Tons of Music MISSING from certain Apps

doogald · Mar 13, 2016

One other question: maybe it's some sort of issue with crawling the folders, with the name of the folder or something. Do any of the folders have any weird characters in the names? Do any of the paths exceed 64 characters (ie, /volume/name of sdcard/music/artist name/album name/trackxx.wma - is it possible that the name of the path exceeds what those apps might support?) So, as a test, if you shorten the name of, say, the names of the folders to something shorter, does that make the music appear?

(Just trying to do some troubleshooting until you hear back from one of those app developers.)

tzr916 · Mar 13, 2016

Those two apps recognize many many other artists albums that are WMA all the same bitrate etc all ripped with same program. "My Alarm Clock" on HTC One M8 recognized EVERYTHING.

Folder names are really simple, just the Artist, just the Album title.

I have contacted all the app makers. They are slow to respond and only offering simple recommendations like "reboot your phone" or "clear the app data".

doogald · Mar 13, 2016

Just as a test, what happens if you rename the folder of one of the problem albums to something else (or, copy the files to a new folder called "test"). Since you actually can rip the CDs, what happens if you rip MP3 instead of WMA?

tzr916 · Mar 15, 2016

I took my SD card and installed it into my GF's Samsung S7 Edge (Marshmallow), and it sees ALL my music on the apps in question!

doogald · Mar 15, 2016

tzr916 said:
I took my SD card and installed it into my GF's Samsung S7 Edge (Marshmallow), and it sees ALL my music on the apps in question!

Did you try what I suggested?

At this point I don't know what to tell you.

tzr916 · Mar 15, 2016

Yes, I even copied/moved some of the songs directly to the phone internal storage, without any folder structure, just in the Music folder. None of the songs show up in those apps.

doogald · Mar 15, 2016

So, as I see it, you have a few choices:

1. Sell the Turbo 2 and buy an S7 or another phone where it does work

2. Re-rip the files as MP3 rather than WMA, if those songs are found when WMA songs are not

3. Live with the inability to play the songs the apps can't find and hope a future update to the T2 fixes the problem.

4. Try to find replacement apps that have the functionality you need but can see all the songs that are missing on other apps.

Thom · Mar 15, 2016

Factory Data Reset?

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 15, 2016

Just so I know I am not crazy... If anyone with a Droid Turbo 2 Marshmallow can try putting this album on their phone and see if any of the three apps can see it:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B82GqdDf8HSyVGZraHktLWliLTg&usp=sharing

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apalon.myclockfree&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tbig.playerprotrial&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrtstudio.AnotherMusicPlayer&hl=en

Thanks

Thom · Mar 15, 2016

Copied one of your songs to my Windows 7 workstation.
Created folder called Test on my Turbo-2 SD Ext card.
Copied song to Test.
Installed My Alarm Clock from Play Store
Sound & Music | Add Tracks did not list the song
Restart Turbo-2 with long press of power button
Sound & Music | Add Tracks did not list the song
Moved Test folder to internal Mamory
Sound & Music | Add Tracks did not list the song
Restart Turbo-2 with long press of power button
Sound & Music | Add Tracks did not list the song
Loaded Poweramp and did a full rescan
Played your song

It looks like a problem with the app running on Turbo 2 under Marshmallow. I would report it to the developer.

... Thom

tzr916 · Mar 15, 2016

Thanks. I have reported it to all three apps.

At least I know it's not just my phone.

mikedt · Mar 16, 2016

FYI the default Android device media scanners, and therefore many apps that use it, won't recognize or play WMA(Windows Media Audio). MP3, MP4/AAC or Ogg/Vorbis, they're usually OK.

Droid Turbo 2, I don't know, never seen one. But it could be that HTC has chosen to support WMA with the M8, but Motorola does not. Android doesn't usually recognize or play WMA, because otherwise device manufacturers would have to pay millions of $$$$ in patent licensing fees to Micro$oft.

The fix is either to use a player that does play WMA, like either Rocket or VLC, or re-rip the CDs or transcode the WMAs to a supported format, like MP3, AAC or Ogg/Vorbis.

BTW

BTW OP, I had a look at your Google Drive, but it's refusing to download the audio files via my VPN.

Thom · Mar 16, 2016

mikedt said:
The fix is either to use a player that does play WMA, like either Rocket or VLC

... like Poweramp

... Thom

doogald · Mar 16, 2016

Fwiw, the older Motorola Droid Maxx running KitKat shows the songs fine in the Alarm free app. (What a pita that app is, always asking me to buy some other app.)

So, it's an issue Motorola introduced at some point after the Maxx. You say it also happened with lollipop on the T2, so it's not just marshmallow.

Again, I agree with re-ripping to MP3, which works everywhere. You could also try AAC, which is an MP4 format that compresses the songs more than MP3, if you have a way to make AAC (eg, iTunes).

tzr916 · Mar 16, 2016

mikedt said:
FYI the default Android device media scanners, and therefore many apps that use it, won't recognize or play WMA(Windows Media Audio). MP3, MP4/AAC or Ogg/Vorbis, they're usually OK...

I've previously explained that on my Droid Turbo 2 Marshmallow, GPM recognizes ALL the WMA's just fine, and the three app's in question recognize SOME of the WMA albums (just not certain albums), and the S7 Edge sees ALL the WMA's in GPM and the three "bad" apps.

mikedt · Mar 16, 2016

OK, but it definitely sounds like the problem is with the music encoded as WMA. Which is NOT a native or supported codec for most Android devices anyway, for the reason I already stated, i.e. Microsoft licensing. And if WMA has DRM, they won't play on anything that isn't Microsoft. So you'll have to use MP3, AAC or Vorbis, shouldn't have any problems then. :thumbsupdroid:

FWIW most device manufacturers already pay codec patent royalties to Fraunhofer and Technicolor for the MPEG codecs, because otherwise who the hell wants a device that can't play MP3, which is pretty much universal.

doogald · Mar 16, 2016

While Android will play ogg vorbis, and ogg is a great codec, it's not well supported on other platforms, so I'd also stay away from it.

This really is a puzzling issue, because it's clearly just on this phone, with specific apps. Some apps (AND Google Play Music) are seeing the files, and GPM is definitely using Android Media store indexes, so it's not Android, and it's not that they are WMA files. Again, my suspicion is that these apps are using either old or unsupported API calls (or a purchased Android library) to discover music and those APIs/methods are inconsistent with the Turbo 2. But, if making everything an MP3 is an answer, and swapping phones is more of a hassle than re-ripping whichever songs you want to appear in those apps, I know what I'd be doing

Also, FWIW, when I moved the files into a /music/artist/album folder structure, the alarm app could SEE the files, but they were all listed as "<unknown artist>". When they were in the /download folder together, it listed Joe Satriani as the artist.

mikedt · Mar 16, 2016

Yeh, Ogg-Vorbis won't play natively on Windows or Mac OS X, you have to install a third-party player. Have Ubuntu or other Linux OS, no problem of course.

FWIW Wikipedia uses patent free codecs, like Vorbis or Theora for their multimedia content, which Chrome and Firefox do support.

tzr916 · Mar 16, 2016

Until I hear something from the App devs:
- I am able to use PowerAmp, but now prefer GoneMad for music playback (both of these show all WMA albums).
- Regarding My Alarm Clock app, I will have to re-rip a few select songs to MP3 (the ones I have been waking up to for a few years with my HTC).

Tons of Music MISSING from certain Apps

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