Playlist is Empty - Repair or Recover?

[WorkInProgress]

Everything seems to be working fine, except "Playlist is empty" for all playlists despite # of songs and length showing correctly.
Troubleshooting Steps: No recent changes to files or system. Made sure running current version of Subsonic, scanned media folders:

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[4/30/20 1:00:21 PM CDT]    INFO   MediaScannerService   Scanned media library with 26064 entries.
[4/30/20 1:00:21 PM CDT]    INFO   MediaScannerService   Marking non-present files.
[4/30/20 1:00:22 PM CDT]    INFO   MediaScannerService   Marking non-present artists.
[4/30/20 1:00:22 PM CDT]    INFO   MediaScannerService   Marking non-present albums.
[4/30/20 1:00:22 PM CDT]    INFO   MediaScannerService   Completed media library scan.
[4/30/20 1:00:23 PM CDT]    INFO   PlaylistService   Starting playlist import.
[4/30/20 1:00:23 PM CDT]    INFO   PlaylistService   Completed playlist import.

Playback Application and version: Firefox 75.0 (64-bit)
Subsonic Version: 6.1.6 (build 0cfa60) – November 10, 2019
Server Version: jetty-6.1.x, java 1.8.0_152, HSQLDB, Windows 10 (82.6 MB / 145.0 MB)
Hardware Platform: Windows 10
Java Memory Limit: 150 MB (Memory used 91 MB)
Problem Filename: Applies to all custom built Subsonic Playlists
Last ten log file lines:

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[5/1/20 6:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 7:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 8:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 9:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 10:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 11:33:16 AM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 12:33:16 PM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 1:33:16 PM CDT]   INFO   NetworkService   Successfully forwarding port 8080.
[5/1/20 1:48:50 PM CDT]   INFO   VersionService   Resolved latest Subsonic final version to: 6.1.6
[5/1/20 1:48:50 PM CDT]   INFO   VersionService   Resolved latest Subsonic beta version to: 6.1.beta2


Any help is greatly appreciated. I would really love to have playlists back, but I'd be happy with even some way to see the song lists so that I could manually re-create.
Thanks very much for your help!

Edit: Since submission of this post, I have updated Java, tried using different Browser (Chrome) and stopped/re-started service via Subsonic Control Panel. Playlists still "empty".

[3Dscrewer]

Hi, have you tried to export one of the playlists?
They have to look like that ...

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#EXTM3U
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\01. The Outsider - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\02. Man In The Middle - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\03. The Battle For Hadrian's Wall - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\04. Save Me - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\05. Smokestack Woman - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\06. Faithless - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\07. An Ordinary Son - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\08. I Can See Your Spirit - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\09. Little Secret - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\10. Crossfire - Black Country Communion.m4a
g:\music\Black Country Communion\2011 - 2 (ALAC)\11. Cold - Black Country Communion.m4a


I have a huge database and I'm working every day on it. Sometimes it happens that I have renamed the Files to this style 01. Title - Artist but normal there is an not found at subsonic

[WorkInProgress]

Hi 3Dscrewer - Thank you - I had not tried that.
I just exported a playlist and opened the new .m3u8 file using Notepad and it only contained this:

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#EXTM3U

I was so hoping you had given me a way to see the songlist...
Any other thoughts or suggestions are welcome!!!

[3Dscrewer]

I'm really sorry, but it seems that your playlists are lost. I don't see a solution to recover the playlists because they are empty.
Since you are talking about Notepad, I guess you are using Windows. There is in the subsonic folder a folder called db.backup, so you can try to rename the original db folder create a new one and copy the backup files to the new db folder, but first stop the subsonic service and after copy start again. If that doesn't help .... I don't know

[rumremix]

Just wanted to call out, for anyone else arriving here with a similar issue, that 3Dscrewer's suggestion worked for me. I had the same problem as author of this thread. For me, this is what happened... subsonic threw a java.lang.NullPointerException error (I saved the full stack trace if anyone wants to see it). So I restarted the service. After restarting, subsonic worked again, but all the playlists were empty. They showed the correct song "count", but no actual songs appeared in any of the playlists. And exporting the playlist created an (essentially) empty file. Also, I was unable to play songs from subsonic in sonos that I was already listening to in the queue.

Been assembling those playlists for over a decade so the prospect of losing them was troubling. Luckily, 3Dscrewer's suggestion worked. All I did was stop the service, copy db.backup to db.backup-copy, then I renamed db to db.corrupted, then I renamed db.backup to db. Then I restarted the service. My empty playlists were repopulated and I was able to continue playing subsonic via my existing sonos queue. Troubling that that happened in the first place but at least there was a fix in my case. Hope this can help someone else. Thanks, 3Dscrewer!

[Miles Redford]

its an old issue and ought to have been solved by now
I run subsonic on 2 pc's and constantly back the db folders up with a daily run bat file, there is no other way.
the db.backup folder is updated regular and if you wait too long to replace the db with its backup the info goes away forever

I also have several mini usb 3 drives and if i use one on a laptop and it has not been updated, the laptop has these empty playlists and the only fix is to restore the drive(sync it with the main drive first to replicate the main mp3 drive), then restore the laptop db folder with info(files) from the main pc db folder or one of its daily backups

2 years ago its drive died and its only stored backup was over a year old, so again I still lost
normally I replace all my c: drives every 2 years to prevent drives dying, sadly I did not do that that time, but at least my laptop was identical to the main , it just took me a day or 2 to realise I was ok.

currently I am away from home for months and cannot access my main server and all I have is 1 playlist with incorrect song count, as it is my main playlist, it is easy to fix because it is also on my PHONE thanks to the android subsonic app but has now prompted me to write a program to read the db and make backups of all playlists and they will be in a db created for this and backed up daily...