Tons of Music MISSING from certain Apps

tzr916 · Mar 10, 2016

Did not have this issue with HTC One M8.
Pulled SD card from old phone put in new Driod Turbo 2.
Card is recognized.
Browsing contents using "ES File Explorer" shows ALL music is there.
Using "PowerAmp" music player shows ALL music is there.

Here's where is gets strange:
Using some other apps, there are more than 30-40 entire music Albums completely missing! Two examples are "My Alarm Clock" and "PlayerPro". They are both missing the exact same Albums!

How can ES File Explorer and PowerAmp show all the music albums, then two other apps be missing the EXACT same music albums???

tzr916 · Mar 10, 2016

May have found a clue, but have no idea how to remedy. Here is my File/Folder structure on SD card for music:

Music
- Artist
  - Album
    - Music files and album art

Most of my (mobile) music is WMA, with some mp3.
When an Artist has all WMA Albums then ALL of the Albums will show up.
When an Artist has all mp3 Albums then ALL of the Albums will show up.
But, when an Artist has a mix of WMA & mp3 Albums, then ONLY the mp3 Albums show up!

gordon55 · Mar 10, 2016

I had a very similar issue after installing Marshmallow yesterday...my usual player - doubleTwist wouldn't play 2/3 of my music files..it knew they were there, but it wouldn't play them. so i reset the players database, and then it only found about 1% of my music files...

I ended up uninstalling it and going with PowerAmp...it recognized all my files right away.

tzr916 · Mar 10, 2016

"My Alarm Clock" was having this issue before I updated to Marshmallow.
Only just installed "PlayerPro" today and just tried "Rocket Player" and it's doing the same thing (exact same albums missing across all apps).

Going back to PowerAmp.
Just tried GoneMad and it sees ALL albums.

Very strange.

Thom · Mar 10, 2016

Did you reboot (power off/power on) the phone . This forces some indexes to get rebuilt.

If on the external SD card the name change from sdcard1 to 9999-9999 may cause some apps to loose track of some folders/files.

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 10, 2016

Yes, rebooted the phone a few times, no change.

Cleared app data for "My Alarm Clock", no change.

Also have been testing connecting usb to my Win10 PC and had to "Disconnect USB cable, go to Settings, Apps, and Show System Apps and find External Storage and Media Storage and clear data and cache on each one and reboot, then give it 5 min after full boot up to rebuild media databases and connect to USB and select MTP." to get the usb to PC working... still no change on the alarm clock app.

Thom · Mar 10, 2016

I had a problem with ...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hybrid.stopwatch&hl=en
... where it would play an alarm and repeat it over-and-over until the app was stopped.

I reported that one to the author.

... Thom

doogald · Mar 10, 2016

The only thing I can think of, outside a bug in those apps: If you install a file explorer app (like ES File Explorer) and you turn on the option to show hidden files, do you see any files called ".nomedia" (with the period at the front) in any of the folders where the albums are not showing up?

The hidden file .nomedia tells the media storage service what you might guess it does - that it should not scan that folder for any media (sound, ringtone, photos, etc.)

Thom · Mar 10, 2016

Did you Wipe Cache Partiton? See...
http://androidforums.com/threads/droid-turbo-2-reference-and-tips.965124/#post-7137749

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 10, 2016

Thom said:
Did you Wipe Cache Partiton? See...
http://androidforums.com/threads/droid-turbo-2-reference-and-tips.965124/#post-7137749

... Thom

Just did wipe cache part, no change.

Did not find any .nomedia file names using hidden feature in ES File Explorer.

Do not suspect "bug in app" because this happens in the SAME EXACT MANNER on more than one app.

Thom · Mar 11, 2016

I just moved the SD card from one Turbo 2 to another that had just had the upgrade to 6.0 applied.

I use Poweramp.

Poweramp did not identify anything on the card.

In Poweramp I did Settings/Folders and Library/Full Rescan

The results semed incomplete

On the Library screen I selected the three dots and then selected Rescan.
All albums were then shown.

Folders reported it couldn't find any.

I selected Auto-Find and it found them all.

This all (seems to me) to be associated with the fact that sdcard1 was changed to xxxx-xxxx in Marshmallow.

Maybe this is the issue you are having with your apps.

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 11, 2016

Doesn't have anything to do with the Marshmallow upgrade:
- "My Alarm Clock" worked perfect on my HTC One M8. I moved the SD card to the Turbo 2 and it failed to see all my music (this was BEFORE the Marshmallow upgrade). It still fails to see the same music after the M upgrade.
- "PowerAmp" works fine the M8, on the Turbo 2 (Lollipop), on the Turbo 2 (Marshmallow).
- I installed three different apps on the Turbo 2 AFTER doing the M upgrade, they all fail to recognize the (same) Albums.

Try installing My Alarm Clock, PlayerPro, and Rocket Player. Those three apps all fail to see tons of my Albums (the same Albums).

Thom · Mar 11, 2016

On the Turbo 2 under Marshmallow did you try the Full Rescan in Poweramp that I reported?

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 11, 2016

You are not understanding my posts. Not sure how to make it any clearer- I do NOT have any problem with PowerAmp. I do NOT have any problem with GoneMad player.

These are the 3 apps that do NOT recognize certain Albums on my Turbo 2, try installing them and see what you get:
My Alarm Clock (free)- did not work properly in Lollipop or after Marshmallow
PlayerPro (trial)- installed this AFTER Marshmallow upgrade (did not have it previously)
Rocket Player (trial)- installed this AFTER Marshmallow upgrade (did not have it previously)

doogald · Mar 11, 2016

tzr916 said:
You are not understanding my posts. Not sure how to make it any clearer- I do NOT have any problem with PowerAmp. I do NOT have any problem with GoneMad player.

These are the 3 apps that do NOT recognize certain Albums on my Turbo 2, try installing them and see what you get:
My Alarm Clock (free)- did not work properly in Lollipop or after Marshmallow
PlayerPro (trial)- installed this AFTER Marshmallow upgrade (did not have it previously)
Rocket Player (trial)- installed this AFTER Marshmallow upgrade (did not have it previously)

Just to ask the question: how about Google Play Music?

I am wondering if it is a bug in the Media Storage in Marshmallow (on this phone at the very least) that you've discovered. I know that GPM uses the media storage index to show music in storage or on a card.

Is there any chance that you can convert the WMA files to MP3 (or vice versa) just to solve the problem at the very least?

Thom · Mar 11, 2016

I just added My Alarm Clock. It shows an awful lot of tracks. I can not stake my life on the fact that they are all there. It seems likely. Poweramp displays them in albums and this app doesn't;t. They are all.mp3

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 11, 2016

GPM works fine.

Ya, unfortunately the My Alarm Clock app does not offer better options like (re)scanning or sorting by album/artist. But I am 100% sure the app is missing full Albums worth of music. Behavior of the "bad" apps:
- I have twelve Albums from Joe Satriani. Eleven of these are WMA, one is MP3. The songs from the one MP3 Album show up fine, but none of the songs from the other eleven WMA Albums are detected.
- I have nine WMA Albums from Black Sabbath, they all show up fine.
- I have six MP3 Albums from MSG, they all show up fine.

I think in order for this problem to show up, you need to have a mix of WMA albums and MP3 albums from a given artist.

doogald · Mar 11, 2016

You might want to email the developer of My Alarm Clock at support@apalon.com to see if they can recreate the problem, or to see if they know about it and have an idea of the solution. Explain everything that you've explained here.

tzr916 · Mar 11, 2016

It's not just that one app. There are at least THREE apps that have the SAME exact behavior.

doogald · Mar 11, 2016

tzr916 said:
It's not just that one app. There are at least THREE apps that have the SAME exact behavior.

You can send email support requests to the others. It may be that those apps are using an Api incorrectly that shows this behavior on Marshmallow on this phone. The apps won't be fixed if somebody doesn't tell them there is a problem. The fact that other apps are finding the music files for you suggests it's an issue with those apps.

I think that at least one of those developers will be able to find an answer one way or the other faster than a support request sent to Verizon or Motorola.

Good luck, I hope that there is an easy answer.

By the way, again I suggest an easier answer is to transcode the files all to MP3 or wma (I'd do MP3 myself, as it's more widely supported, but you say most of the files are wma, so that would be easier.)

Another thing that occurs to me: are any of the wma files restricted with drm? Maybe that's why those songs don't appear - because of the drm on the files. (I don't know of any media store that sells MP3 files with drm, even going back to the beginning of digital music stores.)

rdsok · Mar 11, 2016

tzr916 said:
It's not just that one app. There are at least THREE apps that have the SAME exact behavior.

They were not disputing the issue you are seeing... but being just users themselves ( like you ), they can't fix the issues you mentioned, just make alternate suggestions that you could try if you hadn't already thought of them yourself.

It isn't unusual when a major change on how a device is accessed, that issues on certain apps be seen and not seen on others simply because there are multiple programming methods to address those devices. I wouldn't be surprised if on the apps that are working properly, that they have already made changes in their programming to support the changes made in the Operating System.... the apps that are having problems, have probably not been updated yet.

The only solution to us as users at this point, is to report the issue to the authors of the software that still exhibit the problem and to use other software until the problem is addressed.

tzr916 · Mar 11, 2016

Yep I understand and appreciate all replies. Only hoping that other users can duplicate what I am seeing so that I know it's my device that is defective. Keep in mind, this all started when I went from HTC One M8 to Droid Turbo 2, NOT when I went from Lollipop to Marshmallow:

-On my HTC phone (Lollipop), the My Alarm Clock app worked perfect. When I got my Droid Turbo 2 phone (Lollipop), a whole bunch of songs were missing.

-On my HTC phone (Lollipop), I had audio skipping over Bluetooth issues with PowerAmp. When I got my Droid Turbo 2 (Lollipop), I still had the same Bluetooth skipping issue with PowerAmp, so I wanted to try other music players which is when I discovered these other apps also had the same set of missing songs.

Updating the Turbo 2 OS from Lollipop to Marshmallow did not change any of these symptoms.

doogald · Mar 11, 2016

Again, my thought is that the issue is with the apps for some reason. If the songs are showing up in Google Play Music, the phone's media storage knows that they are there. There may be some issue between the apps and the media files on this phone that didn't exist on the HTC One, but that doesn't mean that the problem isn't with the apps.

The fastest way to find out is to contact at least one of those app developers and report exactly the troubleshooting you've discovered, about the songs not appearing when the artist has a mix of albums with some songs WMA, some MP3. Maybe that will make them troubleshoot that exact configuration and discover a problem.

Remember that both Motorola and HTC customize Android on their devices, HTC more than Motorola, so the fact that it works on one phone and not another does not mean that there isn't a bug in the apps.

tzr916 · Mar 13, 2016

tzr916 said:
- I have twelve Albums from Joe Satriani. Eleven of these are WMA, one is MP3. The songs from the one MP3 Album show up fine, but none of the songs from the other eleven WMA Albums are detected.

As an experiment, I re-ripped the one MP3 album to WMA and replaced it on the SD card.
Went to Apps > Settings > Apps > Show system > Storage > Media Storage > Clear data > reboot phone, wait 5 minutes....
Now NONE of the albums from Joe Satriani show up in "My Alarm Clock" or "PlayerPro" (they all still show up fine in GPM, GoneMad, and PowerAmp).

doogald · Mar 13, 2016

Maybe those two apps don't support whatever the WMA settings you used for those files?

Have you contacted any of the app makers about this yet?

Tons of Music MISSING from certain Apps

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