"Unable to manage your imported or updated items, please check the Media Management folder exists and is writable."

I'm getting this message pretty frequently myself; it seems as if it may be occurring when the actual error is the "cannot write metadata" issue (that is, this message usually seems to appear when I'm trying to write metadata to an m4a file), which would mean there are actually two problems (both the lack of m4a tag editing support, and the wrong error being displayed). I'm on Vista 64-bit by the way, and yes, I have checked all the file permissions.

I am also getting this error message now. It seems to happen when I change something within the watched folder. It correctly updates my Songbird library but it then shows me this message.

Same thing happens here. When ever a something changes in the watch folder, it seems to do everything correctly, then the error pops up.

Yeah, it seems to be an issue of writing metadata. Album Art is also suffering from the same problem if I try to get a cover for for an album missing art in MediaFlow.

Hate to be a broken record but I got the same problem.

It's getting rather annoying with this issue. The error message is not helpful at all, and I couldn't seem to get rid of it.

I get this every time I delete a file from the library. It deletes them from the folders, so as far as I can tell it doesn't mean anything.

it also gives me this message when I try to get album artwork, which doesn't work. None of my files are read-only. I am using Vista.

I'm having this issue on OS X 10.5. I have Songbird set up to manage my library, which is currently a mix of MP3 and M4A (AAC) files. The message usually pops up right after I've created a Smart Playlist and I start editing the playlist name.

The same problem, I hope there is a solution. The software is great but this message is annoying. my system: vista 64 bit

I get it as well when changing metadata even though Media Management still works just like it is supposed too. Anyone found a bugzilla for this yet?

Metadata management is serious screwed up in the new release....

(don't really feel like signing up for the above site)

i usually get it when i delete an item, particularly i just got it when i deleted a song that was in my library but wasn't actually in my music folder (not sure why, songbird never moved it with the rest of the songs in that album)

windows vista, 32bit

windows vista 64 bit. it does appear to be related to deleting. but i even get it when i delete playlists.

i started yesterday after i turned on the manager but hasn't happened once today. not sure if it's related but everytime i start song bird it has to organize my music library all over again. i have a large library this takes several minutes.

Been having this problem with the latest nightlys for about a week and a half or so. Using Windows 7 x64. Happens when I tell Songbird to check for album art, or remove a file. It also happened when I changed metadata for a number of files but is no longer relevant as the Metadata Editor is no longer working(see http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...). The error message does not come up when I change metadata from the list view window.

I've been getting this bug the whole time since 1.2, Songbird seems to not like it when you mess with it's file structure manually.

Same problem except that it has also deleted all the song info for several hundred songs. Windows remembers the artist and album, but since it renamed the files based on the titles (which are now unknown) I'm having to go through and give all of them names again. Ridiculous.

Im getting the same issue when I delete, and Im on Windows 7 32bit. Now I cannot even delete songs unless I go into the folder and deleted. Its like being able to delete a song got disabled. I used to just delete a song and get the same error everyone else got. I also get glitch (only with this release) where it will try and write the metadata for a song, but it can so it tries again over and over so I have an entire artist group where Each song is there like 7 or 8 times, if I delete the multiples of the song, and leave one left, Songbird deletes the original file, UNLESS i play the song while i delete its clones. Im only having this issue with the new release. I may go back to the older beta cause this is giving me the blues.

Same problem, also getting it when downloading music files from the browser tab. Have added a comment to the bugzilla page.

The good news is, Songbird is wrong in reporting the error, everything works fine!

If you turn off the new Manage Mode....it goes away. v1.2 runs much better for me overall without the Manage Mode on. I wish I would have opted not to run it when I upgraded...it has taken me a month to recover. It seems a lot of people wanted this option as a feature, however this is the type of crap I left iTunes over!

I'm also getting this message with Managed mode turned on. Also, don't know if its related, but each time I launch Songbird, the whole library is checked and reorganized (of course, no change is actually done, as it is supposedly already organized)...

And a lot of error message about "'cannot write tags in file", in addition to all that...

Strange...and a little bit disappointing.

Olivier

I get this problem the moment I turn media management on, which is a shame because I was looking forward to being able to migrate my music library and assorted messy file structure of FLACs and other downloads entirely into Songbird.

I did a bit of testing; I first saw the problem when I'd only imported two or three albums. It'd make copies of the files in the relevant folder but they'd appear greyed out in Finder (OS X 10.5.7) and if I tried to open them from within Finder itself it'd say the file was in use and couldn't be opened - this persisted even after logging out and back in. Strangely enough I could open them if I tried it direct from another app's 'file open' dialog.

They could however all be deleted and emptied from the Trash without any problems.

If I restarted Songbird it'd begin the management again, and I'd get duplicate files alongside the previously failed ones. These too were greyed out.

I managed to get slightly more verbose errors once or twice too. I tried enabling it with about 90 items in the library, a mixture of FLAC files and MP3s and saw that '10 items failed to move due to a possible hardware error' and then '77 items failed to move because the original item could not be found'.

This was all when trying to manage my music on an external hard drive, mounted via USB.

I then tested with the Songbird media folder set to a folder on my internal drive and this didn't seem to have any problems with the few songs I tried. Unfortunately I have a pretty huge music collection so there's no possible way I can have my music on an internal disk.

This is all working from a clean install of 1.2. I also tried purging all preferences and Songbird related configuration files and starting with the latest nightly but still had no luck.

Hope this helps to narrow it down because I had hoped Songbird was at the point where it was ready to become my primary music player.

Thanks for fixing this. Now if we could get usb mass storage support under Linux I would be a happy camper.

By the way, any idea when the next release will be out?

Cool, glad to hear the issue has been reproduced. For reference I have Windows XP machines, running SB 1.2 off an external HD.

I run off an external Hd using these instructions:
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/User:Atr...

Toastygoat's scenario is mine exactly. This just recently started happening tonight.

Using OSX 10.5.7

In order to not discriminate against free operating systems, I hereby announce that I have the same problem on Ubuntu (Jaunty). Thanks for fixing this bug!

I have the same problem, Windows XP. I get thiss error message whenever I create a playlist. I did not import any iTunes library whatsoever.

That error message pops up very often, when I'm editing metadata.

The error console fills with messages such as :

Error: Unable to manage file: file:///g:/music/_music/benny%20benassi/tuning%20beats%202003,%20volume%201/benny%20benassi%20-%20satisfaction.mp3

Vista 64bit here. Same issue. Happened 100% of the time when I had protected .wma files in my music folder.

Deleted the protected files and it happens much less often now. Still pretty random. Haven't done a lot of controlled "experiments" though, so I'm not sure what triggers it.

I have the error message everytime now (I'm doing a lot of modification to my files, adding cd covers etc). I've disabled managed mode for the moment.

I restart it from time to time.

I have this problem a lot. Win 7 x64 Build 7100

I turned Media Management on for the first time today. I also received this error every time I downloaded a song from a music blog. Weirdly, the management program was working, as it created the "Songbird music" folder and proper additional folders for all downloaded tracks. ALSO-another copy of the music was put in the base folder "My Music"-TWO copies of the music were established; one organized, one not. All downloads received the topic error. I can't wait until this is fixed, as the media management mode is an exciting addition.

With managed mode turned on, I get this error everytime I remove a file : The file does disapear, but a few seconds later I have an error message.

The error console shows :
Error: Unable to manage file: file:///-what I just deleted-.mp3

So how do we get this patch or when will the update be released?

I've got the latest release for Windows XP Pro (x64) and I'm still getting these errors. I tried a nightly build and that was no better. Is there any way we can fix this? This is an absolutely awesome feature but it's doubling the size of my music library. I have so many duplicates and it's going to be HELL to cleanup now.

Version: Songbird 1.2.0, Build 1146 (20090616030043)

I've got it too.

Hardy Heron 8.04
2.6.24-24-rt
Music folder is on an external usb drive.

Just out of curiosity, is anyone else using some sort of automatic backup for their music folder?

I'm using Jungledisk.

I'm also using gnump3 on port 8888 to stream this library to a windows computer. The windows box only connects via an http connection where I use Songbird to play them.

I wonder if this could be a Jungledisk issue?

Having a strange issue when I'm sshed into this computer from the Windows box (using Cygwin).

I wrote it up on the ubuntu forums too. (no response).

I wrote:
My USB drive frequently "disconnects". I can see the power light and it still is listed in /media. However, cd-ing into any of its child folders results in this error:

Code:

ls:reading directory .: Input/output error

When I'm in front of it (which I'm not at the moment....but it happens there often), I either power-cycle it or unplug the usb cable. Actually, come to think of it, I don't even know if I ever do either process alone. Hmmm.

So now I'm ssh-ed in to the computer connected to that drive and getting nothing.......

(well, just getting that error, obviously)

In reply to aaronLBorg...I am using an external drive also but do not use Jungledisk so I do not think it is a problem with this...my advice is turn off Media management until the problem is fixed on the upcoming release.

Any word on when the update is scheduled to roll out? This bug is basically preventing me from replacing iTunes. :(

I have this problem too. what is a "Nightly" and where I get it?

It's a nightly build, meaning it's (automatically, I believe) built from the latest source on a regular basis.

G'day,

As mentioned from Trevor, a nightly is simply a copy of Songbird which is built using the absolute latest code thats been checked in by developers. This means there may be bugs, it may be stable, and sometimes, it doesn't even build.

That being said, the developers seem to try to ensure that whatever code is checked in, allows songbird to still work, because a lot of us use the nightlies.

The nightlies are available from: http://developer.songbirdnest.com/bui...

At the moment though, Trunk (which is basically just the most up to date code ) was just changed to version 1.5 last night. I'd recommend waiting 24hours for 1.4 to become available (because 1.5 at this time will be exactly the same as 1.4, except no addons function).

Hope that helps