No Music player will recognise my files mystery

[Rossco_234]

My Samsung Galaxy S7 has mysteriously and suddenly decided to refuse to acknowledge my music files.
To make a long story short I have a Microsoft OneDrive account and had been using their music player App Groove, when they announced it was no longer going to be supported on Android devices I started the search for an alternate app that I could use that would be supported by OneDrive.
I started with VLC which is ok, a bit clunky but not too bad. Trying to find a better option I moved over to CloudPlayer which is better but still not perfect, then came Google Play Music which is not much better than VLC.
CloudPlayer seems the best for a OneDrive customer, you can log onto OneDrive directly through their app and your music should be there, in theory.
Now, to my mystery.
I have, through OneDrive, made many albums available offline, they have been downloaded to my Galaxy in a storage folder.
Storage/android/data/Microsoft.xboxmusic.
Why all my music files have been stored in this particular folder I do not know but had not worried about it as everything was working fine.
A week or so ago I noticed a lot of my albums started to have only one or two songs in the album when accessed by CloudPlayer, odd, so I had a look using VLC which couldn't see any files at all, I downloaded the Samsung music app which on first opening showed a music library that reflected what is stored on the phone, however almost instantly all those files disappeared and I now have only two podcasts showing.
Every other music player I have installed is now showing the same issue, nothing to see here folks but two podcasts.
When I navigate through the phones My Files folder to where my music is stored, sure enough, it's all still there and I cannot get any music player to recognize that fact.
Any tips would be wonderful.

 

[Dannydet]

Since the files are now installed on the phone, are they all mp3s?
Try installing Pulsar from the play store and see what happens

 

[mikedt]

My Samsung Galaxy S7 has mysteriously and suddenly decided to refuse to acknowledge my music files.
To make a long story short I have a Microsoft OneDrive account and had been using their music player App Groove, when they announced it was no longer going to be supported on Android devices I started the search for an alternate app that I could use that would be supported by OneDrive.
I started with VLC which is ok, a bit clunky but not too bad. Trying to find a better option I moved over to CloudPlayer which is better but still not perfect, then came Google Play Music which is not much better than VLC.
CloudPlayer seems the best for a OneDrive customer, you can log onto OneDrive directly through their app and your music should be there, in theory.
Now, to my mystery.
I have, through OneDrive, made many albums available offline, they have been downloaded to my Galaxy in a storage folder.
Storage/android/data/Microsoft.xboxmusic.
Why all my music files have been stored in this particular folder I do not know but had not worried about it as everything was working fine.
A week or so ago I noticed a lot of my albums started to have only one or two songs in the album when accessed by CloudPlayer, odd, so I had a look using VLC which couldn't see any files at all, I downloaded the Samsung music app which on first opening showed a music library that reflected what is stored on the phone, however almost instantly all those files disappeared and I now have only two podcasts showing.
Every other music player I have installed is now showing the same issue, nothing to see here folks but two podcasts.
When I navigate through the phones My Files folder to where my music is stored, sure enough, it's all still there and I cannot get any music player to recognize that fact.
Any tips would be wonderful.

Check what format the music is in. Like if it's in WMA, a proprietary Microsoft Windows format, Android may have difficulty with it.

 

[Rossco_234]

Since the files are now installed on the phone, are they all mp3s?
Try installing Pulsar from the play store and see what happens

Hi Danny, thanks for getting back, I've had a long look at the folders and files and here's what I've found, all my music is stored in an odd folder, Storage/android/data/Microsoft.xboxmusic.
I didn't choose this folder when I started to make my music available offline through the Microsoft Groove app, the phone or the app decided, I didn't worry about it as the various music apps I have installed didn't seem to have an issue, seeming to find the music and play it without any dramas.
Looking at this folder now, the music files do not have any file prefix on them, no .mp3 for instance.
None of my installed music players seems to recognize the folder anymore, despite it being fine last week.
If I move some random files into the Android/internal storage/download folder, then individually rename each track and add the .mp3 at the end of each track the various music players will recognize them.
It's a solution, but not a great one, I have some 800 tracks stored on the phone and the idea of having to rename each and every one so I can continue to listen to them is not exactly appealing.
It wouldn't be so bad if I could batch rename somehow, perhaps I will try that by attaching the phone to my PC and see what I can do.
Thanks again
Ross

 

[Rossco_234]

Check what format the music is in. Like if it's in WMA, a proprietary Microsoft Windows format, Android may have difficulty with it.

Hi Mike, thanks for getting back, I've had a long look at the folders and files and here's what I've found, all my music is stored in an odd folder, Storage/android/data/Microsoft.xboxmusic.
I didn't choose this folder when I started to make my music available offline through the Microsoft Groove app, the phone or the app decided, I didn't worry about it as the various music apps I have installed didn't seem to have an issue, seeming to find the music and play it without any dramas.
Looking at this folder now, the music files do not have any file prefix on them, no .mp3 for instance.
None of my installed music players seems to recognize the folder anymore, despite it being fine last week.
If I move some random files into the Android/internal storage/download folder, then individually rename each track and add the .mp3 at the end of each track the various music players will recognize them.
It's a solution, but not a great one, I have some 800 tracks stored on the phone and the idea of having to rename each and every one so I can continue to listen to them is not exactly appealing.
It wouldn't be so bad if I could batch rename somehow, perhaps I will try that by attaching the phone to my PC and see what I can do.
Thanks again
Ross

 

[svim]

Keep in mind that if those files are indeed mp3 files and just misidentified by the OneDrive/XBox service for whatever reason (presumably a DRM issue in a similar way that iTunes does), by renaming them yourself that 'could' fix things but not likely. Best to just try this with a couple of files and do some tests to see how things work out. But, if those files are being stored as a particular file format for a specific reason, by manually changing the name to add the mp3 suffix could create other problems -- renaming a file will not and cannot magically convert its file type into a different file type. That's just not how it works.
Also, how are you even determining what file type those files actually are? If you're viewing them through the viewing window of some multimedia app, that typical reveals very little except for a presented file name, not necessarily the name of the file itself. Instead use a file manager app, and if the proper file names aren't showing, be sure to check its settings menu for any option to disable/enable the display of full file names.

 

[Rossco_234]

Keep in mind that if those files are indeed mp3 files and just misidentified by the OneDrive/XBox service for whatever reason (presumably a DRM issue in a similar way that iTunes does), by renaming them yourself that 'could' fix things but not likely. Best to just try this with a couple of files and do some tests to see how things work out. But, if those files are being stored as a particular file format for a specific reason, by manually changing the name to add the mp3 suffix could create other problems -- renaming a file will not and cannot magically convert its file type into a different file type. That's just not how it works.
Also, how are you even determining what file type those files actually are? If you're viewing them through the viewing window of some multimedia app, that typical reveals very little except for a presented file name, not necessarily the name of the file itself. Instead use a file manager app, and if the proper file names aren't showing, be sure to check its settings menu for any option to disable/enable the display of full file names.

----
Hi Svim, thanks for the detailed response, much appreciated.
I spent all day yesterday on this issue, I can reliably inform you it's a day I would not like to have to repeat any time soon, what a slog.
I downloaded onto my phone a file manager app which allowed me to bulk edit the contents of a single folder at a time.
I'm sure you would be aware of the folder hierarchy on most smart phones for music files, hundreds of individual folders, each with a seemingly random set of files and each with a seemingly random string of letters/numbers as a file name.
Each of these files on my phone had no file suffix attached, I have no idea if they were .mp3 or .mp4 or whatever.
I'm aware that just adding a .mp3 to the end of a file will not magically change it into a .mp3 file but figured I didn't have a lot of choice and plowed ahead anyway.
I systematically went through every sub folder in the xbox folder, changed the file to add the .mp3 onto the end of each file then moved it out of the xbox folder and into the Android/music folder.
That took several hours, with a check every now and then as I went along to see if one of the many music players would start to recognize the files.
And indeed they did.
However most of the players changed they way they saw the music. From the standard view of seeing an album I was now getting a view that instead of one album of 10 songs I was now getting 10 albums, each with one song in it,
For instance rather than one Sade album I now am the proud owner of ten Sade albums, sadly each album only has one song.
I decided I could still live with it, at least, I thought, I can play my music now.
After finally finishing I decided to do one last thing and deleted my preferred music player, CloudPlayer and reinstall it, this, at least at the moment, seems like it has worked and I can see the classic album view and so far most seem to be playing again.
It's anyone's guess if many of the files I changed were not music files and I've created a whole lot of trouble for myself further down the track though.
Fingers crossed.

 

[svim]

On average, how big is one of those files you're working with? A typical song mp3 will be in the 3-6MB range (roughly). But something like a playlist file, which is basically just text, will much smaller (several kilobytes).
Something is clearly very off-kilter in those files, it should be a matter where there's not any need for you do much of anything extra to just listen your music files.

 

[Rossco_234]

On average, how big is one of those files you're working with? A typical song mp3 will be in the 3-6MB range (roughly). But something like a playlist file, which is basically just text, will much smaller (several kilobytes).
Something is clearly very off-kilter in those files, it should be a matter where there's not any need for you do much of anything extra to just listen your music files.

---------------
Hi Svim,
A quick look at a random folder (one of hundreds) shows that a folder with 8 files in it has 36 megs in size.
I agree that something went off-kilter suddenly, the phone and it's music collection happily worked for months and months then suddenly decided to stop, almost overnight.
Perhaps an update was applied and a decimal point was out somewhere, whatever the cause, things seem to be back on track now.
Cheers