Rebuilding your music database?

My biggest gripe with Link (even though there are many) it how poorly it syncs music. More often than not, I get:

- It arbitrarily decides to stop copying music about 1/3 of the way in

- It fails to properly remove music from my device when I ask Link to remove songs or playlists. Sometimes it leaves the song, sometimes it takes the song but leaves a broken link to the song

- It has no sense of consistency with my album artwork, sometimes copying over the album art from iTunes, sometimes completely failing to do so, sometimes putting the wrong cover on a song

At it's core, my gut tells me that part of the issue is actually device side ... that the music database is extremely flaky. Anyone know if there's a way to remove and rebuild it without re-formating the device.

Also - anyone know if there's a way to convince Link to only copy songs to the SD card? If seems to want to randomly fill my device memory before moving onto the SD card. :-(

I hope this software gets fixed someday ....

Go into your setting/USB mass storage , turn it on then connect to your PC and drag your music on to the sd card.

Originally Posted by Slff

Go into your setting/USB mass storage , turn it on then connect to your PC and drag your music on to the sd card.

I've done that before. The issue is that it usually doesn't bring my album art with it.

Thanks though

Originally Posted by RubberChicken76

I've done that before. The issue is that it usually doesn't bring my album art with it.

Thanks though

Yes it does not, sorry

Originally Posted by Slff

Yes it does not, sorry

All good. I have a theory that the syncing is partially caused by a messed up database, which is causing the random issues with album art appearing or not appearing; songs not syncing etc. Hoping there's a way to delete and rebuild it, short of reforming the device ...

Originally Posted by RubberChicken76

All good. I have a theory that the syncing is partially caused by a messed up database, which is causing the random issues with album art appearing or not appearing; songs not syncing etc. Hoping there's a way to delete and rebuild it, short of reforming the device ...

Good luck , let us know.


Posted on CB10 with my iPad, but I have a Z30 ha ha the best phone ever.

Originally Posted by RubberChicken76

All good. I have a theory that the syncing is partially caused by a messed up database, which is causing the random issues with album art appearing or not appearing; songs not syncing etc. Hoping there's a way to delete and rebuild it, short of reforming the device ...

Did you find a way to fix album art without deleting music?

Alas no.

I had to do the following

- deleted all folders on my SD card
- Used iTunes sync app to sync a BlackBerry playlist to my phone
- if any songs were missing art, I deleted them from the device; then
- called up the offenders in iTunes, copied and pasted the album are directly so that iTunes would embed it to the Mp3
- then resynched using the ITunes sync app instead of desktop manager

All album art on my device now




Posted via CB10

So, in playing with this more and seeing where the Sync app also fails, I think the root of the problem is as follows:

- BlackBerry Link doesn't grab the artwork from iTunes and embed the artwork in the music file as it is copying over

- Instead, Blackberry Link attempts to make its own cover database, much like iTunes seems to do. This can be flaky and it sometimes assigns the wrong cover to the wrong album.

- When BlackBerry link is initially syncing, it copies over the song, the song folder and a cover thumbnail. If it glitches for any reason, problems being

- BlackBerry Link routinely fails to properly remove music from device when you ask it to. It may or may not remove the song file. it also may or may not remove the song folder and the cover JPEG

- This causes issues if you attempt to reload the song later ... the leftover folder and artwork can cause Link to see them, assume the song is there already and fail to re-copy. And the database for covers seems to get screwed up

I've got a nice looking music library now due to the steps above, but I really shouldn't have gone to this effort. You'd think the QA team would have caught these issues pretty easily as they aren't uncommon use-cases.

I turned off music synching in BlackBerry Link because it only recognises music files played in either iTunes or Windows Media Player, neither of which I use. I mount my device as a drive on my PC instead, and drag music folders onto it manually.

Why BlackBerry Link can't simply recognise music files by file type, regardless of the program they get played in, is beyond me.

Typed on my Q10, SQN100-2, OS 10.2.1.2234