Subsonic does not find new music on a local hard drive.

[featherstonehaugh]

I have my music library on an external exFat hard drive. Subsonic scanned everything great at first but does not register any changed music either on its scheduled or manual scans. It doesn’t find new albums by existing artist (new album folders in the artist folder) and it also doesn’t find brand-new artist (so there’s a new artist folder in the root directory of the music store).

I have checked the permissions of the folder, restarted Subsonic, etc etc. Still no luck—no changes are registered at all, and new music doesn’t show up.

Short of just deleting my music folder from Subsonic and adding it back (which seems like it does not solve the underlying problem), what can I do here? What can I troubleshoot?

[featherstonehaugh]

Oh, this is Windows 10, and the drive is connected via USB-3. I manage the actual local files with Musicbee and everything is sorted Artist/Album/Track#-Title.mp3.

[toolman]

What version of Subsonic are you using?
Versions prior to Subsonic 6.1.3 have a bug where there are problems with files that are modified outside of Subonic.
Did you also check the permissions on the newly created subfolders?
You could try to do a database cleanup and next perform a new scan.

[featherstonehaugh]

I'm running 6.1.3. I bit the bullet and deleted and added back my music; everything that previously had not been detected now is, which seems to demonstrate that whatever the problem is, it's Subsonic and not an issue with the folder permissions. (Which were totally fine btw.)

I also did the cleanup / new scan move, and it didn't work. It would be nice if I could point Subsonic to a particular folder within the folders it is already scanning an tell it "Look, new music, it's just right there."

[featherstonehaugh]

Well this sucks. Even though deleting and adding back my music worked insofar as it picked up all the music Subsonic had been missing, new music added since is still overlooked over multiple scans.

[toolman]

Seems to me that you have issues with the database.
You could try:
Stop Subsonic service.
Rename the file Subsonic\db\subsonic.data to Subsonic.data.old
Start Subsonic service.
Subsonic will rebuild your database.
Next you will have to start a folderscan to see all your mediafiles appear again.
If you're not happy with the result you can again stop Subsonic, delete the Subsonic.data file and rename the Subonic.data.old file to subsonic.data again.
Restarting the service will put you right back to where you started from.

[featherstonehaugh]

After having stopped subsonic, renamed the db, then restarted, is it normal to get a "HTTP ERROR: 503 / SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE / RequestURI=/index.view" error, perhaps for the time that Subsonic takes to rebuild its database, or is this indicative of some deeper issue?

The service in the Subsonic control panel says that it's started, though it's consuming far less memory than usual, and this error is of course not the same as the error you get when Subsonic is not running at all, which is the "Hmmm...can't reach this page" message in Edge.

[toolman]

I just tried it again and after waiting 3 minutes I could log in again using my own credentials.
So perhaps you should wait a little before trying to log in again.

[featherstonehaugh]

I just rebuilt my entire subsonic installation from scatch and same thing. The first scan picks up everything but later scans don’t pick up newly-added music.

This really appears to be an issue with Subsonic and not my particular installation at this point. I have a large music collection, about 2 TB, if that’s an issue.

[toolman]

I don't know what the problem is. My collection of musicfiles is 186.817 songs in 1436,39 GB and I have no issues adding or changing files.
Could it be that it's a prblem with your browser not updating the pageview?
Did you check the about page after adding files?
Do you see there any change in registered artists, songs, albums or any increase in your medialibrary?

[featherstonehaugh]

I don't know what the problem is. My collection of musicfiles is 186.817 songs in 1436,39 GB and I have no issues adding or changing files.
Could it be that it's a prblem with your browser not updating the pageview?
Did you check the about page after adding files?
Do you see there any change in registered artists, songs, albums or any increase in your medialibrary?

Yeah, I looked for the new albums in question in several different places, by artist, by album, etc. And if checked through the browser, and through various apps. I also looked through the logs to see if anything is amiss. But no—everything is fine, except for the new music not being detected.

If I delete and re-add the folder the albums that had been missed not only are picked up, but show up in the “recently added” section.

[toolman]

I am just as puzzled as you are.
The only and last thing I now can think of is that there may be a problem with the filesystem on your USB-drive.
Perhaps you should run "checkdisk" on that drive. https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/fix-hard-d ... indows-10/

[featherstonehaugh]

Good thought. But I tried that too!

[toolman]

Well there must be something that's not quite right.
Let's have another look:
You add some new folders to your USB-drive and start a folder scan.
Subsonic doesn't pick up any changes.
( You have checked that by visiting the About Page to find there are no changes to the Media Collection section. )
Next you delete all new folders and add them again. Next you start a folder scan again.
This time Subsonic does pick up the changes and even shows the new albums in the Recently Added section.

Did you try to just perform 2 folder scans after adding new folders or is it mandatory to delete and than add the same new folders again?
Did you assign a fixed driveletter to your USB-drive?
Is that drive always online for Subonic?

[featherstonehaugh]

Well there must be something that's not quite right.
Let's have another look:
You add some new folders to your USB-drive and start a folder scan.
Subsonic doesn't pick up any changes.
( You have checked that by visiting the About Page to find there are no changes to the Media Collection section. )
Next you delete all new folders and add them again. Next you start a folder scan again.
This time Subsonic does pick up the changes and even shows the new albums in the Recently Added section.

Did you try to just perform 2 folder scans after adding new folders or is it mandatory to delete and than add the same new folders again?
Did you assign a fixed driveletter to your USB-drive?
Is that drive always online for Subonic?

No, that's not quite it. Subsonic never picks up any new music on any scan after the first one. If I delete the entire music folder--all of my music--from *subsonic*, such that subsonic no longer is aware of any of my music, and then add it back to subsonic, then it does a complete scan, picking up every album, and properly seeing that the newly-added music is in fact newly added (by looking at the time stamps on the actual files). This complete initial scan takes a few hours to run, while the later scans (that don't detect changes that have happened) take maybe 15 minutes or a half hour or so--much quicker.

So any time in the above I said I "added" music, I mean I added the actual music files to the folder structure that Subsonic monitors. And by "delete" I mean tell subsonic not to monitor the folder structure. I'm not deleting and re-adding the actual music files, which are all sorted in a normal artist/album directory structure. (And yes, it's a fixed drive letter.)

So the status quo is that Subsonic's first scan upon telling it to monitor a folder works correctly--and only that scan. And, in troubleshooting this, I have cleaned the database, run multiple scans, quit / restarted subsonic, reset the database, and so forth. Every troubleshooting step I could find.