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

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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

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As a test I manually selected one album and toggled it to download, which it did, and I see the folders you say for the OneDrive cache and the files in them. But the only way I can see of downloading everything it to create a playlist or similar and then download all. I find this bizarre give I just downloaded the Groove app on iOS and can see a 'sync all music' option under settings.... meh!

In the groove app settings under groove music pass there is a sync. Press that and once its complete try download all and see what that does. Let me know if this works
 

steeler4life

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On a separate note. I see that when you play a file it goes to a different site:

https://music.microsoft.com/collection/artists?target=web

I was not aware of this before. It seems that OneDrive is scraping the files (which is great) but I see no way of forcing it to find an artist when it has not scraped it properly. I have issues with quite a few artists that should be found (Green Day, Lionel Richie and the Commodores, the list goes on...). Any idea what scraping service they use?

I am not sure on this issue sorry. I had a few music files that didn't show names so I had to edit the song completely with the metadata and then save into OneDrive for groove app to see it correctly.
 

marky9074

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In the groove app settings under groove music pass there is a sync. Press that and once its complete try download all and see what that does. Let me know if this works

Arggghh! Hate it when it is so obvious. I glossed over that bit because it was to do with the music pass. I'm waiting for a new SD card to be delivered today (200Gb Sandisk for ?60 which I thought was quite good). So I will wait and try it on that one (rather than do it twice). Thanks again for the help :)
 

steeler4life

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Arggghh! Hate it when it is so obvious. I glossed over that bit because it was to do with the music pass. I'm waiting for a new SD card to be delivered today (200Gb Sandisk for ?60 which I thought was quite good). So I will wait and try it on that one (rather than do it twice). Thanks again for the help :)

Nice! Hope it works keep us posted :)
 

marky9074

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Nah, it doesn't. Put the new SD card in and hit sync, it greyed out for about a minute then went blue again. The only album offline was the one I manually set to download. I guess I could go into songs, toggle all, then download that way, but its hardly going to keep it 'in sync'. I'm just so confused by this if you got it working.
 

steeler4life

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Nah, it doesn't. Put the new SD card in and hit sync, it greyed out for about a minute then went blue again. The only album offline was the one I manually set to download. I guess I could go into songs, toggle all, then download that way, but its hardly going to keep it 'in sync'. I'm just so confused by this if you got it working.

The sync is just to update the songs on your groove app. So if you add songs/ edit the metadata to OneDrive or your device where the song is stored it will sync the update to the groove app. That's why its only showing what you had previously on your device. You will have to download everything manually which is a pain. Do it by downloading each album so you go through your list faster(I had 411 albums to download since I don't see a download all)
 
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steeler4life

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Are you running on the fast ring? Just wondering if a later version of Groove might have extra options (or at least ones that work)...

I have been on fast ring currently running 14905(updated couple days ago) groove app version 3.6.2397 (new groove update to fast ring users yesterday) don't think there is much that has changed from the official anniversary update 14393. Is that what your running?
 

marky9074

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I switched to insider and preview release builds a couple days before anniversary come out (should have just waited), but so far no real problems. My groove app version is 3.6.2304.0 so quite a way behind you. I selected 'all songs' and download, and it has been hit and miss with some lock ups. I see that the download icon is sometimes blue, red or yellow, so not sure what each of those status means (I think red is a failed transfer). I'm using the NoSleep app to keep the lock screen off (much like before, the app stops sucking in files when the lock screen is active - and there is no way to disable it on a 950/950XL).
 

steeler4life

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I switched to insider and preview release builds a couple days before anniversary come out (should have just waited), but so far no real problems. My groove app version is 3.6.2304.0 so quite a way behind you. I selected 'all songs' and download, and it has been hit and miss with some lock ups. I see that the download icon is sometimes blue, red or yellow, so not sure what each of those status means (I think red is a failed transfer). I'm using the NoSleep app to keep the lock screen off (much like before, the app stops sucking in files when the lock screen is active - and there is no way to disable it on a 950/950XL).

Groove hasn't changed much from the version you have. The download is exactly that when you are downloading songs. I had to keep my phone from going into the lock screen. It literally took me a couple days to get all my songs downloaded with a few hiccups. Just keep at it and let me know if it works
 

marky9074

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Yeah I got it. Cannot work out how to edit the metadata, which is one of the things tagged for this version. I thought I had all files downloaded, but apparently not. So I have just selected 'All' tracks again and it seems to be downloading the missing ones. The NoSleep app doesn't seem to be working anymore, which is a real pain....
 

steeler4life

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Yeah I got it. Cannot work out how to edit the metadata, which is one of the things tagged for this version. I thought I had all files downloaded, but apparently not. So I have just selected 'All' tracks again and it seems to be downloading the missing ones. The NoSleep app doesn't seem to be working anymore, which is a real pain....

You will hate what the answer is to your editing metadata. In the groove app you can only edit the songs download directly to your phone, not the songs downloaded from the groove app to the OneDrive cache. Don't know why microsoft was unable to allow all of the songs for metadata editing. I use an app in the app store called tag editor (you have to know the info to manually input it yourself since there is no search engine built to the app which sucks).
 

marky9074

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All my files are tagged correctly anyway. I presume this is just some editor and it is not going to go and look up and fix the data? I found out yesterday that Groove uses Gracenote, but I cannot work out how to search that to see why it thinks my tags are not correct,
 

marky9074

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BTW I completely screwed up my music last night. I realised that it had not in fact downloaded everything, so I selected download all and started again. But did it select all the tracks that were missing?.......No! It deleted everything that was already downloaded and started again. I am so close to destroying my new 950 with a large mallet and getting a Nexus....

Groan! I just deleted all remaining tracks in the cache to start again, and the other option - to use a playlist does not work. If you select all tracks and try to add to playlist it comes up with the groove music pass trial window.... ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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steeler4life

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BTW I completely screwed up my music last night. I realised that it had not in fact downloaded everything, so I selected download all and started again. But did it select all the tracks that were missing?.......No! It deleted everything that was already downloaded and started again. I am so close to destroying my new 950 with a large mallet and getting a Nexus....

Groan! I just deleted all remaining tracks in the cache to start again, and the other option - to use a playlist does not work. If you select all tracks and try to add to playlist it comes up with the groove music pass trial window.... ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man sorry to hear that i don't understand why groove app is causing so many problems. It should not show that music pass trial window. I get your frustration but you need to just let groove download the songs. It takes time specially if you have alot of songs and of course the other issue is keeping the phone unlocked
 

marky9074

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I checked and I have 12,201 tracks, and about 5,000 got imported in the ~12 hours yesterday when I managed to keep the lock screen disabled. Then it just stopped.... there was some message (I forget exactly, but more or less 'there are no more downloads') so I was forced to select all tracks again, and download. This time it did resume, which was lucky.

At the moment I keep getting a yellow icon and it comes up with an option for retry all. But I am not sure if it is still trying to download (other files) or not. Every now and again I reboot the phone (pulling the SD card to check the number of tracks at the same time), and it seems to go back to the blue icon again.
 

marky9074

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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.
 

steeler4life

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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.

Great to hear. Now that its all up to date any time you add or remove music it should automatically do it with out the hassle you went through.
 

Schandmaul

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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! :)
 

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