Unable to read artist name

[NGeek752]

As described in the title, somehow Auxio couldn't read the artist of the songs on my phones.

Phone Information:

Android 9 and 7

Due Diligence:

• I have read the Contribution Guidelines.

[OxygenCobalt]

I'll need more information.

• Do you have a logcat/stack trace?
• What phone model/ROM are you using?
• Can I have a possible sample file so I can investigate it's metadata?
• What artist names are you getting? "Unknown Artist", "<unknown>", "null", or just blank?

If you provide me with some extra context I'll be able to discern the problem, it might already be fixed in the development version.

[NGeek752]

1. No I don't think I have one
2. HTC Desire 19+ (Android 9) and LG K4 (Android 7)
3. Sorry I don't know how to do that, but when I use my laptop and other music player apps, I can see the artist name of songs
4. I assume the name below the song title is the artist name. In the library section, all names below their respective song titles are "Music". In the songs section, all names below their respective song titles are the artist name of the latest imported song.

Not sure if I provide enough information. Ask for more if I could provide. Thanks!

[OxygenCobalt]

I assume the name below the song title is the artist name

Oh, its actually formatted as Artist Name / Album Name. So if I'm getting this correctly, you're getting [Last Imported Song Name] / Music on every song. That implies that you use a plain "Music" folder, but I have no idea why the artist name defaults to the artist of the last imported song.

What other android music players are you not getting the issue? I know that VLC and Vanilla music parse audio tags themselves, and so if those work but other players like Phonograph don't, then it's yet another instance of an OEM crippling the Media APIs and there's nothing I can do about it.

3. Sorry I don't know how to do that

You could upload one of your music files to Google Drive [or something else] and then link it. Preferably something that's non-copyrighted to be safe, but that's optional.

[NGeek752]

Sorry for the delay (not here very often)

So if I'm getting this correctly, you're getting [Last Imported Song Name] / Music on every song

That's right.

What other android music players are you not getting the issue?

Music Player Go doesn't have this issue for me. I'm not sure about others

I got one over here. NCS should be safe:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mh5lWqLgXb4uKY0z69puZRxrL_9zCr6n/view?usp=sharing

Thanks!

[OxygenCobalt]

Looks like my device reads it just fine. This seems like a MediaStore issue that MPGO somehow mitigated. I'll try to check it out.

[OxygenCobalt]

I just considered that it might be the way that I was indexing artists in 1.4.2.

1.4.2 reads artist names from the album database. MPGO reads artist names from the song database. Your device's MediaStore implementation may have borked getting the artist name from the albums database but not the songs database. This means that the upcoming 2.0.0 release may fix this issue as I now read artists from the song database.

If it's possible, can you test if the latest version [2.0.0 or 2.0.1] fixes your issue? Thanks.

[NGeek752]

I tested the latest version 2.0.1 but it's the same
A sreenshot for reference:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uPOW0JJ6rXdiwxhuASu2BmLpqpw_KddY/view?usp=sharing

Maybe my Android version is a bit old(?) (I used my Android 9 phone for testing)
Thanks for your hard work!

[OxygenCobalt]

This truly is the most inexplicable issue I've ever seen. MPGO does more or less the exact same thing that my app does, yet it does not have this issue. Can you provide an example of what Music Player GO shows for the artist name? I can possibly trace the issue back to something more specific.

As for your theory about the old android version, the APIs for indexing music have more or less remained unchanged since 2011 (to the detriment of every music player), so version doesn't really matter here. It's more-so OEMs crippling the music APIs either due to stupidity or to railroad users into their music app that relies on private extensions to the OS instead.

[NGeek752]

Yeah sure!
Music Player Go:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/170tP0C1XrYg3P-j7QbTCLMhwvkfzdn09/view?usp=drivesdk

I see. Then it's a really wierd issue... and seems like only I encounter this so far

Btw, my phone is HTC Desire 19+, not one that has many users I guess. Not sure if it helps

[OxygenCobalt]

I think I've found a possible discrepancy between MPGO's implementation and mine. In technical terms, they used the applications content resolver while I used the content resolver of a local context. Other than that, the only differences I found were in their wording of MediaStore columns and their order, which I doubt changed much.

Perhaps try this APK?
Auxio_AppContext.zip

[NGeek752]

Hi there!

I don't know how to install from the zip file (after some research).
However,
I just installed your latest version, and this issue is solved!!! (check out the image below)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--4ptJMihBSOzW_aX-IRvNWGHpnNVsvd/view
Could be the discrepancy you mentioned above

Can't thank you enough for this! Sorry for my delayed response
Wish you the best!

[OxygenCobalt]

That's great! And yes, this does mean that the issue I mentioned above was the cause of this issue. Thanks for holding out for so long.