It’s difficult to come up with the correct words that can truly express the frustrations that arose from this bug making it into the iPod Add-On. This is especially true when attempting to describe the frustrations of our users (while using PG rated language 
).
On the other hand, it’s also hard to express just how sorry we are that such a thing happened. I definitely hope that the way in which we engaged the community in the past few days sent a clear message that we were nothing short of completely dedicated to solving this issue as rapidly as possible while ensuring that this problem is gone for good.
At this time, the updated iPod Add-On should already be available on the Add-On site and disabled version of the Add-On should also auto-update to the version with the fix.
The problem itself stemmed from a code change that was made to the methods used to collate (i.e. order) properties that are numbers. It turns out that the collator was a little too smart for its own good. This, combined with the way the persistent IDs are generated in iTunes and stored on the iPod, led the Add-On to believe it was operating on Track A when, really, it was operating on Track B. With this confusion, it was possible for the iPod Add-On to erase certain tracks because it was essentially attempting to de-duplicate the contents of the iPod when mounting and synchronizing. It may have also simply removed references to these tracks from the iPod. This would leave the content on the iPod but the content would no longer be associated with the iPod Library, which would make it seem like it disappeared from the iPod.
We’d also like to point out a few potential misconceptions about this issue.
- This issue did not affect the iTunes Library.
- There were no ill effects for iPods that were managed using Songbird. Only songs synced through iTunes are affected.
- This issue is akin to losing or having ones iPod break. While it is unfortunate, it should normally be possible to repopulate your iPod using the original source (eg. Your music library on your laptop).
- Users that did not upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1 and ran into this problem will see their collection restored after installing or updating to the new iPod Add-On.
Since then, we’ve crafted test cases to ensure that this problem never happens again.
We hope you’ll come back to us! 
9 Trackbacks
[...] @ 4:30 am | Author: admin A bug that caused music to be deleted off some iPods has been fixed by the Songbird developers. The fixed and updated add-on has been uploaded to Songbird’s servers, and anyone with the [...]
[...] Quelle: Songbird Blog [...]
[...] informações no blog do Songbird. Partilhar [...]
[...] fault that caused music to be deleted soured whatever iPods has been fixed by the Songbird developers. The immobile and updated add-on has been uploaded to Songbird’s servers, and anyone with the [...]
Bug in Songbird-Addon löscht Tracks vom iPod…
Die Entwickler von Songbird warnen vor einem Bug im beliebten iPod-Addon. Dieser Bug kann dazu führen, dass Songbird alle auf einem iPod gespeicherten Tracks löscht.
Sie raten dazu, das Plugin umgehend zu deinstallieren oder zu deaktivieren.
Wer …
[...] bug that caused music to be deleted off some iPods has been fixed by the Songbird developers. The fixed and updated add-on has been uploaded to Songbird’s servers, and anyone with the [...]
[...] bug that caused music to be deleted off some iPods has been fixed by the Songbird developers. The fixed and updated add-on has been uploaded to Songbird’s servers, and anyone with the [...]
[...] bug that caused music to be deleted off some iPods has been fixed by the Songbird developers. The fixed and updated add-on has been uploaded to Songbird’s servers, and anyone with the [...]
[...] Songbird Blog » iPod Add-On Updated, Bug Bites a Dust [...]
63 Comments
Subscribewheres an updated mass storage add on
great! well done guys!
and how about syncing ratings back to songbird? = )
Glad to hear the problem has been put to bed! Obviously, it’s a bummer it ever happened but the team did a great job rolling out a quick fix. Nice recovery (no pun intended).
i would never leave you! fortunately i switched to songbird a while ago but haven’t updated my ipod yet because of the lack of album art support. can we expect it anytime soon?
Great to hear! Great that you responded so quickly
@jephrei
I’m afraid I don’t have any ETA on supporting album art on the iPod using the Songbird iPod Add-On.
I’m sure many would be pleased (some people have gone ridiculously skitzo over this, despite them having a copy of the music on their computer anyway). Quick turnaround actually (it seems like the plugin was revoked only 2 days ago)
Unfortunately, until transcoding is in, can’t personally use my ipod with Songbird anyway (a lot of my collection is in flac or other formats that need to be converted when putting them on my ipod).
But I certainly look forward to the sudden silence there will be in get satisfaction
When will we have support for smart playlist on the iPod Addon?
Thanks!
@Gordon
It should already be possible to sync smart playlists to an iPod. Smart playlists should also show up on your iPod when you are syncing against the Library.
Wha!!! Dude nevermind I just checked with the new Songbird and new iPod Addon. My smartlists are on my iPod. You guys rock.
Thanks for the fast response lol
Excellent turnaround. Super job guys.
I knew it would be quick. Woohoo!
Good job. Personally, I was not affected by this bug. Which is fortunate, because I recently formatted my harddrive and forgot to backup my music–so all my music is on my iPod. I guess I just happened to install Songbird at the right time, only hours after the iPod add-on was pulled.
Great job finding the bug, pulling the add-on, fixing it, and getting an update out. Great communication with the community
My wife synced from Amarok, and then songs was removed when Songbird was open, and the iPod was on recharge… Just wanted you to know. Thanks for the buggfix though.
I want to come back, but I’m wary for the moment. Give me a few weeks: I’ll get over it.
Thanks guys, and don’t worry : sometimes bugs are the price to pay to have such great softwares
Merci!
Mais le code source du gestionnaire de l’Ipod pouvait être pris de Amarok, ou d’un autre logiciel Open-Source, ça aurait été plus simple
@+
Bravo! Off try re-install Songbird!
Glad to see this one fixed, even though the bug has not affected me personally. I have just discovered Songbird recently and I am quite enthused about it. Naturally, a bug like would not be enough for me to give up this nice piece of software.
love you, guys. you are the best!
Good work Songbird team. I personally don’t use the add-on because I don’t use my little iPod, but it was painful reading the outraged comments from furious users who couldn’t bear to just put their music back on. Seriously, bugs happen, especially in a small open-source project. We should be grateful the Songbird team works as quickly as they do. I am, at least, because I need a mac playback program that can manage a library containing flac files; I used sbooth’s Play for a while but I stopped after he quit working on it a while ago. If there aren’t any overwhelming reasons to use songbird, then why did you stop using iTunes? If there was a reason to switch, then I’m sure such a relatively insignificant bug (it never corrupted the actual copies of the music) wouldn’t stop you from using this excellent program.
Going to try it again since this bug is fixed because that is exactly what happened to me on wednesday. A long commute with songs missing is killer. Now if you could just get songbird to not scramble my album art i will be very happy people.
this is why i will not use songbird. this little glitch needs to be fixed before i use Songbird seriously. Both Ipods that I use are formated with the FAT32 file system. other than that, i don’t know what Songbird is talking about.
http://img.photobucket.com /albums/v416/migitmd/this_is_why_i_dont_use_songbird.png
Subtract the space after photobucket.com. (i don’t know how the link would affect this blog and the posting. its a direct link to the picture)
And the smart playlists WILL NOT show up in Songbird. As of now, songbird will not be installed again until these two glitches are fixed.
Yay! I actually moved to Songbird after my 12-year stint with Winamp yesterday, and then got the iPod plugin today. Nice joerrrb!!
Hey! I found that my Nokia Xpress Music works on songbird! Cool. Now, I was wondering if it’s possible to deselect songs from the library like iTunes(with the checks on the left) in Songbird? Or is it a requested feature? Thanks!
“…There were no ill effects for iPods that were managed using Songbird. Only songs synced through iTunes are affected…”
That is not true at all. I do not even have Itunes installed on my machine and yet my Ipod was completely wiped. Please remove this line from this post as it is misleading and simply false.
Xavier, but did you have any songs on your ipod that had previously been uploaded by iTunes?
@Xavier
If you used iTunes originally to put the songs on your iPod or if the program you used somehow used the iTunes components you would still run into the issue.
Fortunately, I was never really affected by this glitch as I was repopulating my Ipod anyway. I cleaned out my Ipod before adding some tracks from my re-organized library.
I love Songbird and I’ll wait for the Cover Flow functionality. Thanks!
Tyler notices and seems pleased.
Very nice! A fast fix! I love the way this was handled.
-Elmernite
@bobby: there is already an extension that does cover flow. It’s called Media Flow, and you can find it here: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/238
Ironically the “bug” is what made me instantly download SongBird finally, I read about it on a lot of tech blogs and I got curious, so I downloaded it and fell in love. Waited patiently a few days for the iPod fix before I really got into using it. Loving it so far and the fact that the bug was fixed so quickly. Looking forward to new features. Burning cds for one, and two I hope that you guys can work with FoxyTunes to get songbird handled with their Firefox extension as well.
@ Shan!
That is an awesome story! A bug… to promote Songbird… Nice!
Will there be support of copy artwork to ipod?
@Shan! @boosh,
It happened the same to me, I noticed Songbird after reading about the plug in bug on wired.
I am using it now!
having ipod issues where i restore the ipod but it shows over 30,000 items and won’t let delete a single item it has been annoying me and i just want help with this issue have over a couple thousand items I want to put on it. any tips?
Is there an ipod update that lets me put my photos on it as the itunes does i use this as itunes is to big and space using but it is very irritating for this to be missing some features.
Who cares about that bug???
Drop everything and add EQUALIZER to songbird.
Releasing a music program without equalizer in 2009 is like releasing competition to Photoshop that only supports Black and White colors.thats so dumb.
you guys are crazy or live in 1985
@Teo
It’s on the roadmap for the next release in may, so it’s coming.
Many people care about that bug as made apparent by the people above you.
yes, Steven – I was being lil over-dramatic on purpose, lol. – to draw attention to this critical matter.
I don’t get it? – are most people satisfied listening to the music on flat EQ that sounds like it’s coming from railroad station loud speaker?
It seems ABSOLUTELY BIZARRE to me that songbird’s developers work on long list of functions – music store, mash scrolling, web integration, tickets, addons, skins, streamer, auto loads, importing, art work, etc etc etc – YET COMPLETELY IGNORE THE MOST BASIC FUNCTIONALITY – like daaa, GOOD SOUNDING MUSIC!!! MOst music playes I used over the years has EQ build-in, 20 years AGO, LOL.
..talking about completely wacked out priorities.LOL
and Steven – the roadmap says – “EQ – no started”
When will we get support for syncing ratings between ipods and songbird? This has already been done with other open-source software, why hasn’t it yet been added to songbird? I can’t switch over to songbird until this feature is implemented.
@Teo
Lol…. so you’re right. They probably have started SOMETHING for the next release though by now. Fair enough, I never really have a problem with not having one but I do turn the bass up sometimes lol.(I do mess with it on my phone though, cause if it’s not tuned right it goes WAY outta whack.)
-Steven
We’ve seen to have a post lag lately btw, what’s going on songbird guys? Nothing to say?
It’s april 1st!
@Andrew Luecke
You could try rockbox[.org] alternative firmware for ipod, sansa etc. Plays flac, ogg, wave, mp3 and all. Has many cool extras. Me thinks, the actual version even has cover flow, but I haven’t updated in months for satisfaction.
Stephan
Please add ipod album art syncing soon. I want to get away from itunes but can’t stand those annoying gray music notes instead of album art.
Any chance of someone out there writing a plugin to fetch podcast artwork? I download my podcasts using Media Monkey and play them back in Songbird, Media Monkey pulls down some of the artwork (its gets a third of them wrong) but Songbird doesn’t try to fill in the gaps.
Anyway a plugin would be highly appreciated. Songbird team, crappy OPML export/import and basic podcast support are the only reasons I still use MM. If you give me at least decent podcasting and good opml support I’d switch tomorrow.
I’m glad the issue is gone. I had uninstalled Songbird for I wouldn’t use it without the iPod function, but it’s all good now. Add Album Art editing for iPod tracks and I’ll uninstall iTunes completely!
first up, great work guys. indeed songbird has a bright future ahead. i’d like to share my experience though using songbird (1.1.1 build 1018) + ipod add-on (3.0.12.1028) on an ipod photo (60gb). well, fair enough that songbird detects and gets to sync, however, i noticed that there are tons of dupes. hope this could be improved/fixed soon. regards.
Not to be pedantic, but i think you meant to say the opposite of “We’d also like to point out a few potential misconceptions”… if those were all misconceptions and not facts, it’d be a bad day for songbird.
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I just discovered Songbird today and it took me a while to figure out that my 5th generation video iPod WAS supported by Songbird 1.0 and an older version of the iPod plugin, but not by the newest version of each. I had thought the numbers in the Wiki described the EARLIEST compatible version of Songbird. Any explanation why newer version are incompatible with older ipods?
The IPod support add-on still doesn’t work for me. I plug in my iPod and nothing happens. It fails to show up in any of the panes.
Like Tony, I’ve been unable to get the ipod add-on to work for me, this is on three different computers, using a 4th gen ipod, nano and a new shuffle. Not one of them have shown up. It’s a pity cause there are some very nice things about the program. Till an EQ shows up and the Ipod support is truly bug-free, I’m sticking with Media Monkey.
Glad to see this fixed. But the real reason I’m still not using songbird is the fact that there is no iPod album artwork support. Please fix this please!
The other problem I have is not being able to edit *.m4a tags
But enough about my problems, good work guys and please get artwork goin’!
Hello,
I am looking for a media manager (linux platform) in order to manage, listen, transfert songs from ipod comp.
I really like the sngbird concept cause it’s platform independent (linux, mac , win and even library indé (gtk, qt…)
The pb with songbird (exactly the same pb with banshee) : if you drag’n drop a song from your ipod to the songbird library, it only indexes it BUT it does’t copy the files itself.
Therefore, once you disconnect the ipod, songbird cannot play the track!
Is there a way to simply transfert files ipod computer within songbird???
Is this a bug, not implemented function or stupid me that do not understand????
Thanks!!!
Any idea when/if iPod Touch 2G is coming up or already out?.. Plz I need this I love song bird but can’t do anything with my ipod!!!
Really looking forward to the ipod addon supporting cover art transfer. When it does, I’ll finally be able to use songbird…
When will the 0:00 time length problem be fixed? I’ve had to goto sharepod to copy tracks to the iPod and have stopped using Songbird because of this problem. It’s obviously a metatag problem. Try using Twit.Tv Daily GizWiz #811 it shows the problem.
The only thing that is holding me back from switching completely to Sonbird is ipod sync. I still have problems with it. For example, for some of my songs, the duration always shows up as 0:00 on iPod after sync but not on Songbird. Any suggestions on fixing this would be appreciated.
After the update I’m actually running into the opposite problem. Instead of songs being deleted off of my ipod, when I sync it frequently adds songs that are already on my device. For instance, my vampire weekend album has 2 of almost every song… I can fix it by reformatting the device, but this takes a while and is cumbersome. Interestingly, there is only 1 version of theses songs in my songbird playlist, but somehow 2 copies make it onto my ipod. Any ideas?
I knew it would be quick. Woohoo!