Adding music to Amarok collection
 

I seem to be having a bit of an issue adding music to my Amarok collection. All of my music is in the folder /music. In there is a folder 'Jethro Tull' and in there is a folder 'Unknown'. I added the folder 'aqualung' and put the individual tracks on that CD in there. I rescanned the collection but Amarok is not seeing the songs. Is there a specific way that I am supposed to add albums to my collection so that Amarok sees them?

Thanks,
Todd

As long as you did a re-scan collection and not an update collection (don't know why but the latter never seems to do anything) Amarok should add the new stuff to the existing list.

That's what I thought. I rescanned the collection numerous times and it is still not seeing anything new that I put in there.

I just noticed something a bit strange, I ran Rhythmbox (for the first time) and I am having the same problem. The four albums that I just added to /music are not showing up in either Rhythmbox or Amarok. They are there in Nautilus so I know that they exist. Why can't any of the music players see them?

Try moving your /home/<username>/.kde/share/apps/amarok/ collection.db and collection_scan.files to a different location then do another re-scan to re-create a new database.

I tried what you said, but the new albums are not showing up. I have two computer and I am having the same issue with both of them. I am running Gnome on Ubuntu 7.04. I go into configure AmaroK and I can see the folders in there when I choose where the music collection is and they are checked but they will not show up in the collection. Could it be that I am running Gnome and not KDE? I do not recall this happening when I was running KDE.

Thanks,
Todd

Using gnome instead of kde shouldn't be a problem. I've used amarok with several different desktop environments with no problems.

Can you play the files if you open them from nautilus? I'm wondering if the reason neither rhythmbox or amarok was seeing them is if the files aren't being recognized as music files

I can actually play them in AmaroK if I browse to them in the 'Files' section. They just will not show up in the 'collection' section. So Amarok plays them fine, it just will not add them to the collection.

Problem seems to be solved. I downloaded the music in Ogg format in CD quality and used SoundKonverter (KDE) to convert them to 192KB mp3s. This is what I was trying to add to my collection but AmaroK would not see the folder. If I used the files tab in Amarok I could find and play them but I could not add them to my collection.

I then tried SoundConverter (Gnome) and did the same thing, success! I have no idea what the difference is as I used to use SoundKonverter and had no issues in the past (Of course, I used KDE then and Gnome now). So now I stick to SoundConverter and Gnome...

Thanks for all of the ideas,
Todd

Just to add to this post.

I recently found that mp3 created with 'sound juicer' at 128kbp (and files created with other software at this rate) appeared in 'Rythmbox' as artist 'unknown'. I changed the settings in Sound Juicer to create files at 160kbp and they now appear.

I reckon you may have had the same issue. Now you have changed to a higher bit rate 'Rythmbox' (and possibly Amarok) will see them correctly. Don't know why this should happen.

Check the properties of the files it could not read properly, I bet they are 128kbp or less.

amarok collection.db
 

One thing i found out today: if your /var partition is full, Amarok/SQLite cant update your collection. It quietly fails after trying.

Clean out /var as best you can, and re-scan your collection - voila!