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Help Music files added to 'music' folder are not picked up by Music Player

handojim

Lurker
Hi Android fans,

I just got my Xperia S on Monday, I'm loving it so far but am perplexed by one issue - Music Player is only showing some of the files that I've added to the 'Music' folder.

I've used File Expert to copy the files from my NAS drive via WIFI and have added them to the mnt/sdcard/Music folder but when I go the the My Music tab of Music Player, it only lists 11 of the 19 albums i've added so far.

I'm also confused by the fact that when I start up File Expert and select My Files I get a list with two entries - SD Card or Phone Internal Storage. I've been following the SD Card option to get to mnt/sdcard/Music but if I follow the Phone Internal Storage path I can get to /sdcard/Music which seems to have exactly the same files in it as mnt/sdcard/Music... I guess one is a symlink to the other or somesuch...? (I'm a complete Linux noob, just started playing around with Fedora 16 LXDE a couple of weeks ago...)
What's even more confusing is that on the home screen for File Expert there's an entry that says My Documents which includes entries for Images, Video, Music, Documents, APK Packages & Compresses Packages - if I select the Music option I can see a list of MP3s that is the same as the list of files shown in the Music Player app, only I've got no options to paste anything into this folder using File Expert so it seems there is some sort of sync issue between the sdcard/Music folder and whatever this folder and the Music Player app are using to populate themselves.

What's even more weird is that as I've been typing this, I just went to check the contents of the My Documents/Music folder and now it's got the same files as the sdcard/Music folder and the Music Player app has suddenly jumped from 11 albums to 26 (the 20 I've added plus the 6 that were already on it, only I added my files yesterday morning (about 8am on Wedneday 14th March) and it's now really early on Thursday morning and they've only just appeared in Music Player....:(

Anyone got any ideas what might have caused this delay? I can't find a way of making Music Player refresh its info (I was looking for an 'add file to library' type option like you get in iTunes / winamp etc) so I guess there must be some sort of background process that normally runs when you drop new files in that updates the Music Player lists, but I guess in this case it didn't run for nearly 24 hours - I hope it doesn't carry on like this!!

Very confused but hoping it has just sorted itself out - will try to add some more files later (after I've had some sleep ;-) and see if it picks them up straight away or if the same thing happens again, and update this post either way.
 
I've not tried this yet, but does the music player (like other models before the Xperia S) have any option to rebuild the library or scan for new tracks?

A lot of Sony Ericsson phones needed to do this before showing any new content.

Try at least one reboot otherwise to see if it rebuilds the file list when it starts up again?
 
is this possibly something to do with the gallery not updating problem? everytime i put a new film onto the phone i have to turn it off and on again to get the gallery to refresh.

ive been reading about it apparently its something to do with an update on android 2.3

Gallery works fine for pics and camera photos/videos but not for films ive added
 
So, it's been a few days since my original post and I thought it was time for an update...

It seems I have to turn the phone off every time I want to update the Music Player file list, there is no 'rescan' option anywhere that I've found, am hoping that ICS or an interim update will fix this.
I also tried the n7 player app to see if that was any better at picking up new music files but it isn't, am keeping it in preference to the stock music player app though 'cos it's way more swish! If only it did network streaming too I'd be a very happy bunny :-)

So far I've only been able to add files to the phone via wifi as I can't get it to talk to my PC - I'm running Fedora 16 LXDE and I think that because the Xperia is locked to MTP only mode for internal storage, it doesn't appear as a usb drive when I connect it to the PC and of course, the PC Companion installer does nothing as I guess it's a Windows thing and I can't find anything in the Sony support site that tells me how to connect this to my Linux machine via usb :confused: - anyone able to tell me how to do this please?

I have downloaded an MP3 via Amazon to test what happens when adding files via 3G and initially neither Music Player or n7 player picked up the file, but I checked which folder Amazon had downloaded it to and it was not one of the folders that n7 was looking at - once I added the Amazon download folder to n7 it found it fine and all the album art and tags were there too, which was nice :-)

Still loving the phone despite its little niggles!
 
I have had a similar problem on my Xperia Pro after the ICS switch. New songs I copied onto the SD card were not detected by the stock music player no matter what I tried to do. Even some third-party music apps were not able to provide solution. One day I found out how to deal with the problem: uninstall the MUSIC PLAYER SMART EXTRAS. Never had the same problem since then!
 
I am having the same issue with the phone not finding the music I'd transferred via USB storage. I turned it on and off, and when it rebooted it said it was searching USB for media, I thought "yay"! But it still didn't find my music (I'd put it into USBStorage/music, as advised by the Galaxy manual). Agh! And I don't have anything called "Music Player smart extras" installed (I'm on a Samsung Galaxy s2 4g). Any other suggestions???
 
Hi. I'm wondering if anyone figured out how to solve Whitehawk's problem from July. I transferred music to the USBstorage on my Galaxy Note, and I can see it all on the phone when I look it "my Files". However, for some reason that music doesn't appear when I open the music application. Did anyone figure out a way to solve this? (By the way, I do not have this problem with the music that I transferred to the external SD card- that music does appear on my Samsung music app) Thanks
 
I am having the same issue with the phone not finding the music I'd transferred via USB storage. I turned it on and off, and when it rebooted it said it was searching USB for media, I thought "yay"! But it still didn't find my music (I'd put it into USBStorage/music, as advised by the Galaxy manual). Agh! And I don't have anything called "Music Player smart extras" installed (I'm on a Samsung Galaxy s2 4g). Any other suggestions???
Hi. I'm wondering if you figured out how to solve your problem from July. I transferred music to the USBstorage on my Galaxy Note, and I can see it all on the phone when I look it "my Files". However, for some reason that music doesn't appear when I open the music application. Did anyone figure out a way to solve this? (By the way, I do not have this problem with the music that I transferred to the external SD card- that music does appear on my Samsung music app) Thanks
 
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