Hi there everyone. I’ve recently got a Clip Zip and whilst it’s a great sounding little thing something has been bugging me ever since I have had it.
When I scroll through the list of artists looking for something in particular, Michael Jackson say, I’d get to M and find sometimes he was there and sometimes wasn’t. Then I noticed that there were in fact 3 “levels” of artist names and if I scroll from A-Z 3 times I would eventually get to the M that Michael Jackson had taken up residence in. Eg:
A------M-----Z-A-------M-------Z-A----------M--------Z and then you loop back to the first A.
The only things I can think of are that perhaps some of the artist names are lower case and end up elsewhere, or that maybe it knows when the artist is in a compilcation album with lots of others and files them out of the way.
Has anyone else experienced this? I’d either like to understand what it’s trying to do or how to fix it!
It’s a 4GB white version with a 32GB Class 4 microSD card and updated using Winamp if that makes any difference.
Edit:
Just to add I’ve only got music on the microSD card so it’s not that some of the music is on the main memory and some on the card.
I have also just done the firmware update and that hasn’t fixed it.
I also meant to say it’s exactly the same for the list of albums.
Another thing that will cause mutiple Artist listings is the file type. For example, if you have an album (or just some songs) by a particular artist ripped in .mp3 format and maybe another album in .wma fomat, then maybe add yet another album in .flac and .ogg you could have that same artist listed 4 times in the Artist listing.
Thanks for the replies. 
I have used Mp3tag to rewrite every music file on the SD card in the Clip Zip to the format recommended on this very forum to see if that helped and unfortunately it has made no difference.
There are some different file formats on there but having just looked there is no connection between formats and where the artist or album appears.
As an example I’ve got an album by Rihanna called “Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes”. All the tracks are mp3s in the same format. The album title is identical when viewed in Mp3tag and yet appears twice in the cycle of 3 A-Zs. When looking closer it’s actually the artist name that has somehow split them up. Any tracks which lists the artist as “Rihanna plus xyz” or “Rihanna and abc” appears in the first listing of the album and anything with the artist listed as just “Rihanna” appears in the second. If I’m going for a run and want to listen to that album my automatic process would be to select the album by name rather than navigate by artist and yet by doing this I would only be selecting part of it.
If I’m the only person to have experienced this what could I have possibly done to get this result? Is it worth me trying a different memory card for example? Sending it back and getting a different one? It just seems like such an unusual problem to have!
Thanks again for any further inspiration!
looks like the issue is due to the artist feild having different values in it. i would suggest editing the artist feild to show consitant data. for example instead of Rihanna and xyz change it to just Rihanna
drlucky, I’m sure there’s a pattern as to what’s going on but unfortunately I’m not bright enough to spot it! Alas it’s not as easy as what you’re suggesting.
I have 4 of Radio 1’s Live Lounge albums with a different artist on each track. They are all grouped together as Live Lounge 1, 2, 3 etc under the second set of Ls. Under the third they also appear though. Two of the tracks that appear under the third set of Ls are by the Foo Fighters. If I start browsing artists I scroll through and find that the Foo Fighters appear under the third set of Fs.
Miikerman, I do have the latest firmware but will do everything that you suggested and see what happens. I’ll put that Rihanna album on as the first and see what the result is.
I’ll post an update once I’ve tried it. Thanks again for the contributions. :)
Well having followed Miikerman’s suggestions and put the album above on it appears only once in the album listings. I’m throwing 20gb now to see what happens…
Well with about 18gb of music on there it now has 5 levels of artists, one of which only has a handful of names, and 4 levels of albums. That Rihanna album has appeared in one place rather than two and the Live Lounge albums are also all together so that points towards it not being related to the files themselves.
Could it be that it can’t cope with the number of tracks on there?
Could the order they appear in change depending on the order in which they’re put on the card?
And another odditity. The under “Info” in the “System Settings” menu the memory card shows that it is empty!
Well it now won’t turn on at all so I think there must be something wrong in there somewhere! Time to see what Play.com’s customer service is like…
Well Play.com agreed there was a fault with it and I now have another Clip Zip. The trouble is that it has the same problem! Am I really the only person to have experienced this issue?
Hello again Miikerman. Thanks for taking the time to reply again. I’ve tried processing the tags in MP3tag, used different memory cards, changed every aspect of how I load files on there (programs, microSD card readers, copying directly, copying in stages) and have found that every time there has been a new (and different) order in which the artists and albums are grouped.
Out of desperation I have just installed Rockbox on there and it worked first time. I now have a nicely organised database of music that’s easy to navigate. I’ll try it for a few days and see how I get on with it. I hope it’s a permanent solution as I really like the hardware design of the Clip series. They’re brilliantly packaged.
I’ll post an update in a few days… :)
An update as promised. All appears well using Rockbox but not through the standard software so I guess there’s an issue in that somewhere. Oh well. At least it’s now usable. Thanks for all of you help everyone.
