Fewer tracks on phone than on computer

[billfalls]

New user question: after syncing music from MM5 on my computer to MM5 on my phone's SD card, MM shows fewer tracks on my phone, even though all the tracks were already there under my previous music player app:
Computer (Music > All tracks): 9423 files, 67.6 GB - this closely matches my music library size in other apps
Computer (Classical music): 6288 files, looks about right
Phone SD card (Music): 2315 tracks
Phone SD card (Classical music): 7448 tracks, and in this view I see jazz, Latin, and other genres

None of the reasons offered for tracks not syncing in the MM website help articles and this forum apply as far as I can tell: no folders left out, interrupted sync operations were completed later, etc.

My questions:

• Might the phone SD card have all 9423 tracks but something's wrong in my MM settings?
• Why does Music on the computer show all tracks but on the phone it shows fewer tracks than Classical?
• Do the Music and Classical music views in MM mean different things on the computer vs. in the phone?

[Lowlander]

Were all files selected to be Synced?

even though all the tracks were already there under my previous music player app

Are you saying the files were already on the device? Did you Sync after that?

[billfalls]

Are you saying the files were already on the device? Did you Sync after that?

Yes, most of the tracks were already there when I did my first MM sync. MM still appeared to download thousands of tracks during the lengthy first sync but the total file space used on the SD card didn't change much, so it may have been comparing or overwriting the existing files.

Another data point since I posted this question yesterday: I found that two of my three albums by a film composer that were "missing" in the Classical Music view on my phone are in the smaller Music view (see the track counts in my post yesterday). I also see other albums in the Music view that I thought were missing.

So it looks like all the tracks may be on the phone SD card after all (more of them than MM shows on the computer, but I don't need to solve that mystery now). So I'm just left with the question about why the Music view in MM on the computer appears to show everything but in MM on the phone it shows only "everything but classical." Is this in the app design or is it something I caused? Is there a view mode on my phone that shows all my music together as Music does on the computer?

[Lowlander]

Yes, it's a design choice. You can modify what MMW shows in each Collection, but this isn't possible in MMA.

[billfalls]

Yes, it's a design choice. You can modify what MMW shows in each Collection, but this isn't possible in MMA.

Thank you, Lowlands.

This is unfortunate - I'm discovering that more composers and even albums are split across the two views, Music and Classical, in MM for Android, a bad mismatch with the way I think of and listen to my music. I'll submit something in the feature requests area.

[Lowlander]

MMA can't be configured, so make sure that in MMW Type = Music for all files and that Classical isn't used in the Genre. Then all files should be picked up as Music and be together in the same views.

[billfalls]

MMA can't be configured, so make sure that in MMW Type = Music for all files and that Classical isn't used in the Genre. Then all files should be picked up as Music and be together in the same views.

In MMW I deleted the "Classical music" collection (nervously, hoping I would be warned if files were to be deleted) and that went OK: the collection heading is gone from the UI (fine with me) and the music is still there. I didn't touch the genre info yet.

Then in MMA I started a sync and it first offered to delete all tracks in the "Classical music" collection. That was clear and I declined, but the sync then concluded with no deletions but one category. The "Classical music" collection on my phone is still 7281 tracks as before, and "Music" is still only the remaining 2315.

I searched the MM Help wiki for "track type" and found it in descriptions of file attributes but no guidance on how to edit it in bulk; it looks like I need to change "3" (Classical) to "0" (Music) for all those tracks. I looked at iTunes, where I currently manage my music library, and see no track type in album settings. Can I change the track type of those 7000+ tracks in MMW, and if so how?

Or is it as simple as letting MMA delete all tracks in the Classical category and reload them from MMW, where they'll now have the Music category? Based on your last reply I'd need to change the Classical genre too, maybe to Music, before the sync. And my exploration in MMW suggests that I'd need to buy a Gold membership to do that.

[Peke]

Hi,
Things happen, especially when you switch applications.

If you want to do it yourself then Follow these steps:
1. in Tools -> options -> Library -> Collections, Enable Entire Library collection
2. Open entire library -> All tracks
3. Right click on header -> Properties and enable type Column
4. Left Click on Type Column so that it is only and main Sort
5. Select all tracks with Type Classical -> Right Click Properties -> Change Type to Music -> OK
6. WAIT

That should handle File Type.

Please note that MM detect Classical Type based on Genre during scan and other specific Types by other fields and specific things tied to those types so you need to remove/change cause for the issue.

After you are satisfied you can compress your MM5.DB -> Upload it somewhere -> Send DL link in support Ticket and we can Restore Classical collection that would make things easier as you can hide it from UI, no need for delete.

EDIT: I forgot, welcome and HAPPY MONKEYING!

[Lowlander]

Deleting Collections has no influence on where files are Synced to on MMA. Type and Genre do, both can be edited in Properties.

[Peke]

Hi,
Do not forget that you can change each Type destination mask so that they are synced to same folder.

[billfalls]

Thanks, Peke. Your instructions yesterday worked (once I figured out which set of MMW headers gave access to the file properties) and I was able to change all the Classical file types to Music. I changed the Classical Music genre name to Music and will leave it that way, since it's such a huge group that I never filter on it when selecting music to play. Then I discovered that I could do the same to my phone SD music files in MMW.

I also discovered the tool for listing and cleaning up duplicates. That took hours because iTunes on Windows, it turns out, had been duplicating all my imported music (from Amazon Music, Bandcamp, vinyl I'd digitized, etc., even the old iTunes Music folder) into the iTunes Media folder. That cleanup eliminated hundreds of tracks from my PC.

But after a sync from MMA there were still about 2,000 fewer music files on my phone SD card than in the MMW library. So now I've deleted all music files from the SD card and am doing a clean sync from MMA. It looks like it'll run for a few hours, even over USB. I'll report back on the result but the progress bar still shows 6,020 files to download, about 2,000 fewer than in MMW.

[Peke]

Hi,
Only way for us to fully see what happened during sync is that you create debug log as described at viewtopic.php?f=30&t=86643