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So I have an album that for some reason shows up as of an 'Unknown artist' in my library in the Google Music app. I already fixed the tags in Foobar (and also checked them again with MP3Tag) and then deleted the old files off my sd card and copied the fixed ones back on it. Yet still, they show up without an artist in the app...

I tried several things:

  • Uploading them to my Google Music Library, then they show up just fine. (So the files should be correct. But I want them on my extra SD card, so this was just to see if there was still something wrong with the files.)
  • Clear all the data of the Google Music app (menu->apps->google play->clear data.) Didn't change a thing.
  • Reinstall the Google Music app.
  • Remove the com.google.android.music folder.
  • Restart phone.

Nothing fixed it... Now I don't know what else I could try. Obviously something went wrong, since at first the tags were wrong, but I fixed them. Any other program I tried reads them just fine. Any ideas on how to fix it?

Edit:

I just tried another music app on android (doubleTwist) and that also shows those songs under 'Unknown artist'... Yet when I copy the file back from my SD card to my pc it does show both Artist and Album artist correctly. I'm stumped. Is there some kind of cash of android I can clear? (Already tried clearing the Google Music app cash.) I'm completely stumped on what's going wrong :(

Edit 2:

I just found that the 'unknown artists'-songs apparently use an older/different version of Flac than the other files. According to foobar the bad songs are flac 1.1.1, while the other files are 1.2.1. When looking in Mp3tag the bad ones says 'FLAC (FLAC ID3v2)' and the good ones say 'FLAC (FLAC)'.

Thanks a lot!

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  • I know I have this issue occasionally, but did you change the artist and the album artist as well? Sometimes I can have all the artist information, but if they album artist is left blank or different, Google Music puts more importance in that instead.
    – VarnerBeast14
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 17:05
  • Yea, my Foobar configuration needs me to set the Album Artist correctly to make it show up as I want it. So yes, both are set correctly. Both exactly the same (just like all the music of that artist.) Usually that indeed fixes the problem, now it didn't and I'm stumped :s
    – The Oddler
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 17:09
  • I keep all of my music stored online with Google Music, so when I edit the information it's all from Google Music on my computer, but have you tried syncing the Google Music App? Sometimes I have to sync for it to update the information that I changed or to be able to see the music that I have added.
    – VarnerBeast14
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 17:11
  • How do I do this syncing? Tried to find that option but nowhere to be found. (I'm looking in the Google Music android app, correct?) I did find a 'refresh', but that didn't help :(
    – The Oddler
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 17:15
  • The refresh is what I was talking about, but your phone also has to have "Sync" on. For mine, it's in the same place that I toggle data, wifi, bluetooth and all of that stuff.
    – VarnerBeast14
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 17:22

2 Answers 2

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Ok, I fixed it!

The problem was apparently the version of the Flac files. The bad files had version 1.1.1, the good ones had 1.2.1. So I used Foobar the convert the bad files to version 1.2.1, replaced the bad files on the SD card and then their artist showed correctly!

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For anyone who comes across and this is not the reason... I got a new phone and transferred all my music from an SD card to internal storage... i then noticed that a whole load of songs had unknown artists...

I came across this link and realised all the songs with 'unknown artist' were wma files... absolute nonsense

https://www.htc.com/sea/support/htc-u11/faq/cant-play-wma-in-google-play-music.html

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