Database Info

Duplicate Songs in Google Music

I recently started using Google Music. Previously I had all my music files on the internal memory of my INC. I had just copy / pasted them from iTunes but now it looks like Google will sync that music automatically when I download new music to iTunes.
But I noticed quite a number of duplicate songs recently. Is Google placing duplicated songs on the SD Card somewhere? Should I delete the music folder from the internal memory or is it maybe just a fluke for these songs? Doesn't seem to be across the board though.

Google music beta has been pretty buggy so far. As for your duplicated, it might be because your tags don't match between what's in the cloud and what's on your phone. I guess you could remove them from your phone just to see what happens. Worst case is that you have to reload them.
Sent from my HTC Incredible

Use Amazon's cloud and be done with it already.

I had the same issue. Here's what google said:
Albums stored locally on your Android devices may appear more than once
during uploading. After uploading has completed, Music Beta will recognize
and combine these album listings.
If an album is appearing multiple times in your library after uploading
has completed, this is likely because the 'Album Artist' field in the
metadata for your album's listings is either blank or appears differently
for each listing.
To combine these listings, simply edit the 'Album Artist' field so that
it's identical for each album listing. Instructions for editing metadata
can be found in the Music Beta help center at

I had the same issue so I uninstalled the program uploaded all my music and deleted off my sd card and internal memory and have had no issues...but do remember it is still in beta.

OP did you solve the problem or does it still remain?

im seeing kind of the same issue over here, except mine is duplicating songs in playlists in google music. i have 0 gigs of songs on my phone and all the music is coming from the same itunes. It will just put the playlist of songs twice in the playlist. kind of annoying.

i had the same problem with some albums i had on SD card.
all i did erase the albums from card.

I am having the problem were duplicates are showing on the web version of Google Music. I have no duplicate songs in iTunes and they all have the correct metadata. Most of the duplicated songs appear to be ones I purchased or got for free from Google.
I do not want to use Amazon cloud as it's not free.

If you have all the music on your couch with music manager attached, if deleted off Google Music online. Would music resync with music manager?
Ik. randomness

and did you already try with another ROM if the same happens to you?

Bi-Directional syncing is also a huge problem on google music.

sharper4 said:
I recently started using Google Music. Previously I had all my music files on the internal memory of my INC. I had just copy / pasted them from iTunes but now it looks like Google will sync that music automatically when I download new music to iTunes.
But I noticed quite a number of duplicate songs recently. Is Google placing duplicated songs on the SD Card somewhere? Should I delete the music folder from the internal memory or is it maybe just a fluke for these songs? Doesn't seem to be across the board though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found a solution and posted it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2164765

[Q] Is it possible to make Google Music's offline cache available to other players?

I have already read some other topics about this, and I know Google Music stores its offline cache in android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music and that you need to delete the .nomedia files in the path for the songs to be available to other players.
I have noticed, however, that Google Music stores the files with random numeric names with no ID3 tags. So when you access them with other players, it's rrrrreally annoying to sort the songs out.
So my question is... how does Google Music know which file corresponds to which song? That info must be stored somewhere, right? Music is showing the ID3 info somehow.
Is it possible to create an app that renames and moves the cache files to other directory according to Google Music's internal information?
Thanks in advance.

Would love if there was a way, even if it involved hooking it up to a computer and getting another program to tag the songs.

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A

In your sdcard, if your device has an internal sd it''l be there and not in the removable, go to Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music and rename the .nomedia file. I haven't tried this myself because I don't have another media player as i love the music beta player, but that file is what you put in a folder to tell the media service to not scan that directory so removing it will add those files to the media db. However that may cause issues with the Music Beta app so be cautious, hence rename instead of delete. I would reboot check the apps and if all is well u can then delete the file.

Offline Music Importer
Check out the app which makes this task easy.
The ID3 tag information is stored in Google Music's database on the phone. The app accesses that database and applies the proper ID3 tags and artwork to the cache files you're talking about.
With all that information added, the app moves the files to a public folder on your sdcard so that the Android Media Service Provider can see the files. The files then become available to any player on the device.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.sapien.music.importer

I don't know how the syncing really works within the application or anything, but when I just installed Google Music, none of the playlists would download. I had to empty my music folder completely, and now everything syncs.
Is there anything that doesn't remove the music from Google Music's folder? It seems like moving it all would mess up the sync function. I'm just wondering if anyone knows before I subject myself to a day without music while the app downloads a couple thousand songs.

There is nothing on my local folder, android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music, actually there's no "music" folder inside "cache". I have try the above app and also the app "Google Music Importer" (which appears to be the same) but nothing, it's doesn't recognize the downloaded albums. I'm on ICS 4.0.4 with a custom ROM. What can I do?

I have finally managed to import my music. First of all, you need the latest version of the import app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sapien.music.importer
If the music is not on your internal sdcard under android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music then the path will be /data/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music. Now you have to set the proper permissions to the folder and files (I'm not sure if you have to set reading permissions or also write and execute ones, and also, I'm not sure if you have to set it only in the files or also on all the folders behind). You need to grant permissions on files under artwork and music folders .
You have to tell the import app your "cache" path under its settings. If your path is the second one, you will need root access (also configurable on the app's options).
Now the import app should recognize your music. If not, please let me know.
I have a problem here, how can I change permissions to more than just one file at the same time? Thanks.

It's a good idea

It doesn't work, sometimes the app recognizes the music and sometimes it doesn't. The funny thing is that sometimes it only recognizes the artwork, and not the music. This is starting to piss me off...

New music on SD card not displaying in Google Music

I have a lot of music on my SD card and normally use Google Music (4.1.511) to play it. However, I noticed that a couple of albums I've added this week are not showing up in Music and no matter what I do, I can't make them show. Here's it what I've done so far:
Cleared cache and data in Google Music
Booted into recovery and cleared cache & dalvik
Checked file properties and permissions in Root Explorer
Played the tracks in Google Music by going into Root Explorer, long tapping and hitting Open (plays fine )
Confirmed the music doesn't show in stock ICS Music
Removed stock ICS Music
Uninstalled Google Music (also went into /system/app and deleted the APK)
Re-installed from APK
Fixed permissions and checked SD card in recovery
Checked that the files are correctly tagged and re-copied them from the computer
Probably other stuff I've lost track of
After all that, these new albums are still not showing up in Music. The rest of my collection is there, just not anything added recently, even though I can see these files in Root Explorer and play them in Music by long tapping --> Open. WTF???
Can anybody give me any ideas before I go insane? And please don't suggest other music players, I like Google Music and it has always worked well for me across different ROMs. There must be some fix to this.

Try an app that forces Android to rescan for media files.
Sent from my HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio using Tapatalk

Tried Rescan Media and still no dice. I backed up my ROM and flashed a different one and it showed them up within a couple of minutes of booting. Very, very odd.

wmoore said:
Tried Rescan Media and still no dice. I backed up my ROM and flashed a different one and it showed them up within a couple of minutes of booting. Very, very odd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but a lot of people seem to still have this issue. Here's what worked for me:
Some apps rely on the Media Storage service to list media files on the device, instead of enumerating files every time they are launched. In other words, Media Storage indexes the files on your device, then apps like Play Music query Media Storage to know which files to display.
For some reason, on my phone, it only indexed files if they were copied through USB. If I copied MP3s from a network share using ES Explorer, or from Team Viewer, they wouldn't show up in Play Music.
The solution was to clear Media Storage's data (Settings => Apps => All => Media Storage => Clear Data) then reboot the phone. This forces the service to reindex all content. Play Music will act as if there's no music at all on the device for a few minutes, then everything should show up.
I hope this can help someone

dsp4 said:
The solution was to clear Media Storage's data (Settings => Apps => All => Media Storage => Clear Data) then reboot the phone. This forces the service to reindex all content. Play Music will act as if there's no music at all on the device for a few minutes, then everything should show up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this was the same solution I stumbled upon.

The Solution to clear the media storage data and reboot works! Thank you so much.......

[Q] Way to sync music with Copy? (Dropsync for Copy)

Let me mention this first. I do NOT want to use google play music cloud service. I like the music directly on my device, and on my computer as well.
I have a large library of music, and managing it with my phone is some what of a hassle. I prefer to use itunes because out of all the music players I try, I find that it functions well and looks elegant. So when I want to add music to my HTC One, I plug in my phone and move the artist folder from my itunes media folder, in to the music folder of my One. Sometimes this is just a bit of a hassle and manually moving the music to the device takes up time if I buy a bunch of music from different artists.
I would like to use a cloud service like Copy( since I have 550gb of storage on there) to sync music with my phone automatically. I can set my itunes folder to any folder, so setting up a folder to say User/Copy/Music isn't an issue on my computer, but I'd have to download the music on to my phone and move it to the specific folder which would be worse! I know I could use dropsync (dropbox version of what I'd like) to sync a folder on my device to the cloud and vice versa, but does something like this exist for Copy? My music library exceeds the size of my dropbox space. Could possibly even use Box for this.
TL;DR Is there a Dropsync like app for Copy?

Dropsync like app for Copy
Obviously there is none. A lot of people - like me - have quit the DropBox because of Mrs Rice. I am now on Copy. Works well.
So - is there some dev who can create a CopySync app? Should not be too complicated, since Copy has about all the features of DropBox....

FolderSync - the Solution
Guys, FolderSync is a very reliable app and works with all major cloud services - with copy.com as well.
F.... the dropbox and Mrs. Rice.

[Q] Where are the Music playlists?

Hello,
I'm trying to move from folder organized music to playlists, but I would really prefer if I can back them up on cloud etc and modify them on 1 device (PC) then send them across all my devices.
I just have some trouble when I delete a playlist in Z3.
If I delete it from an explorer (SolidExplorer) the Music app (aka Walkman) doesn't forget it. Kill of media services, cache clean, data clean, media rescan with 3rd part app AND hard reboot have no effect on this playlist LOL...
My research showed me Android maybe using a file Music.db in data/data/ as a back up. Which I suppose is the root folder requiring a root access to be opened by browser.
Anyone can confirm this for me, since I never needed a root permission before?
I belive another issue with deleted mp3s persisting in Music app, untill reboot (media rescan wont help >_>) have the same origin.
Any workaround?
How I can clear old (missing) mp3/Playlist shortcuts in Music app without restart?