random songs won't play

We have quite a few reports regarding this problem.
Dealing with media playback is a complex work
We are trying to improve that with every release.
There are a lot of different things that can trigger this.
Formatting the files with different players, editing metadata with external applications, problem to read ID3 tags for certain files.
If you could give us any details on what you could possibly do with your data.
The best way for us to look into that is to get problematic files to test.

And don't forget to re-scan your library when moving your files around on your machine.

Hi Boris --

Thanks for your attention to this issue. I realize that with the symptoms we're describing (so far) this must be a vexing problem to deal with. Here's what I can do to make it a little more vexing:

In at least one of the instances I noticed, a track at the end of an album wouldn't play in the manner described above (no when selected, but yes when playing continuously from the previous track). However, all the other tracks on the album would play as normal, and all had the same file directory (not moved), had the same format, were brought into the library at the same time, etc. The only differences between the ones that would play and the one that wouldn't were the minor differences you'd expect in the metadata (track number, song name, and -- because this was a collection -- name of artist). The album was purchased in eMusic and used in iTunes prior to coming to the Songbird library, but again that was true of all the tracks in the album and not just the one that wouldn't play.

I hope this information at least helps you reject some hypotheses about the problem.

its actually whole albums that won't play for me but mutiple albums with nothing in common that i can find,

thanks for the quick response btw

i also had this problem with a few files that i've downloaded. i scanned for new media in the folder that i downloaded them too (downloaded them using limewire if that helps) and then played them first in songbird by double clicking on the library entry. it didn't play. so i tried playing the file in itunes and it played fine. strange thing was that when i tried to play it in songbird after playing it in itunes it worked perfectly. i have no idea what itunes has done that fixed it but it works perfectly. hope this helps

I have been having this problem with my songs and I can find no common factor either, but they were playing just fine yesterday. I had upgraded to the 0.7.0 RC1 last night, and that is when they began not playing. I uninstalled it and reinstalled 0.6.1, but some still wouldn't play. I am running Windows XP SP3, all my files are .mp3 and most of them are ripped directly from Cd's, the rest are from torrents. I'm sure the Songbird team is dealing with quite a bit right now, so thanks for helping.

I'm having this problem as well since upgrading to the 0.7 version. I have tried rescanning the library, but that did not work, and like the OP, I have not moved any files to cause a problem. They're all the same MP3 files they were when I played them with the 0.6 version earlier today. I am using Windows XP SP2.

I also tried running in Safe Mode, with all add-ons disabled. It isn't an add-on issue.

i deleted my entire library by selecting every song and removing them and rescaned my media, everything plays fine now

Godzirra's suggestion didn't work for me, sadly. The same songs that could not play before, still can't.

I think i know what might help, it worked for me at least. I just deleted my profile and began fresh. the default save location is:

C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Songbird\Profiles

Hope that helps :)

For some reason no songs will play on any of my media players for ubuntu.
I've tried them all.Music plays on such sites as myspace and last.fm but not on my media players.It's becoming more confusing and frustrating everyday.
If some one could e-mail me a solution that would be greatly appreciated.

@Phillip
What version of Songbird do you use?
Did you upgrade from older version?
What you mean by not playling?
You get no sound?
Are those .mp3 files?
You can not play them with Ubuntu native players either?
I would clean your profile first and run the application again to create a new one.
To delete profile, you can run in terminal:
rm -rf ~/.songbird2
Also, check your GStreamer packages, see if you have them installed.
Here are the packages required for Ubuntu:
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/index.ph...

I still have this issue with Songbird 1.0. I run ubuntu and use an external harddrive.