Missing Tag Info for Some Songs

[Zach B]

Hello!

I have recently installed Poweramp, full version, and have been using it in tandem with Musicbee.

It has worked great overall so far, very impressed, but there are a few stinkers in my collection that won't read right:

 

I'm on Android 10, OneUI 2.5, Galaxy S9

Using a 512gb Samsung Micro SDXC card

With Windows 10 and the most recent version of Musicbee

On Poweramp 956

(Music is saved to "Music" on the root of my SD)

 

The tags are verified, they work perfect in Samsung Music and other players, but in Poweramp they have varying degrees of issues.  Some read with no album art, some have album art, all of them have missing track info (track number).  See below for an example of one with album art:

Screenshots from PA:

Note the missing track number and album artist.  Also worth noting it says there is No Embedded Album Art, so it's just pulling that from the folder instead of reading the tag correctly.

 

Same song in Samsung Music:

Album artist and track number read fine!  So strange.

 

Basically, I have tried multiple times and multiple methods of copying (USB wired sync, wifi sync, sync straight to the SD card, manual drag and drop; reinstalling PA and trying full rescans every time), and the files are still not agreeing with PA for whatever reason.

Also worth noting, all the albums I am having this issue with ARE pretty old (circa 2015 or 2016) and most of them are CDs I ripped straight to iTunes myself back then, but I verified they have the ID3v2.3 tags, so I'm not sure how their age/original tags may impact things.  I went and retagged them in Musicbee multiple times already, even trying to change the album name and album artist just in case, but no dice.  Making changes this way fixed maybe five or so other old albums, but there are about ten remaining that are giving me the issues listed above. I DO have a setting checked in Musicbee that says "Also create ID3v1 tags", so maybe I need to uncheck that?  Might those tags conflict and confuse PA?

Any other thoughts on how to get PA to read these correctly?  Should I just try and download new MP3 copies of all these albums, retag them from scratch?

Thank you for the help!

[andrewilley]

@Zach B Could you temporarily share a few of the problem files which never read correctly?

ID3v1 tags should not be a problem, v2.3 should be used in preference though. Re-edited files (especially ones that have been remotely syned) sometimes don't flag as being modified in Android, so a Full Rescan may be needed to pick up the changes rather than just a quick scan.

Andre

[Zach B]

Sorry for taking your time, I had tried multiple full rescans and reinstalls to no avail, but I figured something out so I'll share my solution here:

 

I used MP3Tag to copy paste the tags while removing the ID3v1 tags

More info here: https://community.mp3tag.de/t/removing-id3v1-tags/4043/11

 

So my only conclusion is that Poweramp was reading the v1 tags for some reason- removing them from the trouble files and ensuring they only have v2.3 tags solved all my issues!

 

Note that Musicbee has the setting "Also create ID3v1 tags" on by default, so I recommend turning this off!

 

Hope this is helpful for devs (to find a way to default to v2.3 tags) or for other people having this issue!!

[andrewilley]

Having ID3v1 tags in an MP3 file shouldn't matter, any v2.3 tags should override them. Almost all of my MP3s have both (and a few in fact have v2.4). My own settings in both TagScanner and MP3Tag are to still write v1 tags:

If you had ever scanned any music files which only have v1 tags, then later edit them to add v2.3 details, then the modifications might get missed by a regular rescan (especially if the files were copied over using a syncing program) but a Full Rescan should correctly update all the database entries for you.

So it might still be an idea to upload a few of the problem versions of these files. If they are being generated by a common app in the wild (such as Musicbee) Max may be able to code around whatever oddities might be found in the files.

Andre

[MotleyG]

Note that mp3tag has an order of preference for tags, APE>ID3v1>ID3v2.x

But as you have found, you can copy any existing tags, and paste them back to write them in only the preferred formats. Usually the culprits are APE tags. If you have no specific need for these, I would personal recommend to remove them and use only id3 moving forward. Even ID3v1 tags are of limited use for most purposes now, unless an older player or car radio requires you to keep them.

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, MotleyG said:

Note that mp3tag has an order of preference for tags, APE>ID3v1>ID3v2.x

Interesting, TagScanner defaults to APE > ID3v2.x > ID3v1. But that's configurable.

I agree that removing APE tags would be a good idea, they'll just confuse the issue if you are primarily working with ID3.

The vast majority of files in my Singles folder (which come from all sorts of sources) are ID3v1+ID3v2.3, followed by ID3v.2.3 alone, followed by a few ID3v1+ID3v2.3+APEv2. However I've batch-edited almost all of them to remove extraneous tags (don't want varying Album, Album Artist, etc tags in a Singles folder) so that could be as a result of the re-saving.

Andre