NW-A Series Problem: Artist Link does not work!

[till25]

Hallo!

Today I got my A1000 in silver..Its really awsome:-)

But i have one problem...The "Artist Link" function does not work properly. It always says that there are no linked files found on my divice. But all my files on the player have a genre information...

It only works with the two sample songs from sony on the player

Can somebody help me?

[cryptos]

Salu

I have the exact same problem and kind find a solution! have you found one??

Regards Martin

[Ishiyoshi]

*thread moved to its appropriate section of the forum

[cryptos]

thanx for moving us!

let's hope, that someone has some advice here!

[Ascariss]

Indeed, i have the same problem, not sure why. Granted 95% of my tracks have no album info or genre, I may get onto that tonight though.

[Guest Stuge]

We should wait for the "major update " to come. Hoppfully these bugs will be solved in that new update.

Keep Patience till then@@@@@@

[Tetsugaku-San]

Mine works sometimes on the 3000 but not always, I think it just depends how well tagged your files are. Remember it goes mainly on genre, and as the genre section is always stupid - rock/rockpop/poppyrock/punkrock/oldrock/eightiesrock/indierock (for example) the player can't necercerily make the connection between them.

[cryptos]

I've been trying to modify my tags so that the artist link funktion should recognize them.... untill now... no sucess :-(

[till25]

Hi again!

I've not yet solved the problem. All my music files on my a1000 have id tags. I've fixed all of them with TagScanner.I really don't know why it does not work. Only with some files i can use the artist link button...

[Dinko]

I'm kind of curious...

are you guys using mp3 files, ATRAC files, or a combination of mp3 & atrac?

[till25]

Some of them are ATRAC files (ripped from CDs) and some are MP3 files. But the most files on it are MP3 files...

[Ascariss]

All Mp3 in my case, SS3.3 crapped out on me for some reason, keeps crashing whenever I try to import more than 5 files at a time, and I am in no hurry to import over 2000 files into SS and convert them to atrac. lol

[jdbrookes]

ArtistLink sounds like a good feature, like the 100 fav shuffle feature.

One (or more) question though. I've had an iPod for about 2 years now (before everybody and his dog had them) but its been giving trouble and generally pissing me off recently. What can I expect changing over to a Sony? I relied quite a bit on the smart playlist feature of iTunes eg. listing all tracks from a certain artist that I rate 3 stars or better. I'm a die-hard song-rater! Is there anything like that wi the A3000 or in Connect (or possibly in future updates)? I've noticed in screenshots of the A3000 that there are stars, but what exactly can be done with these? Are they synchronised with the Connect player etc?

I listen to music on my iPod or at least 2 or 3 hours a day (lots of walking) so these little features can really make or break it for me ;-)

By the way I already use a Sony Ericsson phone, a Sony Vaio laptop, Sony Cybershot etc so it'd be nice to have the full suite!

Thanks

Dave

[Guest Stuge]

I've noticed in screenshots of the A3000 that there are stars, but what exactly can be done with these? Are they synchronised with the Connect player etc?

YES,You cangive you star rating by first giving it on Connect then Star rated songs can be imported via connect to A3000...& While playing a song you will see what Star rating you have givien to a particular song or album

[till25]

Are there any news about the Artist Link function??

[cryptos]

Unfortunatly no

I've given up on trying to edit my tags so that my sony should be able to link the artists.

I for my part have created my own genres....

Regards Martin

[mgillespie]

I have never seen ArtistLink working.

HAS ANYONE?? if so, what on earth did you do to make it work?

[Ascariss]

I believe Tetsugaku-San has gotten it working, he mentioned it here someplace. I for one haven't tried all my mp3s on it, but haven't gotten it working yet.

Perhaps the player also needs year for it to link artists? I am not sure though.

I am planning on emailing sony canada regarding this.

[sc_bond]

Stuge, for someone who doesn't even have a NW-A1000/3000 you seem to think you know alot about things like the artist link and ratings!

In reply to the other guy, when you try to rate a song it tells you that you must connect to the compliant software or, if you use Connect already, it lets you rate!

I too am having the artist link problem with my NW-A3000 and and my guess is that it must be something else as well as the genre that requires the link. That's only a guess though. So far I've had one Walkman with ATRAC3 and my new one with MP3's and it always says that a link cannot be found!

[sc_bond]

Minutes later and I have half an answer to the artist link problem. If you are pressing the link button whilst playing a song it will either list artists and allow you to preview them or it will say "Cannot find linked artists". If it cannot find linked artists, I have found out that it will either say "Increase search range", in which case you can select other options other than just genre. If it does not say "Increase search range" then heres the tricky part, either it needs updating in firmware (i think) or all files on the player (whether you update the tags or not) have no information with them. This could mean additional information other than just tags is needed, that part I do not know.

So now if you're seeing "Increase search range" you're ok, which would have been obvious anyway, if you don't see this then hold tight for an answer soon!

[Tetsugaku-San]

I have indeed got it working, to a degree, really I just get what sc_bond mentioned - it's either a bit crap, or I'm not doing it right!

[Ascariss]

Still haven't gotten it to work for me, perhaps i need to add the year to the track information?

[amigoguapo]

Still haven't gotten it to work for me, perhaps i need to add the year to the track information?

←

so far the only conclusion is, needed firmware update!!!

I do not download music but only transfer from CDs, since u all know SONY software auto update all the songs info... so everything is perfectly donw, transfered to the WALKMAN, but never got to work!!! Either on A1000 or A3000!

it will no use if u just add year, or artists, or anything, since in my case everything is done properly!!!

Sadly, it is a flaw I have to say!!! hope SONY will come with a update soon! or maybe they didnt realize there is a problem.

[Ascariss]

Your the user with the black imported A3000? correct? perhaps maybe share some pictures of it, and your A1000.

[bluesign]

not sure but can be related to this topic...

after some testing, i concluded that "artist link" function uses CDDB for finding the link. and I guess you need to rip your cd or you need CDDB2 compatible mp3s which store cddb info while they are ripped.

If someone can confirm that failure with mp3s or success with CD rips, I will be glad.

[Ascariss]

interesting, i've ripped a few of my cds, so I will give it a try tonight.

[bluesign]

update:

seems it uses moodlogic as secondary solution if first one fails (CDDB2 or CDDB)

i will dig up more soon i hope

[bluesign]

I finally understood how "artist link" works, and tried to describe, you can check from my blog.

but it takes ages to complete all link data (at least on my connection = 1mbit)

Connect PC Artist Link

hope this helps

[Ascariss]

Great, only sony can come up with something like this.

I really don't need the artist link, as long as history and fav shuffle work, I am happy. Thanks for looking into it though, Much appreciated. This will def go into the FAQ.

[mgillespie]

So my entire collection of music is not compatible with Artist-Link, unless I re-RIP them using the Sony software,

I don't recall seeing that mentioned anywhere in the documentation.

The more I own the NW-A3000, the more nasty suprises I ams tarting to discover.

Is there any 3rd party utility to gather CDDB2 information and automatically store it in the files?

[Guest Stuge]

Please Read "page no 42 & 43"of A300 online manual for more information on Artist link..

On Sony Japanese Site they have update FAQs on A3000/1000.I think they have mentioned the problem regarding Artist link .But translation of that page was so bad that i was unable to understand anything ...If someone who can read japanese then the person can solve may problem regarding "Artist Link"

[bluesign]

actually it is compatible with mp3s also as I mentioned on my previous post. But it takes ages to download information. Cause each time it sends an sample from mp3 as WAV to server and if sever recognizes the song, connect software asks for more information..

Actually I uploaded 300 songs yesterday to my library, and waited for recognation to finish (where there is no alert) and then uploaded them to my device...

Full story:

Here

So basically it is working but there is no such info anywhere....

[cryptos]

Wow thanx for the info!!

Well I'm going to give it a try.......

Open connet player

Open internetconnection

And leave my computer in peace over night, maybe something will work in the morning :-)

Regards Martin

[Ascariss]

I am curious, will the player update the id info from CP if you don't transfer the files again over?

[hobnob]

I have mostly classical music on my device and Artistlink works tremendously well. I have spent quite a while catalogueing my music so that under artists it has the composer's name, the genre refers a specific musical genre, and the year is the original composition year. I cannot fault the results i get. I turned off the network function (whatever they are) and subsequently the artist link background service (both in preferences) after i found that some files i had ID'd were being changed. I have been particularly impressed with it link 4 or 5 quite underheard of comedy acts, i always assumed it was because i put them in a "comedy" genre, rather than any CDDB resource... Not sure if this helps anyone!

H.

[bluesign]

it works (updates) after you put your songs to the player too... I uploaded 200 songs and left connect player open and connected to internet, and in the morning when I sych my device all artist data transfered...

btw artist link is cool, but the wide search is really inaccurate

--------

deniz

[Ascariss]

Good, if I don't have to reupload songs, I will be happy. Thanks for the info.

edit, i turned on the network thingy, and hte artistlink thingy, and let CP run for 2o minuts or so, then hooked up teh player, artist link doesn't work yet, so i will let CP run over night see what happens.

If I have to retransfer all the songs, I will be seriously ticked off.

[bluesign]

Ascariss, how many songs you have?

actually I tried with 300, which took more than 1 hour on my 1mb connection...

-----

deniz

[Ascariss]

I have 502 on my A3000 now, I am on 1.5mbps. I left CP on overnight, now I will hook up the A3000 and see what happens.

[Bijl]

I suppose this doesn't work if you didn't tag the year and genre of the song properly?

[bluesign]

actually on my case, it is sending a sample from song (wave sound) and service recognizing song, and then it is updating all tag info (album, year etc)

so basically it should work even without year info (i tried it with few tracks and it works without gender and year)

it gets two new info fields like gender, these are artistlink, which is for example "progressive rock" and artistlinkwide "rock"

so when you do search for link, first it lists all "progressive rocks" and if you widen your search you will see all "rock"

thats why I see placebo and britney linked when I widen lol

PS: I started to work on a Windows Media Player plugin for A1000, will try to finish on weekend (to synch my device)

I don't know much experience about digital music, so you can always PM me your ideas