Windows Phone 8 Music Library gets corrupted

[SomeMuthaFunky]

I get the same thing. I have even gone to the pains of removing all tag data from my music then re-applying it. I have tried using Windows Explorer to transfer music, I have also tried windows media player, the Windows Phone Desktop app and Media Monkey. I have tried formatting the SD card, I have tried resetting the phone, I have all communication with Xbox turned off but it still does it and rather randomly I might say. My music was perfect for at least a couple of weeks and then out of the blue it was all split up and album art missing. It is a fundamental issue with the app. There is nothing you can do until they fix it. I don't use my phone for anything fancy but being able to play my music is paramount. This is very frustrating and Microsoft seem to be dragging their heels in fixing it.

Bizarrely, if you copy the music back to your PC and check the tags, they are all perfect so why the app does this or based on what information I have no idea?

What I have noticed is, using an SD card to store my music, I see files appear under the Phone storage / Music / Album. All the duplicates seem to be caused by the files that are put here for whatever reason. I have no idea why files are populated on the phone storage when I have select to use the SD card.

 

[anon5997486]

I don't see any options to show suggestions. What I am definitely sure of is the fact that in my case, duplicate entries are created everytime I re-sync my phone using Windows Media Player. The files are not copied over the second time, but entries are created.

I deleted everything and copied the music using the Windows Phone app and so far so good.

 

[howiewolverine]

This is a common problem and it is odd that Microsoft has not addressed it. The issue is with the microsd card, and can effect music, pictures and videos. There are several tricks to resolve the issue, but they are not permanent and are not universal fixes. In other words, the approach to address the duplicate music issue does not address duplicate pictures, etc.

 

[anon5997486]

Well, the closed file system nature of WP7 and Zune did have this particular advantage that file corruption/library corruption was almost non-existent and synchronization was seamless.

Are the problems less severe with higher class SD cards or is speed not a factor?

 

[rm rf]

The multiple entries per song issue isn't SD card related. My 920 had the same issue. The various suggestions on the various forums didn't fix anything.
I ended up deleting all the songs using the Phone's user interface, then re-synced all the songs.

 

[anoopkn]

I'm fed up of the double entries that makes me hear every song 2 times because the album has double entries. I don't use any sync applications. I just copy and paste music form my PC and download from Nokia music. It's absolutely ridiculous that there's no way to refresh the music collection index. Even deleting files on the SD card from windows explorer don't affect the music collection display in any way. They just throw an error when playback is attempted. Now I have to select each song one by one and delete from the phone because there's no select all or search features in the music app. And the windows phone app for Windows 7 PCs is totally clueless about what's going on because it shows the song entries, probably collected from the music app's directory, but can't remove those entries because the files aren't there. It's very frustrating. Multiple entries should not have been there in the first place, but as a workaround re-indexing application should have been there, for God's sake! Damn public beta testing software. Sorry, I had to vent out my anger somewhere and I spared by phone of it because the damn thing is costly

 

[anon5997486]

Does anyone here know if Microsoft is aware of these issues? If not, we should contact support reporting this.

 

[Trainwreck_0532]

What I find funny, is that wpcentral made a bunch of articles pressuring Xbox to release more live games for the wp8 platform, but I have not heard a peep about the music situation. Maybe they know as much as we do, or maybe they're not gonna tell.

 

[JsLee14]

I have to say, I have shared the same frustration with you guys completely, I even went for a while on a tweeting spree to Microsoft support about this weird nature of the music app, apparently when you sync your phone the phone itself creates an index in which tells the phone what artist is being shown, even when you have music on your SD card. When that messes up, your whole collection gets screwed regardless of how clean the meta data on the actual music file is. I have spoken to a few Microsoft people about it but as for them knowing for sure that there is a fix is unknown, Microsoft keeps it vague and on the down low unfortunately. I believe the next patch should take care of it like some people have said. One can only hope with this no good ****ty sync system they have now.

 

[anon5997486]

I can confirm that the problem is with the syncing mechanism itself, not the music/video app.

I cleaned everything out and synced my phone fresh last week. Since then I have not synced the phone and none of the original problems appear. I am sure if I sync it a few times, the problems with come back.

Hope MS is working on a fix.

 

[N_LaRUE]

I can confirm that the problem is with the syncing mechanism itself, not the music/video app.

I cleaned everything out and synced my phone fresh last week. Since then I have not synced the phone and none of the original problems appear. I am sure if I sync it a few times, the problems with come back.

Hope MS is working on a fix.

Good to hear it's fine so far. I never sync with Windows Media Player but I did originally have issues with duplicate songs which I think was the xbox thing. My wife who owns an 820 doesn't have any issues at all and all her songs are on SD card. I'm starting to think that some installments of the OS or the RAM are corrupt. I had the issue where I didn't receive update notifications and decided to try a reset which bricked my phone and ever since I got it back (yes I got the same phone back) I've not had any issues. My wife's 820 which ran perfectly since day one has had no issues at all. So my guess is that some installs of the OS or the RAM on devices must be corrupt. There's no other explaination really. I would suggest you try a reset but there's a strong possiblity that your phone might brick. One of the things I am sorely missing from my days with Symbian was the ease of reinstalling the OS yourself.

 

[d_abbatelli]

I can confirm that the problem is with the syncing mechanism itself, not the music/video app.

I cleaned everything out and synced my phone fresh last week. Since then I have not synced the phone and none of the original problems appear. I am sure if I sync it a few times, the problems with come back.

Hope MS is working on a fix.

Not my experience: I sometimes managed to have my library working fine with no duplicates (doing hardreset, taking away the microSD, copying the music with the sd in the computer and putting it back in the phone). Even without any further syncing, after a couple of days the songs were duplicated again. And if you just wait doing nothing, the number of duplicate songs keeps growing.
At the moment, it shows 14.000 songs in my library, when they are about 2000.

I tried about every possible syncing software: WMP, the ModernUI syncing app, the desktop syncing app, Mediamonkey, MusicBee, Songbird and probably also some more i don't remember now. No improvements.

I can say that they should be aware of this issue: I had two chats with MS customer support: the first time they told me there's nothing to do and they are working on a fix, the second time they "escaladed" me to a guy who suggested to "create a new folder inside the music folder and move all the music there". Obviously, the trick didn't work, but since then I keep receiving standard mails like this:

Greetings Daniele,
This is Alfonso again with Microsoft Support and I wanted to follow up with you regarding your previous escalation.
I wanted to give you an update and let you know that we are still actively working towards a resolution to this issue. As we continue to work on this issue we will make every effort to keep you up to date.
Best Regards,
Alfonso B.
Microsoft Support

I am very very very pissed of this. In 2013, a smarphone that is not able to play music... Seriously?
I hope GDR2 arrives as soon as possible with a fix, otherwise I'm seriously thinking about selling my phone and get an Android.

 

[N_LaRUE]

I am very very very pissed of this. In 2013, a smarphone that is not able to play music... Seriously?
I hope GDR2 arrives as soon as possible with a fix, otherwise I'm seriously thinking about selling my phone and get an Android.

I'm like you that I'm giving WP a chance. But also like you I'm tired of the little things. I have a hard time selling WP due to that. There are things I love about WP and there are things that drive me batty.

It is also all these little issues that continue to crop up, the problems with automatic app updats, the music app issue, lack of VPN support etc. that start to wear on people. I keep hearing be patient but these are things that we shouldn't be patient with, they shouldn't be an issue in the first place. All platforms have issues but this is basic stuff.

 

[lasm2000]

Same problem here. It happens with files I synch with WMP but also with some files which I transferred with the file explorer. It always happens that the very same files are the ones that get corrupted, either by completely disappearing from the music list or by showing a lot of duplicates.

 

[anon5997486]

Same problem here. It happens with files I synch with WMP but also with some files which I transferred with the file explorer. It always happens that the very same files are the ones that get corrupted, either by completely disappearing from the music list or by showing a lot of duplicates.

Well, for the last one month, all I have been using to manually transfer music is the windows phone desktop app. There hasn't been a single corrupted file since. However, it is a pain. Waiting for GDR 2, after which will try WMP to sync again.

 

[Sebastian DM]

I have this very same issue as the first (1) you described in the OP.

The phone (Huawei Ascend W1) does only list about 1/10th of my songs in artists and about as many (but not the same ones) in album. Further, the playlists that i transfer to it from my computer also disappears. I am able to reach all of the songs through 'songs', and from every individual song, I am able to press the artists name and, through this method, get to the artist page that i cannot reach through the 'artist' listing. I managed to resolve it once by syncing the phone again, but after about a week the problem was there again. (I am using WMP to sync the phone for the record)

I suspect that it has something to do with lack of internal memory. As i have all my music (20GB of it) on an SD-card and have filled my entire 4GB of space of internal storage (due to the 'other' storage problem). I would imagine that the phone saves playlists and metadata-lisings on the internal storage and has been unable to when this is filled. The biggest problem then is that i have 4GB internal and this is currently occupied by 2GB of system and 1,8GB of 'other'. I have 200MB left for all my apps etc., which makes it hard to keep space left unoccupied for the music app.

TL;DR:
I have problem 1 from OP. I suspect it has to do with lack of internal memory. Is everyone with this problem also struggling with insufficient memory or could it be the sync method (WMP) that causes the problem?

 

[anon5997486]

I don't have any problems with internal memory. I have more than 2gb left.

I haven't synced using WMP for last 2 months and I have no issues with music disappearing or duplicates. But then, my library is now stale.

 

[blegs38552]

I have been having the same problems on my Lumia 521 phone with a 32 GB Micro SDHC card.

This morning, I formatted the card in my phone, and removed the phone in Settings...Storage...etc. Turned the phone off and moved the SD card to my Windows 8 PC. After verifying all of my music files and tags, I copied them onto the micro SD card through Windows Explorer.

Reinserted the card into my phone, started the phone, and gave the phone time to read the card. Looked in Settings...Phone Storage and am seeing 3.34 GB free, SD Card 27.10 GB free on the System screen. Tapped Phone Storage and under SD card, see 2.62 GB used and 29.72 GB to the right of this.

Tapped on SD Card and see music + videos 7.63 GB, pictures 0 bytes, other -5,378,765,537 bytes, free space 27.10 GB.

Looked in Nokia Music...my music. Some artists are duplicated, and some of these are spelled wrong. Clicked on albums, there are multiple lists for many albums, some of which display the album art, other do not FOR THE SAME ALBUM!!! Clicked on songs and there is massive multiple listings, some as many as 4 times for the same song.

Something is definitely wrong with this picture. One bigh reason for buying this phone and moving up from my Lumia 710 WP7 phone was for the SD card capabilities so that I could load large amounts of music into my phone, and eliminate the need for a separate MP3 (Zune HD, in my case) player. Unfortunately, this has not worked, at least to this point.

Hopefully, GDR2 will fix this. I would like to see Nokia and/or Microsoft's comments on this problem in ths thread.

 

[hillmanimpster]

Is there 'any' solution for this? I've just lost all album information, album art, and playlists AGAIN on my phone. Highly highly annoying and the only way to do it is to re-sync the lot.

Is it a problem with the Windows Phone 8 platform, or is it a problem specific to Nokia Lumia?

(im using a lumia 620, music stored on SD card).

 

[slyronit]

AFAIK, no. I have stopped syncing music with Windows media player. I manually copy my music using the windows phone desktop app now