Music Player Bugs

I've been struggling with the exact same issue, discovering that there are variety of reasons why certain songs weren't being recognized (some of them I knew about from experience with other phones). I ran a test with 213 songs, 1 song sampled from 213 different albums (to test out the various methods of transcending into the mp3 format that may have been used). I would estimate about 20% of them weren't being recognized after the initial transfer (whether by direct copy, Windows Media Player sync, or Sprint Media Manager, all three of which had the same results and do not seem to make any difference on this issue). Root causes ranged from image format variance (using Sanse Mp3 Art Sizer worked on some of them) to odd characters in some of the file names, with these issues fixed using Mp3tag. That only knocked about another 4% off, though, leaving quite a few songs still not being recognized.

A few moments ago I had another thought, really just a grasping of straws (I’m not sure why I thought of it other than I’m a technical troubleshooter and my brain leads me places I don’t always understand). I used FileRenamer to change a few characters (e.g. a file called “01 songname.mp3” was changed to “01 ren songname.mp3”) in all the songs directly on the phone (i.e. not renaming on the computer and then re-transferring) and lo and behold it fixed every one of them except for 1 belligerent holdout. Using the same FileRenamer utility, I then renamed them all back to their original name (e.g. removing the "ren") and they still all worked, except now including the one holdout!

I have no idea what this indicates exactly, and find it quite bizarre, but if it works I'm game. When I get back to my home PC I'm going to try to rename them on the computer first and then transfer them and see how that goes, but I have my doubts about that, and here's why: I suspect it may have something to do with how the Instinct is caching, or something with its internal database (if that’s how it even works)? Maybe something goes wrong during the initial transfer and renaming them to something else and back again triggers something to reinitialize? Or perhaps there's some odd thing related to the original file name itself (although renaming and naming back to the original name would seem to rule that out, unless the FileRenamer utility is doing something I can't think of, e.g. something other than just adding/removing what appear to be standard characters).

I’m wondering if I’d done this to begin with instead of first using Sanse Mp3 Art Sizer if I’d had the same results, although reducing the size of the images makes a huge difference in the initial load time, which changed from about 10 or more seconds to about 2 as it scanned these 213 songs from the 4GB card (and I think there is a caching element here, as it scans faster each subsequent time after the initial scan I do immediately after the mass file renames).

Whatever the technical explanation is (of which my mind can only speculate at this point), all 213 songs now have their tags successfully recognized, as well as all the art displayed, and this was primarilly accomplished by renaming the files directly on the phone (using FileRenamer, which makes it a few-second operation), then renaming them back. I’m hoping a developer sees this and it triggers something as to the cause and fix for this problem, because having to do this, even if it works, is still quite annoying.

This is a great post guys! Keep up the great compilation of the info. Very detailed and very useful!

Great info guys...but hey, I have a question for anyone who can answer..
When I loaded up my music, alot of the album art doesn't show up....about half of it Ex: 400 songs, 200 artwork shows up....but some of the artwork that is showing up isn't the album it came from...The album art that shows up contain the song in them but that's not the album I pulled it from...Anyone getting this? 
Example. Freebird by lynyrd Skynyrd was from gold and platinum, but the artwork that pulled up is from a Dukes of Hazard Album which I don't have...This was put on the computer directly from the cd, so...I don't get it...is this happening to anyone else???
Any help would be great...

Thanks dfootball56...

okay, tried the sanse mp3 art sizer on the existing mp3's I didn't delete, and out of 200 songs, only 2 failed to find or resize the art work...I'll take that. I backed up the 200 songs so I could  put the songs that had artwork on the albums back in the phone...damned if half of them didn't disappear...so I deleted them off the card, reloaded the converted albums from your suggested programs...and all but 2...And they fit the screen now...very cool
Thanks again dfootball56...High Five my man...

Edited:  Looking at this thread, I see it's been mentioned over and over...so...Thanks to all you guys...way easy

Only thing I dread is re-doing my entire library...over 700 albums....oh brother...

Too funny..... listening to "Call Me the Breeze" by Lynyrd Skynyrd...look up, and it's that damned Dukes of Hazzard Album Art...Never figure how that happened, but it sure beats no album art and the 5 star display that pops up...