IssueTracker

I get this too. HTC Desire + FroYo

Verified - not reading Artist info in WMA ID3 tags.  Research indicates issue exists across Froyo implementation, not specific to any model phone.

Also appears to affect AAC files.

It is also affecting most, but not all, of my MP3 files. I'm getting "unknown artist," "unknown year," "unknown disc number" and "unknown track number" on the files affected. It appears to be affecting files in odd random ways, ie., I have the tag info for the first track of one album, but not the rest and the first 2 of another. There is also an issue with track duration reporting. Tracks are being reported with lengths of 20~30+ minutes.

Same here unfortunately with unbranded HTC Desire and Android 2.2. Not sure whether to wait for a fix from Google or to convert my WMA into MP3..

Ok, whats up with this case. Sorry, but this servich is much worster then the HTC support. Now i have an unbranded desire and have to convert 7 GB wma files to mp3? So please, give us a fix for that or a reaction. Then we kow that you trying to fix this problem

Same problem on HTC Evo 4G 2.2 both stock and FreshMod. WMA files with ID3 tags don't show up correctly in either HTC music (stock) or DoubleTwist. WMA9 files don't play at all (though they never did). Ogg and MP3 seem fine, ogg tags show up correctly.

Guess I'll transcode all to ogg until a fix is available.

How could this have happened? No one thought to check if there would be issues with any of the major music file types? Those working on the Android OS have done great  things, but this is a real bummer.

Same problem on my Droid Incredible with 2.2--happens with the HTC music player as well as Mixzing, a 3rd party player.  However, Mortplayer does include the correct ID3 information, so I would suggest that program for accurate track reporting.

If the big brains at Google can correct this problem, can you also make it so that the tracks are listed in track order, not alphabetical order?  I'd say 99.999% of the population prefer to listen to their albums in the order that the artist intended!

Come in guys, without htis feature, the player is for me nearly useless. I buy my music in wma and dont wont to have a double workload while converting the files into mp3.

I have the same issue - however i had the problem previously (2.1) too.  I have checked and triple checked - all the tags are present and correct.  All my music is WMA.  Synced from WMP12 - or copied directly to SD - makes no difference...  HTC Desire.

I am also experiencing this on htc droid incredible with froyo.  Everything works fine for mp3 files.  But with wma files, the songs always get placed in the "Unknown artist" section.  I also verified that the wma files (on the phone memory) have the artist metadata correct.

I can't imagine this would be terribly difficult to fix.  The HTC Music player has lost the ability to play .wav files from our Cisco phone system and does not recognize tags correctly.

Android 2.2 won't recognize tags in WMA files. please fix!!

Same problem with unrecognised tags in WMA files: 'Unknown Artist' appears in music player after Froyo update on HTC Desire.  Works fine otherwise.

I have the same problem with unrecogised wma tags. I received an Android system patch a couple of days ago but it hasn't fixed it

For those of us with HTC phones, please submit a ticket to HTC as well. I called their support and they acted like they had no idea of this issue.

Phoned HTC and they said send my phone back and they will reinstall all the software. I am doubtful it will fix it. But they said it might just be due to the download having a hiccup mid process.

Is this common to all HTCs on Android 2.2? If so I definately dont think it will work (plus it seems to be on other phones too)

That's interesting. When I submitted a ticket to HTC online their second level response told me to convert all my music to mp3. Worthless

I have also got this problem since upgrading to 2.2 on my HTC desire. None of my wma files display artist information despite having been fine before the update. The files are not corrupt as loading them back onto my PC shows them to be fine. I had no problems during my update process and would be very surprised if this could be caused by such a thing anyway.

Same issue here.  All WMA files are listed as "unknown artist".  When can we expect a fix for this as surely Google/HTC or whatever manufacturer don't think it's acceptable for this not to work properly.

This is not an HTC issue, though reporting it to them may help encourage Google to patch this.  It is strictly an issue with Froyo and any music player that depends on how Froyo reads the file tags.  Other players that read the file tags independently are fine.

[Comment deleted]

I'd be willing to bet when Google finally fixes this my phone will be so obsolete I won't even get an update

Same issue here with an HTC Incredible running 2.2. I had issues before in 2.1, but mp3tag helped me fix those. Now, however, it has no affect as the ID3 tags are properly saved.

Same issue here. The file in question DOES have the artist name listed under properties.

Same issue on desire with froyo

This is a big problem for users of our MixZing Media Player app, anyone with WMA files on 2.2 is now telling us they get unknown artist on all their songs.

And why do you use the parent directory name as the album name?  I know that will work sometimes, but it gives totally random and confusing results.  Better to have "<unknown>", which is the truth.

As a user of MixZing (and very nice it is too) can I just add my name to the gripe list that .wma are no longer properly listed since updating to 2.2. A fix would be really appreciated.

Same here... HTC Desire on Orange running 2.2.
This was working fine before the 2.2 update.
This bug makes the media player "almost" useless, trying to find anything is now very difficult.

[Comment deleted]

Why is it that Google never ever comment on any of these bugs?  It's like talking to a brick wall.  Are we getting a fix for this, it's a really annoying problem and makes Android's ability to play WMA file utterly useless.  It also means that all WMA files are scrobbled to last.fm with "unknown artist".  Come on Google!!!!!  Can you imagine is iOS suddenly stopped reading the artist tag of AAC files?  At least there would be some sort of acknowledgment from Apple and probably a fix within days.  It's unacceptable to have this issue unfixed and not even acknowledged for such a long time.

Verizon's vmm app fixeds everything by morphing files to ogg.  This is Verizon with with the big dick.... fucking us all..

Verizon's vmm app fixeds everything by morphing files to ogg.  This is Verizon with with the big dick.... fucking us all..

Verizon's vmm app fixeds everything by morphing files to ogg.  This is Verizon with with the big dick.... fucking us all..

verizon hates it customers......
its all about file format.. you can spend forever making your files ogg.'s  they give you the software.. It is a pain 2500 songs equals 5000 plus mins

This is completely unacceptable.  Does anyone actually test this software before it is released.  I use my phone as a music player every day.  Since upgrading to froyo the music player is barely usable.  If google actually wants android to gain market share they will have to behave more professionally than this.  At the moment they are making apple look good.

One of the reasons I upgraded to Android and a smart phone was because my previous LG Chocolate 3 had a terrible media player.  However, the phone recognized all media formats.  Now HTC Incredible with Android 2.2 and I barely can find things.  I end up searching YouTube instead of my vast library out of ease.

This is why Verizon needs the iPhone.

Same problem here on a UK Orange HTC Desire - fine before the upgrade to 2.2.

This is also affecting Media PlayerPro which I have started using since the 2.2 update broke the interaction between the default player and Google Navigation.

The only music player that seems to reads meta correctly now is Museek, but as that is currently in beta it is a buggy as hell, so it's not a viable option.

This has been a poor update as far as the media stuff is concerned.

Yeah I have the same problem on my desire. Damn yhe worst thing is that I can't use last.fm :/

Is there a free player that does work on UK HTC Desire?

+ 1

My Incredible has the same issue. It came with Android 2.2, so it isn't an issue with the software downloading bad. I have issues with both .mp3 and .wma. I would try the Verizon method, but they don't support 64-Bit OS!!! I never thought I'd have a reason not to like Google... This was a huge bummer and it totally sucks!

The HTC Desire music player is awful anyway - no graphic equalizer and too quiet.  Now we have the added insult to injury of Android 2.2 and the wma tagging issue. I tried 'Mixzing', which only managed to disable the earphone (speaker and headset worked).

It's possible to play .wma files by selecting albums but if HTC and Android can't produce a good music player between them then my Desire is as useful as a brick for music. Even my old HTC HD Windows phone was better.

Google and HTC - you are handing Apple and Microsoft the bullets to shoot at you. Please send out a patch asap.

Same issue Incredible froyo

But what's the deal with my .mp3 files? Most of those don't work either. For detail sake, I use Zune to do all my music stuff.

I think its about time maybe someone went to some of the gadget press and websites about this issue.  Google obviously aren't going to do anything about it but to have a phone that can't even read music tags properly is just completely unacceptable, especially when you consider the length of time Google have had to simply even acknowledge the problem.

May a bit of negative press will force them in to fixing this ridiculous problem.

With a new Windows phone platform being launched, not ot mention Symbian,  you'd think they would rush out a fix as soon as possible. I'm not sure how many other bugs there are in 2.2 but this one would surely be easy to remedy quickly.

I hope the poor guys ordering the new Desire HD read about this before they part with any money.

I prefer wma files to mp3 because to my ears they sound better and the sound level is very steady and doesn't fluctuate like mp3s do.  I was very disappointed in using V Cast Manager because of the ogg issue.  Just make all your loyal users happy and fix the tag issue.

it'S not only wma files, i only have mp3's.
Museek and Mort Player work fine, since they build there own database. but none of the other players i have tried (including winamp, meridian and Vanilla Music..) recognizes Artists (do they use the same database? how can I reset/delete the database and have Music Player rebuild it?).
Strange thing with my database is that out of my MP3's the first lets say 50 artists up until the letter "Bo..." got recognized and then none anymore.

My main reason for getting a smartphone was so i didn't have to carry round an additional music player, this is now completely useless!!

Just noticed that the phone doesn't read artist tags on MP3s either.  This is utterly pathetic, why aren't Google commenting on this or releasing a fix?  There must be a complaints route or something as moaning in this bug thread obviously isn't getting anyone anywhere.

MP3s work fine on my HTC Desire. The problem only occurs with WMA. Check your library to see if your MP3s are properly tagged. My library is lossless WMA and I use mediamonkey to automatically convert to MP3 when syncing. It works a treat with all artist,album,album art, etc being transferred. I'd still rather just use WMA directly but this is a feasible workaround until the bug gets fixed.
It's a shame nobody is really looking into this. A tip to a tech blog would probably do the work, but would hurt the Android platform overall. Decisions, decisions...

@nuno, which Android version are you using?  Mine was fine on 2.1 but can't read any artists on 2.2.

I've checked the tags on the files on the phone by plugging them phone via USB into my PC and using Mp3Tag to view the files on the SD card and all tags are present and correct but the phone just won't read the artist tag even though it's there.  It's an obvious bug.  I may try transferring the files with Media Monkey makes a difference.

I have contemplated making a video showing the bug, posting it on youtube then alerting all the tech blogs and gadget sites to at least maybe force google into actually commenting on the problem but can I really be bothered.

It's shocking nothing is being done though, how can they expect Android to become a mainstream platform when the average user can't even have their music displayed on the device correctly?

I'm using 2.2 on a unlocked Desire. The original music library is created on Windows Media Player, used in my Media Center. I just pointed mediamonkey on my laptop to the music folder, configured the sync and hey presto, everything is working on the phone. I only needed to convert the WMA, existing MP3 and AAC files worked fine.

Several messages to HTC just keep producing the same gereric response asking for my IMEI and software details, and no acceptance at all that there is a problem with 2.2 and not my phone. I've even posted links to forums like this where it is obvious that Android and HTC need to act fast to resolve the issue.

Orange UK seem aware of the problem and told me a patch would be provided, but nothing has been sent so far.

Same issue here - Orange Android 2.2 - <unknown artist> for WMA files, but not all of them.

Google must fix this issue pronto.. it's just not acceptable.

I am rapidly losing patience with Android - it's going to become a problem if google don't pull their finger out and SORT THIS.

ARE YOU LISTENING GOOGLE ?
ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR CUSTOMERS
AND FIX THE ISSUE

A lot of times the Android media scanner messes up for some reason, and if you force it to rebuild the database it fixes it.  Our users often have problems with missing tags etc. and this process often resolves them.  The WMA issue is a separate thing, but if you're having inconsistencies or certainly any issues with MP3s then try this:

1. From the home screen go to Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage Applications
2. Go to Menu->Filter and select All
3. Scroll to the Media Storage app (you may need to do Menu->Sort once or twice to get it to sort alphabetically)
4. Tap Media Storage and press the Clear Data button
5. Get the scanner to start: if you have MixZing, then from the initial library screen do Menu->Scan Media; otherwise you can USB mount and unmount, or use one of the rescan apps from the Market.

Note that it may take quite a while to rebuild the database depending on how many files you have.

Why did mixzing respond before Google?

I do not have mixzing, but try their method. Still no good. The same albums tags are not being read: songs out of order and no artist info.

The one player software I've found that does not have trouble with the artist info, DoubleTwist, does have it's own problem.  It is not able to filter out Ring , Alarm and Notification Tones stored on the SD card.  So win one, but lose another one that makes it just as frustrating.

I have the same problem - Desire audio library dosen't show artist on wma. The funny (nope, not really) thing is that on my wife's HTC HD mini (running windows mobile) the HTC music player have the same problem. Windows Mediaplayer on the same phone works OK. So it might be a quite common misreading of a spec?

But it's quite annoying and giving the importance and number of people complaining it should be fixed by now...

Same problem here :(

This is partial work around that's quite quick to implement if you just have all your wma's in a single directory

1. copy music off your phone
2. download a demo of Tag&Rename http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm and point it at your copied music directory (great app worth paying for, btw)
3. Use the "rename files" option with a directory sepecified, something like:
%3\%6-%2
4. Copy all the directories back to your phone

Because the indexing service will use the directory name as album names, this will now give you album names in your MP3 player. If you'd rather play by artist than by album, you could use the artist name as a "virtual" album using:
%1\%6-%2

... its far from ideal but its a 10 minute job and for some people might be enough.

BTW I tried the next obvious idea which is to create another parent directory and hop e the indexing service picks that up as artist e.g. %1\%3\%6-%2 ... but no joy.

Also - c'mon pull your finger out, Google, and get this fixed. Its ridiculous I should even have to post this!

HTC have tested a variety branded and unbranded Desire phones and found that they all have the wma problem. The new Desire HD with Android 2.2 does not. The issue is being escalated and given a high priority.

Th fact that the new Desire HD is OK with wma files points to the problem being caused by the upgrade process from 2.1 to 2.2.

I don't blame HTC as it is Google which has stuffed up and needs to act as if it actually cares about its customers.

My contract is with Orange.  Orange is responsible for the equipment it supplies. As there is no fix or patch for this problem, I will ask for a change to the Desire HD or termination of contract. Maybe if enough people put pressure on their networks this will also help push Google to act?  

I seem to be having the same problem even on .mp3 files. I recently updated my HTC Desire to 2.2

I have found that for mp3 (sadly not wma) files on my HTC Desire using the tag editor in Mixzing to populate the tags for the total number of tracks on the album and the  disc # of # fields fixed the problem and allowed the artist to be recognized correctly - viz:  

Track 1 of X   <- the Xs need to be populated
Disc X of X   <- the Xs need to be populated

This would be fairly time consuming if you had a lot of mp3s to re-tag.  I suppose an enterprising person could write an app to automatically populate these fields, or existing apps like Mixzing could include an option to automatically populate these tags if they are not present.

I don't know if the absence of the total track count and disc # of # fields is the cause of the problem for wma files since Mixzing can't edit tags for wma files.  I don't recall seeing total track and disc # of # fields in Windows Media Player's advanced tag editor.  If these fields are present in the wma wrapper how can we edit them?  Anyone know if a program like Media Monkey can do it?

Update to post 68 above.  I tried a couple of wma tag editors from source forge and found that total tracks and total disks do not appear to be standard wma tags although I was able to include a tag for disc #.

More interesting was that after adding a tag to make all tracks on a sample album part of disk 1 I tried to rebuild the music library following the steps in comment 59 by MixZing and found that the mp3 tracks that did have an artist associated with them no longer did.  The track # of # and disc # of # tags were still there but 'unknown artist' again.  I was able to make MixZing recognize the artist again by changing a tag value and then changing it back again.  I now think it was the fact that the tags had been updated (and saved in a format that Froyo can read properly) rather than adding the track # of # and disc # of # tags that caused the artist tag to read correctly.  Which brings us back to the fact that Froyo is expecting the tags to be in a different format.  Well it was worth a try.  

Like other posters I agree that this is a large and frustrating glitch with an otherwise truly great operating system that blows all its competitors away... but those of us with large collections of wma files are finding it hard to keep the faith  until this is fixed properly with a patch.  It used to work perfectly under 2.1...  

Incidentally can anyone confirm that the problem does not exist with Ogg Vorbis or FLAC?  Even before this happened I had been thinking of ditching windows altogether but I didn't think there was a need to re-rip 200+ albums because Ubuntu will actually play wma files and I was happy with the playback quality.  But if I have to wait forever for a patch then re-ripping those discs is starting to look like the better, albeit highly annoying, option.

for me copying small amounts of data (<3gb) at once helped. previously i copied a lot at once and after that the mp3 tag artist didn't get recognized at all with the stock music player.
also i turn the phone into airplane mode to minimize activity and the risk of being called during filetransfer.

Here's what I did:
   I downloaded iTunes, and set the importing encoder to the .mp3 encoder. Then I dragged all my .wma files from the "Music" window to the iTunes program window (iTunes won't add .wma files to the library otherwise). I then waited as iTunes converted 298 .wma files to .mp3. Thank goodness I stopped using .wma as early as I did!
   Simply put, Google, I had to use software from your competition to finish the job that you failed to do. Nice work. At least I can post this from my phone.
   Also, as a side note, iTunes is good for embedding album art into ID3 tags. This way, you don't need a 3rd party music player to do an okay job at finding the album art.
   First: Set iTunes view to album view, as its easier.
   Next: Click the icon on the bottom-left of the screen that looks like an up arrow in a box. A window should slide up over the icon. Now left-click an album, then right-click it. Select "Get album art". Right-click the new album art that appeared in the window above the up arrow icon and select "Copy". Then right-click the same album and select "Get info". In the lower right corner of the pop-up window, you'll see a small empty box, conveniently sized for album art. Right-click the empty box and click "Paste". Select "Okay" (or whatever you press to accept changes, i'm writing this from memory). Album art should now be embedded into the ID3 tag FOREVER AND FOR ALL DEVICES! HAHAHA! At least, it worked for my Band Of Horses album. Sorry for the length of this post, but I want to share what I know. I got this info from www.lifehacker.com originally.
     Google, stop playing dumb; fix the issue.

Same as many an EVO running 2.2 will not read artist tags, this is true of the Android player as well as the HTC player.However they are sorta seen by the PowerAmp app. When played individually the display fine. But do not work for "lists by artists"...I hope ths gets sorted out soon..I have a large wma library and this is a bad bug..Not sure if it is a HTC issue, Sprint issue or Google one.

I can confirm this issue on the Wildfire running 2.2

Same prob here on HTD Desire 2.2, sort it out Google!

Same problem w/ wma tags not being recognized: G1, MixZing, Cyanogen Froyo.

Same prob; I have a HTC Desire Z and no music player appears to recognise the artist value for wma files only. There's no way I'm converting to mp3 as they are generally 3 times larger than wma.

This really needs to be a "High" priority issue as it completely breaks the functionality of the music player, as well as any music-related apps that depend on it.

This is a huge fumble for Google, as I know of Some Other Phone that handles music without issue... How does something like this make it past beta testing? Or do Android releases even get tested?

Also verified. Running Froyo on my Eris. All mp3 tags are fine, but wma's are all unknown except for the title field.

Hi everybody,
here is at least some kind of solution:
use a player that isn't based on the default android player.
These I have found from android-market:
- AMplayer, a really basic player
- Tinyplayer, a little better and still free.
- Poweramp, this is a really good player and my favourite. It's not free, but I think cheap enough. A free test version is available at the market.

Power Amp skips my wma files altogether.

Varying music players is not the solution.

-Glenn

Power Amp library function reads from the Android library, so it still has the same issue with WMA tags.

DoubleTwist builds it's own library, but alas still cannot filter by folder to eliminate ring, alarm, and notification tones.

Power amp does use the library which suffers the same issue. However it does
also have the option to use folders.

This works very well and does get around the WMA tagging issue as it reads
the tags itself.

If your WMA files are named in order of the tracks on the album you can use
this to make sure the WMA's play in the correct order.

same here, just updated my htc legend to android 2.2 (finally), and just found out all my music (I only use .wma files) are listed under 'unknow artist', really annoing....

I don't get it how people keep saying mp3's are fine.
Pretty much all my music on my Legend is in mp3 and ALL files now show up as unknown artist and lack all information when playing them.

I checked the tags and the tags are still correct. I also deleted some albums and copied them back to the phone to no avail. This is just ridiculous. It's near impossible to find anything now.

OK, Deal breaker, I am returning my EVO!

I have a HTC Desire running v 2.2.
It seems like this problem has been reported under servereal other issues numbers, at least: 4620, 10687, 10957, 11785, 11337, 12506.

I think this bug is severe; it is not possible to use the 'phone' as music player at all.

Way back, HTC were supposed to be treating this as something which was to be given priority by their technical team.

Now I know they meant 'low priority'. :(

This is not the way to persuade customers to choose Android rather than the new Windows phones.

Nobody in Google or HTC understands basic marketing, it would seem?  

This is my only Major problem with Android.  I bought my fist smart phone (Android 2.2; T-Mobile G2) a month ago and this huge inconvenience for me.  I have been forced to start to burn all my CDs again and this time with iTunes.  Because of this bug, I highly considered returning my phone and getting an iPhone 4 instead.  This not acceptable and must be fixed ASAP.

Same here: HTC Legend updated to Froyo some weeks ago, and the tags have gone on .wma files. Loaded lots to use on airplane (& airport!) last week & that's when I found out.

Seems this issue has been around for some time now, so I wonder why this is still marked as a 'new' issue, without any reaction by Google. Like so many other in the issue-list...
This is more and more becoming a forum to complain, where it should incite interaction between users (& developers) an google.
C'mon google-guys, give us a sign of life! Acknowledge, give us a helpful workaround - or just state that this is not a priority issue for you.

Time to go to the tech press and blogs with this now I think.  Google have had ample time to just even acknowledge this issue or make some kind of statement.

This is a serious issue as it renders the phone useless as a music player, one of the primary functions of a smartphone.  This, potentially, makes the phone unfit for purpose.  Maybe a bit of negative press will push Google into at least acknowledging the problem.  It's pretty evident that no one from Google or the Android dev team reads these bug reports.  

My wife and I both got our first smartphones (HTC Incredibles) a couple of weeks ago.  I can't believe that this WMA tag issue has been going on for so long.  As a previous poster stated, part of the reason we went for a smartphone was the ability to have both a phone and music player.  How can the developers let this bug go on?  Simply unacceptable.

I have a solution to the problem of wma track order which works 100%. I posted this also to issue 36910306. I doubt this will address the mp3 issues mentioned above as it's specifically for wma, relying on the wma metadata and I am unable to confirm whether it will fix the album art as I have not had that problem on my DX. As the art is a metadata issue it may get fixed. However, this solution is simply to have the albums play AND display the tracks in the correct order.

I noticed that some of my albums played in the correct order, some partially played in the correct order and some played in the well-known metadata title alphabetical order. Of the ones which partially played in correct order the tracks which didn't play in order were usually ones from a different source or which I added later or had some other distinguishing feature. This is what gave me the clue that the potential to play in order was in there somewhere.

After examining the first hundred or so bytes of each track with a hex editor I noticed that the track information is in a shambles - The metadata isn't presented in any consistent order. I noticed that the albums which played in the correct order had the metadata in the same order in each track - any deviations led to an inconsistency in playing order for the errant track.

I'm not yet sure whether android only requires all the tracks to present the metadata the same way within any album in order to play in order per each album, or whether the metadata has to be in the correct place for every track anywhere to know its place. Regardless, I have found a way to do this. As I said above there is a cost, two costs actually though further testing may remove one cost.

The first cost is the tracks have to be re-encoded. This is not as bad as it sounds if you have good quality originals. Instead of dragging and dropping my tracks from my laptop to the phone I ran them through Total Recorder's batch processing utility. This merely converts files from one format to another, or the same, and allows different bit rates to be specified. This is the other cost - Total Recorder is about $18 to buy. Worth it in my opinion but I respect the opinions of others who can't or don't want to buy.

I will explain what I did and maybe you will know of other file conversion utilities which will do the same - I'm sure there are but I don't have any of them.

First connect your phone to the computer in mass storage mode.
In Total Recorder go to Tools/Batch Processing and navigate to the folder where your music is located.
Using the check boxes select the tracks you wish to process. I would suggest just checking the tracks for one album at first to ensure it works for your phone.
Hit the Process button when you're done selecting.
In the Batch Processing Wizard which appears select Next
In the next screen check Change format to and choose a new format - the same format and bitrate works.
Select Preserve Original File tag and hit Next
Check Use this folder and navigate to the location on your phone you want the tracks to be stored in.
Select Use source names and Close Batch Processing Window and hit Start.
What follows may be a lengthy process depending on how many tracks you selected.
When the conversion is complete unplug your phone and wait. You need to wait for the phone to assimilate the new tracks and this will take a finite time depending on the number of tracks you processed. It won't start doing this till you unplug the phone and release the SD card back to the phone.
As this is the only solution I have found to this anywhere I'm going to post it in several forums. I encourage anyone who gets this working with another maybe free program to share and a bit of credit would be nice if you repost elsewhere

Karina K

HTC desire, Android 2.2...

No artist info

No gapless playback

No artwork

And, hilariously, some of my albums play in alphabetical order.

...and thought I'd bought a smartphone :-)

Sorry - one more comment:

It says that the priority of this bug is 'medium' as it 'doesn't stop shipping'.

It would certainly have stopped me buying had I know this beforehand. Does that help?

Reencoding files is not a solution its a work around. That said, if your
going to all the effort of reencoding why not simply move to a format that
doesn't exhibit this problem to begin with?

I think the point off this thread is to get the root cause fixed otherwise
we all would have simply swapped formats months ago.

information on .wma files

posted this also to issue 36910306. I doubt this will address the mp3 issues
mentioned above as it's specifically for wma, relying on the wma metadata
and I am unable to confirm whether it will fix the album art as I have not
had that problem on my DX. As the art is a metadata issue it may get fixed.
However, this solution is simply to have the albums play AND display the
tracks in the correct order.

partially played in the correct order and some played in the well-known
metadata title alphabetical order. Of the ones which partially played in
correct order the tracks which didn't play in order were usually ones from a
different source or which I added later or had some other distinguishing
feature. This is what gave me the clue that the potential to play in order
was in there somewhere.

editor I noticed that the track information is in a shambles - The metadata
isn't presented in any consistent order. I noticed that the albums which
played in the correct order had the metadata in the same order in each track
- any deviations led to an inconsistency in playing order for the errant
track.

the metadata the same way within any album in order to play in order per
each album, or whether the metadata has to be in the correct place for every
track anywhere to know its place. Regardless, I have found a way to do this.
As I said above there is a cost, two costs actually though further testing
may remove one cost.

it sounds if you have good quality originals. Instead of dragging and
dropping my tracks from my laptop to the phone I ran them through Total
Recorder's batch processing utility. This merely converts files from one
format to another, or the same, and allows different bit rates to be
specified. This is the other cost - Total Recorder is about $18 to buy.
Worth it in my opinion but I respect the opinions of others who can't or
don't want to buy.

utilities which will do the same - I'm sure there are but I don't have any
of them.

where your music is located.

suggest just checking the tracks for one album at first to ensure it works
for your phone.

same format and bitrate works.

the tracks to be stored in.

selected.

wait for the phone to assimilate the new tracks and this will take a finite
time depending on the number of tracks you processed. It won't start doing
this till you unplug the phone and release the SD card back to the phone.

post it in several forums. I encourage anyone who gets this working with
another maybe free program to share and a bit of credit would be nice if you
repost elsewhere

Just tried the solution from MixZing (comment 59).  After deleting the media database, I simply triggered it to rebuild by mounting my phone as a drive on my computer and then dismounting it.  Simple and it worked!  All my WMAs show the proper tag info now.  HTC Evo w/ Froyo.  Sweet!

I just received a the Mixzing update (very nice thanks) which includes the capability to edit meta data for wma files.  When I tried this out Mixzing shows me the artist correctly in the tag editor(!) but not in the normal lists, even deleting and rebuilding the media database as suggested comment 59.  

Does this then mean it might be possible for an app like Mixzing to build its own database and bypass the built in android one seeing as how it does seem to be able to see the artist field correctly in the tag editor?  I realise this would probably mean taking up precious on-board memory on the phone but I think there might be a lot of grateful wma users out there until Google finally gets around to fixing this.

Regardless of wheather comment 97 above is possible it's still unworkable. I'm not about to manually edit thousands of tags.

There are several music apps that create their own database.  As I mentioned in a previous post DoubleTwist does so, but it cannot filter out any ring tones or other sound files stored on the SD card. That, sadly, makes it a non starter.

I have an Archos 70 Internet Tablet, and the music app they built is darned near perfect to me. I personally think they should sell it on the app markets for non Archos devices.

[Comment deleted]

missing some tag info when show OGG, always show "Unknown Artist" although foobar2000 can show them correctly on my PC. Mime Desire HD

Same thing here with my t mobile my touch 3g. Froyo, what a load of crap. Not only is my media player out of wack, my whole phone has been affected. Super slow on all applications. why would they call it an upgrade if it downgraded my devices productivity? unbelievable! Someone needs to be fired for this

Android 2-1 was always a bit flaky on WMA files - any albums where I'd edited track names or combined two CDs into one WMA "album" had all sorts of issues with artist name etc.  Whereas if you did the same to MP3 albums there were no problems.

But 2-2 (Orange Wildfire) has just made it insane - I'm seriously unimpressed to see this bug has not been addressed in over 4 months.

Can't believe Google haven't fixed this yet.

Phone: Samsung Galaxy i9000
Android: 2.2

I can confirm that with FLAC files I also get "unkown artist."
On the PC the tag information is there, it's just not showing in the android music player.

With MP3 files the Artist show correctly.

Forgot to mention that, on FLAC files, besides not showing the "artist", the name of the album is not showing completely, is is being truncated to 16 chars.

Again, on MP3 files shoes correctly, i.e. I have not seen any "truncation".

Hi there

I can confirm that with OGG files it is the same. I get as well the error "unkown artist" and the internal player is not able to play them.

By the way I followed the steps under: Comment 59 by MixZing, Oct 28, 2010.
But the situation get even more worth. Now the player mixes the album art too. To be sure I verified the ID3 tags in the program Mp3tag. There all tags are fine inclusive the album art.

I hope that this will be fixed latest in Android 2.3.

Seeing this on my HTC Thunderbolt (Android 2.2) and it's pretty annoying. I don't have a ton of WMAs so I can just re-encode but it seems like a silly workaround for what should be a minor bug to fix.

All my music is in .wma format at it's upsetting and disappointing that I am not able to download coverart because of this.

I have the same problems, Motorola Milestone 2, with Android 2.2 so exchanged for another. same problems, so exchanged for a Desire Z.. same problems... it is an Android issue... not the phone... so back to the shop again for an iphone me thinks!!!

I have the same problems, Motorola Milestone 2, with Android 2.2 so exchanged for another. same problems, so exchanged for a Desire Z.. same problems... it is an Android issue... not the phone... so back to the shop again for an iphone me thinks!!!

Same with OGG files on Android 2.2 T-Mobile G2X

I can also confirm that the T-Mobile G2X music player straight out of the box does not recognize the artist in Ogg Vorbis files, and seems to be combining them all under "Unknown Artist". It also seems to be pulling info out of the comments section and "divining" artist info from that, which leaves me with a plethora of artists. The most import problem is the lack of Ogg album metadata support---I have 680 songs that are listed as "Unknown Artist". This is quite disappointing, as this is my first Android phone after over a decade with Nokia, and I was hoping that at last I'd be able to use my Ogg files without transcoding them to MP3.

Galaxy S II running 2.3.3 from the box, shows "Unknown Artist" for all .aac files. Disappointing.

I have just tried an app called ID3Fixer which is free in the android market place.  It actually seems to have fixed nearly all my wma tags - MixZing can now find nearly all tracks by artist.  I had to run it several times selecting by 'unknown artist' as it seems to have a limit of fixing a few hundred tracks at a time and I had over 1800.  You need to set a target character set - I think this app is intended to fix language related issues - but as a really nice side effect it seems to have resolved the unknown artist problem.  Give it a go.  I'm going over to leave this guy 5 stars for giving me back my music library!

Yes even I have this issue

ID3Fixer can fix the problem on ogg but I have to put each artist again onmy phone. Too many time to do it.

Thanks woodwind, ID3Fixer fixed all my wma files issues in a snap!. I had over 1,000 files and it did them en-batch, convering to US-ASCII. I am soooo relieved to get a fix for this really annoying bug!. At last my phone is back to being a worthy audio media player :-D

Title of this bug should be changed, as not only wma is affected by this bug.

Here on ogg vorbis it happens too, while ogginfo on Linux shows the tags just fine:
Processing file "09. Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms.ogg"...

New logical stream (#1, serial: 4fb0bbf6): type vorbis
Vorbis headers parsed for stream 1, information follows...
Version: 0
Vendor: AO; aoTuV [20110424] (based on Xiph.Org's libVorbis)
Channels: 2
Rate: 44100

Nominal bitrate: 128.000000 kb/s
Upper bitrate not set
Lower bitrate not set
User comments section follows...
        ARTIST=Dire Straits
        TITLE=Brothers in Arms
        ALBUM=Brothers in Arms
        TRACKNUMBER=9
        DATE=1985-05-15
        MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID=00e80381-2362-485c-aa47-942ff63f0ac0
        MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID=614e3804-7d34-41ba-857f-811bad7c2b7a
        MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID=4c618c14-0ed3-3b50-b32a-562e0f4cfe28
        MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID=614e3804-7d34-41ba-857f-811bad7c2b7a
Vorbis stream 1:
        Total data length: 6243500 bytes
        Playback length: 7m:00.240s
        Average bitrate: 118.855892 kb/s
Logical stream 1 ended

Also other Linux music players, like Totem and Rhythmhbox, show the tags just fine, only Android gets it wrong.

Android 2.2.1 on my HTC Wildfire is having this same issue since the upgrade.

I have the HTC Inspire 4G and I too am having an issue with the music I have put on my phone. My problem seems a little different than everyone else's. I do not use wma files, but I am having the same issue with the mp3 files. None of my songs have artists.  All songs are listed in the unknown artist folder.  How can I fix this? They used to be listed by artist but for some reason now will not.
Thank you for any help you can give.

The ID3fixer app made about 70 percent of my wma files so that the standard Android music player reports album and artist correctly. I also used the US-ASCII setting. (I upgraded my SD card to 16 GB and have over 3,000 music files on my phone, so this is a major issue for me.) It's not a perfect solution, but compared to nothing it's a vast improvement. I am very grateful to the developer!

I've got a Desire HD and my songs are being sorted alphabetically within each artists album. All the artwork and artist information is loaded just fine, but the songs are in the wrong order - the player (standard HTC music player) is ignoring the track number completely.

I contacted HTC support (in the Phillippines) who had never heard of this issue. Their reply was to connect my HTC to my PC as a disk drive and load my songs that way.

So I tried that to no avail - after over 2 hours of trying various load methods (all ending in the same way - songs sorted alphabetically) I gave up.

Going back to HTC Support with lots of links to forums and this log as evidence that they NEED to look into it sooner rather than later as this has been an ongoing issue for over a year now and they still seem blithely unaware of it.

Same problem, unable to read WMA artist/track # info, though works for mp3.
Android 2.2.1
HTC Wildfire

ID3Fixer not available for Wildfire, so unable to try this workaround!

Having issues with my HTC incredible2 Android Ver. 2.3.3 HTC sense ver. 2.1

I have transfered over 4gb of music files (mixed formats i'm sure) through usb cable, and the stock 'music' app will not even recognize I have music. I'm also unable to look at the files through the phone, though I can see the SD card has info on it (through difference of storage limit and storage available).

Any word on a fix?

Same problem on Desire HD...

I managed to get my tags working (all file types), if you are using Ubunutu then I posted step by step instructions here: (If you are not, try and replicate the process on your favourite OS.

http://www.rosshemsley.co.uk/?p=538

This is completely unacceptable.  Does anyone actually test this software before it is released.  I use my phone as a music player every day.
Find a solution, give us a fix for this!

Wow, this is more annoying that I thought it'd be. The 2.2 I'm using is actually on a tablet, not a phone, but I use this tablet for music either way.

Really? Even Poweramp won't recognize these tags correctly because Android won't. When I first tried to edit tags via Poweramp, the information was actually still there and all correct, but still filed under Unknown _____. So there goes that idea.

The hell is this. Get this the hell fixed.

Google should have seriously fixed this issue ages ago. As many people have said before, this completely defeats the purpose of having a music app on a smart phone, and yet it seems like Google has made no attempt to fix this bug in any manner. Not only this, but after updating to 2.2, I've also been experiencing many difficulties in regards to playlists on the music app. It seems every time I update my music library on my phone the playlists get reset or disappear and rebuilding my playlists each time I want to listen to music is ridiculous. Is anyone else having a playlist issue on the stock music player for 2.2? I'm running a G2, if that helps at all.

Does anyone have any ideas why both music players can't read an mp3 file but when I go into file manager (Astro) I can play the music perfectly fine via music player. I have all my mp3s in my music folder. This only applies to music downloaded from file sharing. So my question is: Is it my music players or is it my phone? I use the default music player and PlayerPro music player. Phone: HTC Wildfire.

This is so annoying...

[Comment deleted]

I had the same problem on Gigabyte GSmart 1345 (Android 2.3.4) with WMA files generated by dBpoweramp - all tags ok but unknown artist. I fixed it 100% successfully with ID3Fixer (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.yschi.ID3Fixer).

I am having a similar problem on my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0.  On my PC, all my files are tagged correctly.  However, in the Samsung music app, Google Music app, and the mobile Winamp app, some tag elements are wrong, but not missing.  For example, in those apps, all my ska tags show up in the "reggae" genre instead.  All of my alternative, grunge, and industrial songs get combined into ONE genre, "Alternative/Indie".  And all of my rock, metal, death metal, and punk songs get combined into one genre, "Rock".  On my PC, I have checked the tags with Winamp (latest version), Windows Media Player, Media Monkey, and a dedicated tag utility, and none of them show these incorrect genres; those programs, AND the PowerAmp app on my Samsung, all show the correct genres and tag info.  This leads me to believe that it's not a particular app, but some way that Android is reading the tag info.  Any suggestions?  I'm running 2.3.5.

ID3Fixer doesn't seem to work for Ogg files unfortunately. :(

Id3fixer did more harm than good.

I had good results with removing the app data from Media Storage and restarting. Unfortunately, any change in the genre information after that results in the same issue.

This report applies to an Android-based device, and the issue tracker where you reported it specializes in issues within the Open Source source code of the Android platform.

We are not able to provide support for individual devices. Please report this issue in the support forum for your device, which might be hosted by your device manufacturer or by the operator where you got your device.

The report may apply to a specific device,  but the problem doesn't. I also experience it on a Creative Zen Touch 2 media player with Android 2.2. So the problem is clearly in Android 2.2, not in a specific device.

Best Post!
Tag&Rename is a Windows tool that allows you to rename and rename music files in a variety of formats. This tool allows you to quickly and easily edit tag information such as MP3ID, Windows Media, and iTunes tags (see complete list below). I use this software to maintain the folders of music and I hope that this software is also benificial for you.
https://hitplugins.com/tagrename-crack/

Ah shit, a blast from the past boys!!!