Groove Music Windows Phone 10 - how to force update media content?

[Windows Central Question]

I noticed a few days ago that music I have been adding to the phone has not been picked up by the Groove music app. I know I had problems with this before, but it eventually sorted itself out, however nothing I do now can trigger an update of the music database.

Yesterday, I completely deleted and re-added all music on my SD card (a lengthy process) and whilst when there was no SD card in it showed no music, when I put the SD card back in it still only showed the historic music (as in it didn't even detect a change, just showed what was on the SD card before I deleted and re-added music).

There must be a way (as there is for the PC build) to delete the database to force a refresh? I see that even VNC player uses the same database so cannot refresh it from there either.

Any help would be much appreciated (I'm on fast ring at the moment - Lumia 1520).

 

[steeler4life]

I have a different problem with Groove on my L950 (W10M AU):
I have both music (albums of different artists) and audio plays (episodes from different series) on my SD card, all of them labelled carefully.
When I click on "albums", all albums of all artists and series are ordered alphabetically, but when I click on "artists" and choose one series, the episodes are not ordered alphabetically.

It looks like this:
artists -> "Series xyz" -> "023 - Episode 23" ... "014 - Episode 14" ... "001 - Episode 1" and so on.

Why are they not ordered alphabetically? I looked everywhere and chose "A to Z" wherever I could find it, but they are still not in the right order.
Hard reset, taking the SD card out and putting it back in again, soft reset, deleting all music and putting it back in, all of these measures did not help... I can't get Groove to sort albums of one artist alphabetically.

Do you have this problem as well? Do you know how I can fix this? Thanks in advance!

Try editing the track number for each ( since all of your episodes/ songs are saved in the SD card groove app allows you to edit the metadata by pressing down on the song you want to edit for a few seconds) and that should order them the way you want them to be.

 

[Schandmaul]

I think I found the problem!

The audio plays are tagged like this:
artist: "Audio Play ABC" (for example "Batman", the title of the series)
album: "023 - Episode Title 23" (for example "023 - The Killing Joke", the 23rd episode of the series)
track: "02 - Track Title 2" (for example "02 - The Joker Returns", the title of this track, the file is then called "02 - The Joker Returns.mp3")
(This audio play doesn't really exist, it's just here to illustrate the problem ...)

The expected behaviour in Groove would be:
Clicking on hamburger -> "albums" generates a list of all albums on the phone, ordered from A to Z. If I have 3 episodes and 2 music albums, I would get the following list:
"002 - The Dark Knight"
"023 - The Killing Joke"
"034 - Bane"
"Death Magnetic"
"St. Anger"

Clicking on hamburger -> "artists", I will get:
"Batman"
"Metallica"

Here, when I click on "Batman", I would EXPECT the following:
"002 - The Dark Knight"
"023 - The Killing Joke"
"034 - Bane"

But instead, I get:
"023 - The Killing Joke"
"034 - Bane"
"002 - The Dark Knight"

As I said above, I think I know why this happens. When you click on an artist in the "artists" list, the albums are NOT ordered from A to Z, but according to their release year, starting with the newest. BUT, the albums of the same year are NOT ordered from A to Z, but randomly instead.

Long story short: Is there a way to order the album list, which you get when you click on an artist, from A to Z instead of anti-chronologically?

 

[marky9074]

I did notice that in OneDrive some tracks showed first (the last one in an album normally). Since I could not edit the metadata in OneDrive (or in Groove since it is cached) I just lived with it, but for sure found it strange because numerically it should order correctly.

 

[steeler4life]

I have not been able to find a way to do that for the artist

 

[Fuzzerus]

I had the same issue with my library in the groove music not synchronizing, but I found the solution. At least it worked for me.

Here it is:
I moved all my music to my PC (removed it from a phone's memory) and then I synchronized my library using Windows Media Player. "Synchronizing" in the WMP moves files to a phone, apparently in some other way than when you drag and drop them in the explorer.

I hope you'll find this useful.

 

[Ryujingt3]

So it took the best part of two full days to get it all downloaded. NoSleep semi-worked. I think you have to start the phone, open Groove, open NoSleep then immediately use the long press back to switch to Groove, then stand on one leg.... and if you're lucky the lock screen stays off. I had to reselect all tracks about four times before I managed to get it all down, and I still have no idea why it prompts for a Groove music pass when trying to do it via the playlist route.

Anyway, all downloaded now. Painful though for sure.

Is NoSleep the only way to stop the lock screen? I am having a similar issue to you. Lots of songs to import on my phone, but Groove stops each time the screen locks.

 

[bhankerson]

Is NoSleep the only way to stop the lock screen? I am having a similar issue to you. Lots of songs to import on my phone, but Groove stops each time the screen locks.

Just change the "Lock screen after" to "Never", open the Groove app, and wait. It sometimes takes up to an hour before Groove even realizes there are changes and starts updating. I suggest turning the phone off and on before attempting this, and do not change apps once you have opened Groove. I know, it's a pain to wait, but this works for me 90% of the time (the other 10% consists of seemingly never updating--in which case I simply took the SD card out and put it back in; and once Groove deleted about 20% of my music collection from the SD card before I realized what it was doing).

 

[Ryujingt3]

Just change the "Lock screen after" to "Never", open the Groove app, and wait. It sometimes takes up to an hour before Groove even realizes there are changes and starts updating. I suggest turning the phone off and on before attempting this, and do not change apps once you have opened Groove. I know, it's a pain to wait, but this works for me 90% of the time (the other 10% consists of seemingly never updating--in which case I simply took the SD card out and put it back in; and once Groove deleted about 20% of my music collection from the SD card before I realized what it was doing).

On my X3 I don't have 'Never' as a timeout option for the lockscreen. It doesn't go that high. I got used to just leaving Groove open with my finger on the screen instead. Luckily, in the latest version of Groove for W10M, you can now force sync music, at least from OneDrive, which is where I now store all my music.