iOS 5, 3GS, Music app simply will not open

[ttttaylor]

everything was working fine since the 12th, and then all of a sudden this evening my music app stopped opening. i get either an empty window or just a black screen. sometimes it freezes the whole phone, sometimes i can just home-screen it out.

the videos app seems to work. i mean, it opens at least but i don't have any videos to watch.

tried a hard reset (several, actually). haven't resorted to re-installing the OS yet; hoping that since it HAS been working, there is a way to make it work again.

i know lots of people are having issues with iOS 5 and the music app specifically, but anyone else not able to open it at all? i'm tired and i need my podcasts

thanks for your help.

 

[PkennethV]

+1 here with an iPhone 4.

I guess I'll just do a full restore in the morning if there's no solution posted in the next 12 hours or so...

 

[PkennethV]

So, I've done a full restore, tried syncing with another computer, then syncing again with my regular computer - none of which has helped. I've also downloaded TapTunes (alternative music player app available from the AppStore), and that seems to crash upon opening as well

 

[Kyotoma]

Try DFU restoring as new and see if that helps.

 

[PkennethV]

I really, really, really didn't want to setup my iPhone as new again (I just did 2 times in the last 2 weeks due to other problems) so I did some more experimenting...

Turns out, it was either some/one of the newer songs that I've added to my iTunes/that would be synced to my iPhone in the last week or so that's causing the problem. I stopped trying to sync any new songs that I've added from the last week or so, and the Music app works "fine" now.

Not sure what about the new song(s) was causing problems, though. I looked through them and couldn't find anything weird (no lyrics, funky metadata that I could spot, or extremely large album art or anything). Hmm.



EDIT: I fixed it (for myself anyways - not sure if the OP has the exact some problem or not)!
So it was the metadata. The culprit was the batch of new songs I added by The Cranberries. There were parts of the metadata that said "Cranberries, The" - I changed it to "The Cranberries", synced it to my iPhone and everything works fine again