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ALL music apps see only 1st song in folder

R

rtv900

Lurker
sorry if this has come up countless times, I can't find any situations that apply to what I have.
So certain music folders of WMA's will only display on the phone the first song, but the others are there when I look at the files actually stored on the phone. I do have a wma player and other folders of all WMA's work fine.
There is one difference that I have found in the folders with issues.
The 1st song has more title data when viewing it in a folder. For example, the first song will not only have it's normal title, but further over to the right there is also a column for "contributing artist" and also "album" next to that.
For some reason the phone only sees this file, but I don't know how to either change the others or get it to just see them.
More odd yet, if I simply delete that first song with all that data then nothing at all is recognized by the phone.
The confusing part is that other WMA folders that work fine do not have ANY of that extra data in the file name, no "cont artist" or "album" data at all. So it views them fine, but it won't view others.
I've tried probably 10 different music apps and all of them are the same.
I'm totally willing to pay for an app if that's what it takes to make it work, but I am not a super computer savvy person so I don't know how to tell if it will work before buying it and I also don't even fully understand what is causing this problem.
 
Welcome to the forum! :)

Can you tell us which music players you have tried using?

WMA is WINDOWS Media Audio. So I'm not sure if it'll work on Android. Are the file extensions for the other songs of the affected folders also in WMA format? (you can check if it ends with ".wma").

You can try VLC for Android. It supports many audio/video formats so maybe it will support WMA as well.

I generally store my songs as MP3 files. Almost all music players support MP3 and I've never had any trouble with it... So if you can, try converting them to MP3.

Also, check if those folders have a file called ".nomedia". If this files exist in any folder, then media apps (like music, gallery, and video players) will ignore whatever is in that folder. But actually, in that case it would ignore all the files. I can't understand how only one file is visible.
 
FYI stock Android doesn't play too well with WMA, basically because of Microsoft WM licensing and patent royalties the manufacturers would have to pay if it did. And usually it wont play WMA at all. Some third-party media players might.

MP3, AAC, Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC encoded music should be no problems.
 
yes they are all .wma in the affected folders.
I did learn that wma is an issue, but I just downloaded a specific wma player so it would view those.
But that is the crazy thing, some folders that are 100% wma's work fine, but then the ones with issues are these ones that have those other entries like 'contributing artist' and whatnot.
But all the actual file extensions are .wma.
I don't think I could list the apps I've tried as it's been so many and i just uninstall them right after seeing they view the same way. But it's been tons of them.
There's a consistent issue with the folders that have the oddball naming for the first file
 
Can you try to open the audio in the music player? Go to you file explorer, select any .wma file from the affected folder and look for an option like "open with" or something similar. Select one of your WMA players and see if it plays.

I just want to test if those are working audio files...
 
well here's where I am going to look stupid.
I don't even know how to browse files on a phone to find files. I can do it if I hook it up to a computer, and the other wma files definitely work fine, they will play no problem.

2nd note, I downloaded a converter and converted one of the folders from wma to mp3. In the converter program it sees both file types, but in the regular music players it still won't see the mp3's, and on my computer it still won't see the mp3's that were supposedly converted.
 
I just restarted the phone and now on the computer it shows both file types in that folder, each song as a wma and mp3.
But NOW on the stupid phone it displays only TWO files, both the first song identical to one another but obviously now one wma and one mp3.
There's no telling one from the other on the phone, it just has two songs in that folder that are the same first track.
I am just mind boggled because on a computer it works fine and you can see what is there, but the phone is bizarre.
 
Hmmm... That means the audio files are working. So what must have happened is that the other audio files are somehow hidden. Have you tried renaming the files? Generally if a file starts with a "."it gets hidden. Do those audio files start with that character?
 
rtv900 said:
I just restarted the phone and now on the computer it shows both file types in that folder, each song as a wma and mp3.
But NOW on the stupid phone it displays only TWO files, both the first song identical to one another but obviously now one wma and one mp3.
There's no telling one from the other on the phone, it just has two songs in that folder that are the same first track.
I am just mind boggled because on a computer it works fine and you can see what is there, but the phone is bizarre.
Click to expand...

I've had that issue before and as I was playing about in my device file manager, every .mp4 video of music I had and .wma music format. I just renamed each one as .mp3 at the end of each one in the files description box and my device accepted the rename and now it plays them as .mp3 files that plays with no problems. But I noticed that this doesn't work with all devices but I was just giving you a little trick that may work for you as it has for me.
 
^yes I was thinking of doing this too
So I searched online for a wma to mp3 converter and the only thing I found was an app for a phone, so of course it appeared on my phone then. It did seem to work as the new mp3's are in fact there, but the phone still doesn't see them.
Is there a decent converter anyone knows of for an actual computer so I can just do it right on there?
The phone one took forever, I feel like it was practically 20 minutes for just one album.
 
music library is 17gigs

update: so I put a converter on my pc and converted a folder in question to mp3.
I deleted the original folder for that artist on my phone, via my computer.
then restarted the phone.
then added the new MP3 folder to the phone
then restarted it again
this time, that artist had another folder in the main view rather than being within the original folder, but it still only showed the 1st song and nothing else.
all of them are MP3's too.
And oddly, my regular music (non wma) viewer does now show that artist too when it previously did not, but it ALSO only shows the first song!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess at this point I'm out of options other than trying just deleting 100% of everything and reloading it with the bad albums converted to MP3?
 
AHHHHHHHHH
I can't believe it. Now this morning all the tracks are showing up.
Last night even after restarting the phone it still only showed the 1st track in MP3. I just checked it again now before replying to this to verify I'm not dumber than I thought, and turns out I am, but this time in a good way.
No clue how they make the software for these devices and why a restart would not correct it, yet for some reason sitting overnight did.
Anyway looks like I'm finally on the right track.
Now I just need to go through all the rest.
Thanks everyone so far. I'm sure I'll be back if anything goes squirrely
 
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