XBox Music on W8.1 - Folder Cleanup and duplicate tracks

[dnmartin98]

Folks,

I'm determined to get to the bottom of some of the problems with my xbox music performance on W8.1 I have albums showing with multiple tracks all over the place, some with streaming icons, some as unplayable, etc. It's a really poor experience. I've had a music pass since purchasing my Samsung Focus WP7 when I was using the Zune Desktop software with it. Then with Windows 8 I switched to Xbox music and a Lumia 920. As a routine I download a lot of stuff to my hard drive for offline listening.

In my Music folder I have the following folders.

music/xbox music/subscription cache
music/subscription
music/xbox music pass
music/zune temporary music

Plus there are the actual folder with my cd ripped music in them from my own collections.

All of these folders have stuff in it. The music/subscription folder I suspect is a hang over from the Zune desktop days as is the zune temporary music folder. I'm not sure what the difference is between the other ones. There seem to be duplicates in a number of these folders and I'm wondering if that is what is causing so many of issues. When I leave XBM open it starts to go through and do it's downloading/matching thing, but fails on lots of stuff and I end up with errors all over the place.

Here's a screen capture of some of the duplication issues I'm having. It's crazy. I've deleted and re-installed XBM many times to try and fix this and each time it ends up back at the same state after a few hours of building back it's database, which is why I'm wondering if it's something to do with my directories.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Can I delete any of these folders do you think?

Cheers,

DavidM

 

[pmhgeneral]

I noticed different play times don't match also, leaving me to believe may be coming from various artists or albums, I also had that and found you have to go threw your playlist and delete them to .

 

[dlalonde]

First, check the properties of some of the doubled songs. My guess is either:

• You downloaded the album and it now can be in the Xbox Music\Downloads folder
• The app is showing your local and online library. That can be turned off http://winsupersite.com/xbox-music/xbox-music-display-only-music-device

Other than that, I couldn't say.

 

[Bobvfr]

Just had a look on my Surface Pro and Laptop:

On the Surface Pro I have the music folder with my local music listed as separate folders for each artist then the folder Xbox Music with Subscription Cache inside that and then all the XBMP artists sub folders listed there.

On the laptop it is basically the same but there is an additional Music pass folder inside Xbox Music with one sub folder called "The Rolling Stones" and this contains one track of an album (I will shift this when I get round to it).

Have a read of the post I did concerning my wife's music pass, we had trouble last weekend when we set this up and it was down to designated music folders, once we sorted that it worked fine.

I have been lucky (Or I took the time to work through XBM) I haven't had any (Or many) of the issues that seem to have caused grief to others, but I came from a clean start so my PC wasn't an upgrade from 7 I currently have over 3000 songs over half of which are XBMP stuff and the rest MP3's ripped from CD's, and I have my local music copied on each device and it pretty much works seamlessly between the local and XBMP music.

The one thing I don't do is touch the setting "Automatically match my local music to the cloud" as this causes lots of issues, for example my Led Zeppelin collection would go from 8 albums to one track because of copyright issues and Page's non acceptance of services like XBM. You need this setting turned off on all your PC's.

So it does look like your surfeit of folders is the cause of your issues so a spring clean is probably in order. It's not just the folders themselves but probably the settings to tell XBM where to look for music.

Obviously this could be an issue for legacy music you already have from the Zune days that currently reside in some of the other folders.

I think I would bit the bullet and do a major tidy but do as much thinking before you jump.

Not an expert but willing to help if I can (Work permitted). Good luck.


Bob

 

[RTGent]

FWIW, I've also had a pass since my Focus days and ALL my music has always been on the same Music --> My Music folder, with the following nesting: every music file (including album art and playlist files) stored in Music Library, then in My Music: every music track in their respective single album folder, every album in its single artist folder.

The only duplicates I get is when I re-download something I thought I had deleted, but had not; or when I mistakenly download a second album version. With experience, dups are now pretty rare.

I do cloud-matching only on my RT, but only because that is all I do there: I do NO active downloading, nor device-syncing with it. I've never studied the RT collection, but I know it does not include all downloads, and does include some tracks I've deleted over the years.