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.

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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.

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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.