All, and then hit the Delete icon
- Do this for all Artists that are present (note: it takes an extra 30 seconds to fully recognize the changes)
- When finished, your Xbox Music > Music Hub should state that "it's lonely here" and no Artists or Albums should be present
- Meanwhile, connect the microSD card to your computer (I have an SD card adapter...I did *not* connect my phone)
- The microSD card should be completely empty -- no files or folders present
- Create a "Music" folder, and then drag/drop all of your music folders/files into it.
- When complete, reinsert your microSD card into your phone. It should *NOT* prompt you with the "Do you want to use this for Photos & Music" option
- Give it a minute to scan the card, and then open the Xbox Music > Music Hub
- Your Artists and Albums should be present
Note: opening the first Artist may take an extra second or two (slight lag), but opening an album is
fast -- as are subsequent artists or albums.
Also note: with this method, none of my albums or songs had the "sd card" icon next to them...even though they are on the microSD card. I'm not sure why.
Final note: prior to this method, my Phone Storage > SD card would always show a negative number value for the Other selection. After performing these steps, all numbers appeared to be proper and correct.
I would love to know if this is helpful for anyone else. Right now I've removed my SD card and I'm adding another 20 gigs worth of music. We'll see what my phone does when I reinsert the card. I was mainly impressed at how fast it became to browse Artists and Albums after doing this. Definitely a "work around" at best -- and Microsoft still needs to fix this -- but it may get me past the frustrating couple of months until they resolve it.
Lastly, I don't know (yet) if songs will duplicate again over time. We shall see.
UPDATE: I removed my card, copied nearly 20 gigs of extra music, and re-added it to the phone. It was still seeing my "old catalog" of tracks. I had to remove the card again, delete ALL existing songs/artists/albums from the phone (that took a long time), and then once the Music Hub said "it's lonely here" I added my SD card back in. It sees ALL of the music now, and performance is still very fast. Have nearly 30 gigs of music on my SD card.