Windows Phone and Music: Tips & Tricks

[Whachusay]

I don't know either. Try asking at a Music/MP3 forum. The iTunes forum, for example.

Thanks for your help! :smile:

 

[iGeorge23]

Thanks for this great forum!

 

[Asrialys]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Some of the characters work so, so I'm going to assume (could be wrong) that some of the character encoding is supported and some of it isn't. I downloaded Nokia Music and it's not any different than Xbox Music - still having the same issue. I understand what you are saying by rewriting the problematic tags using a supported Character Encoding, but I am not knowledgeable as to how to do that. rly:

Do you mind saving one of these songs to SkyDrive or something and then share the link to me over PM. I want to take a look at it and try a thing or two.

 

[Whachusay]

Do you mind saving one of these songs to SkyDrive or something and then share the link to me over PM. I want to take a look at it and try a thing or two.

Not a problem. I sent you a PM. Thanks!

 

[MrTofu]

Just came across this thread. Thanks OP!

 

[Whachusay]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Some of the characters work so, so I'm going to assume (could be wrong) that some of the character encoding is supported and some of it isn't. I downloaded Nokia Music and it's not any different than Xbox Music - still having the same issue. I understand what you are saying by rewriting the problematic tags using a supported Character Encoding, but I am not knowledgeable as to how to do that. rly:

Well, it seems that I have found out what the name of my problem is - mojibake. And it does have to do with the character encoding of my music. I downloaded a program to help me with my issue. Foobar 2000. There is a component that actually lets me edit the metadata charset so I can stop having this problem. I'm still trying to figure out but I feel closer to solving my problem, and wanted to share in case anyone else comes across this issue.

 

[Muessig]

Well, it seems that I have found out what the name of my problem is - mojibake. And it does have to do with the character encoding of my music. I downloaded a program to help me with my issue. Foobar 2000. There is a component that actually lets me edit the metadata charset so I can stop having this problem. I'm still trying to figure out but I feel closer to solving my problem, and wanted to share in case anyone else comes across this issue.

I'm pretty sure that you can edit the metadata in MusicBrainz Picard as above, but it's great to have options so I'll add FooBar 2000 into the OP. Thanks!

 

[Whachusay]

I'm pretty sure that you can edit the metadata in MusicBrainz Picard as above, but it's great to have options so I'll add FooBar 2000 into the OP. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong. In MusicBrainz Picard my music appears correctly, but I re-write the tags just because I know I'm having issues, and when I sync my music, it still comes up with the mojibake nonsense. I wish anyone else with the issue luck, because I am about to give up.

 

[Asrialys]

So did Foobar work for you? I couldn't even get MP3Tag to get it to change on my phone. I can mess around with tags all I want with my other music and changes will be applied, but your file wouldn't transfer those changes to my phone, even though the tags were clearly different on my computer (Zune, Windows Media Player, File Explorer, etc.).

 

[WPhoney]

I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong.

Maybe the root of the problem is deeper than the tags themselves. Download the freeware MP3 Diags and see if there's some malformed/corrupted element inside the file. I've used this program several times to fix MP3s that wouldn't play or whose tags had problems. Warning: this program isn't very intuitive, so you'll need to spend some time playing with it and reading the documentation to figure it out.

Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[Whachusay]

So did Foobar work for you? I couldn't even get MP3Tag to get it to change on my phone. I can mess around with tags all I want with my other music and changes will be applied, but your file wouldn't transfer those changes to my phone, even though the tags were clearly different on my computer (Zune, Windows Media Player, File Explorer, etc.).

Yeah, that's the problem I'm having. It shows completely normal on my computer but on the phone it looks like a mess. Foobar got me closer to solving the problem so I thought, but it still didn't work.

 

[Whachusay]

Maybe the root of the problem is deeper than the tags themselves. Download the freeware MP3 Diags and see if there's some malformed/corrupted element inside the file. I've used this program several times to fix MP3s that wouldn't play or whose tags had problems. Warning: this program isn't very intuitive, so you'll need to spend some time playing with it and reading the documentation to figure it out.

Keep us posted on your progress.

I'll try this out, and let you know. Thank you all for your help.

 

[Whachusay]

Maybe the root of the problem is deeper than the tags themselves. Download the freeware MP3 Diags and see if there's some malformed/corrupted element inside the file. I've used this program several times to fix MP3s that wouldn't play or whose tags had problems. Warning: this program isn't very intuitive, so you'll need to spend some time playing with it and reading the documentation to figure it out.

Keep us posted on your progress.

It worked! This program worked! When I scanned my files, it showed me all the issues and offers fixes for them. Thank you so much!!! :smile:

 

[WPhoney]

It worked! This program worked! When I scanned my files, it showed me all the issues and offers fixes for them. Thank you so much!!! :smile:

You're welcome, mate! Enjoy your tunes! :grin:

 

[Asrialys]

lol Was just about to suggest the old method of burning affected music to an audio CD, and then ripping everything. Would probably need to re-tag everything though. However, it did work for me.

But WPhoney's method might probably be more efficient...

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

I've been doing a bit of experimenting because the song duplication issue is really annoying for me (I always listen to whole albums, so song duplication is a deal breaker). I've come across some interesting behaviour, and (I think) a consistent way to stop it from happening.

Some background first: I have a Lumia 520 and keep all of my music on a 32GB microSD card. I sync just using drag-n-drop/cut-n-paste in Windows 7 x64. All of my songs are in mp3 format (a lot of albums are in FLAC, but I convert them manually beforehand) and I keep all of the tagging neat, tidy and consistent using mp3tag. The folder structure of my collection is Artist\Album\Track - Title.mp3. All of the Xbox Music stuff it turned off so it doesn't mess up any of my hard work.

I think the problem occurs when you try to sync too many songs at once, like dumping your entire music library onto your phone at once. My collection is only 696 songs/7.4GB and it almost always produces duplicates when I transfer all of it, regardless of whether I format the SD card beforehand or not. When I was testing out different things trying to find the cause (e.g. playing with tags, doing things in a different order, etc.) I started transferring smaller numbers of songs so I didn't waste 30 minutes at a time to see if something worked.

I'm not sure if it has to do with the number or the physical size of the files you transfer or even the number of folders, but I found that by syncing less than about 120 songs or 1.20GB at a time, duplication wouldn't occur. Whenever I did get duplicates, I deleted the files and the offending albums from the hidden Music\Albums folder on the Phone storage (not the SD card), then I disconnected the phone from USB and checked that they were indeed deleted in Music+Videos. Redoing the transfer but with less songs worked every time.

TL;DR only transfer around 120 songs/1.20GB at a time (the problem may be number of files or total size, I don't know). It's a painstaking process, but it worked for me. Maybe not so feasible for those with big libraries though.

That's works for me too. But I'm transfering just one album at once. No duplicates files. And I'm using Windows Phone App for Windows 8.

 

[grizzlyaddams]

Once you use MPA Tool to choose an artist background, is there any way to change it?

 

[sakendrick]

Re: Windows Phone and Music: Tips & Tricks >> Syncing Zume DRM playlists

I'm having a real challenge getting any thing to work for my new Lumia 1020. Long time Zune / zune pass user and I've been using and LOVING windows phone 7.5 (HTC Titan II) for 2 years. Now I've upgraded and I can't do anything. I use Windows 7 on my PC and my main issue is that I sync to my phone using playlists that include purchased, subscription (zune), and ripped music. Here are my issues:
The recommended way to sync playlists in the post is using windows media player.
- Windows media player will not sync anything to my phone - always gives status as "error"
- From what I've read from MSFT you cannot sync Zune DRM files using WMP so this not solve my problem anyways

The other recommendation is to use windows explorer
- This doesn't help me with syncing playlists which is the primary way I sync music to my phone and the primary way I listen to music
- Apparently this won't work for Zune DRM files (I'm told the only way to sync Zune DRM files is with the windows phone app)

The MSFT documented way to sync Zune DRM files is to use the windows phone app
- playlists will not sync using this app - the playlist name copies over but it always says 0 songs
- I spent an hour on support chat with MSFT yesterday trying to get this resolved - no luck

If I could sync playlists using the windows phone app I'd be fine but now I'm stuck.
any help is appreciated.

 

[sakendrick]

Re: Windows Phone and Music: Tips & Tricks >> Syncing Zume DRM playlists

OK - a light at the end of the tunnel... I tried both Windows Media Player and Windows Phone App on my work laptop which is also win 7. And things worked as I expected them to. Windows media player synced the list but omitted all subscription songs. Windows Phone App synced the list perfectly. Now the problem is that my entire library lives on my other PC and I have to find out why the same procedures don't work on that PC. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the fact that my library lives on a networked drive and not local.

 

[sakendrick]

Of course I spoke to soon... my test list worked fine. My real list only partially synced... a play list of almost 300 songs showed up on the device with only 55 songs. ??? need help.