@jonas , exactly! thank you very much!
I installed

gst-plugins-adaptivedemux2

and I can play Tidal streams now with following log:

$ GST_DEBUG=3 strawberry 20:20:07.255 INFO main:180 Strawberry 1.2.13 Qt "6.9.2" 20:20:07.256 INFO main:181 "Gentoo Linux 2.17 - (linux 6.12.21-gentoo) [i386]" 20:20:08.587 ERROR GlobalShortcutsBackendKGlobalAccel:165 KGlobalAccel returned QList() when setting shortcut QList(QKeySequence("Media Next")) 20:20:08.591 ERROR GlobalShortcutsBackendKGlobalAccel:165 KGlobalAccel returned QList() when setting shortcut QList(QKeySequence("Media Play")) 20:20:08.596 ERROR GlobalShortcutsBackendKGlobalAccel:165 KGlobalAccel returned QList() when setting shortcut QList(QKeySequence("Media Previous")) 20:20:08.602 ERROR GlobalShortcutsBackendKGlobalAccel:165 KGlobalAccel returned QList() when setting shortcut QList(QKeySequence("Media Stop")) 20:20:09.499 INFO UrlHandlers:38 Registered URL handler for "subsonic" 20:20:09.529 INFO UrlHandlers:38 Registered URL handler for "tidal" 20:20:09.746 INFO UrlHandlers:38 Registered URL handler for "qobuz" 0:00:23.992780856 22848 0x1b54610 WARN discoverer gstdiscoverer.c:2080:start_discovering: No URI to process 0:00:24.312955998 22848 0xb0df8470 WARN adaptivedemux2 gstadaptivedemux.c:668:gst_adaptive_demux_change_state:<dashdemux2-1> error: Element requires a streams-aware context. 0:00:24.315852177 22848 0xb0df8470 WARN decodebin gstdecodebin2.c:2423:connect_pad:<decodebin0> Couldn't set dashdemux2-1 to READY 0:00:24.344984722 22848 0xb0d19f60 WARN codec-utils codec-utils.c:2833:gst_codec_utils_caps_from_mime_codec_single: Unknown codec 'flac' please file a bug 0:00:24.353183041 22848 0xb0d19f60 WARN structure gststructure.c:1032:gst_structure_set_field: Trying to set empty string on taglist field 'container-specific-track-id'. Please file a bug. 0:00:24.387177797 22848 0xb0df8470 WARN structure gststructure.c:1032:gst_structure_set_field: Trying to set empty string on taglist field 'container-specific-track-id'. Please file a bug. 20:20:33.272 ERROR HttpBaseRequest:180 "Musixmatch" "Received status code 401, switching to URL based lookup." 20:20:33.284 ERROR HttpBaseRequest:180 "LoloLyrics" "Error transferring https://api.lololyrics.com/0.5/getLyric?artist=Massive Attack&track=Paradise Circus - server replied: (203)" 20:20:33.341 ERROR HttpBaseRequest:180 "lyricfind.com" "Empty reply received from server." 0:00:26.587052516 22848 0xb0d05500 WARN flacdec gstflacdec.c:798:gst_flac_dec_handle_frame:<flacdec0> Lost sync, flushing decoder 0:00:26.703255491 22848 0x9caad6f0 WARN adaptivedemux2 gstadaptivedemux-track.c:539:_track_sink_chain_function:<track-audio-0-period0> buffer doesn't have any pts or dts, using segment position (0:00:00.000000000) 0:00:26.705925523 22848 0x9caad6f0 WARN adaptivedemux2 gstadaptivedemux-track.c:539:_track_sink_chain_function:<track-audio-0-period0> buffer doesn't have any pts or dts, using segment position (0:00:00.000000000) 0:00:26.709059511 22848 0x9caad6f0 WARN adaptivedemux2 gstadaptivedemux-track.c:539:_track_sink_chain_function:<track-audio-0-period0> buffer doesn't have any pts or dts, using segment position (0:00:00.000000000) 0:00:26.707080419 22848 0xb0d15bd0 FIXME decodebin3 gstdecodebin3.c:1305:gst_decodebin_input_unblock_streams:<decodebin3-0> Re-use existing input streams if/when possible 0:00:26.711201823 22848 0xb0d15bd0 FIXME decodebin3 gstdecodebin3.c:1305:gst_decodebin_input_unblock_streams:<decodebin3-0> Re-use existing input streams if/when possible 0:00:27.574134043 22848 0xb0d280b0 WARN flacdec gstflacdec.c:798:gst_flac_dec_handle_frame:<flacdec1> Lost sync, flushing decoder

@remelach You're welcome.
Additionally, you can also use MP3Tag to check/edit the metadata of your songs, in case you need another software to do so.

@henk
The startup could be slower because of the way Strawberry initializes objects earlier at startup, I fixed bugs and even rewrote many parts of the code where Clementine did things unsafe thread-wise, ie.: reading and modifying GUI things from a another thread than the main thread, which will be faster, but it's broken code, and just a coincidence that it doesn't crash.
One thing you can try is to turn off "Grey out unavailable songs in playlist on startup" in Settings / Playlist, this feature will lag the startup significantly.

Strawberry has a little delay at the beginning of the scan, it's because it iterates through the directories to find the number of files for the progress % status.
Clementine calculates the progress only based on the number of directories, which makes the progress inaccurate, and often stuck on 97-99% for a long time.
Other than that, then scan speed should be pretty much identical.

@maybl8
Musicbrainz has rate limiting, Strawberry tries to respect it, by delaying requests, but there might be cases where it glitches causing it to stop working for a while.

@Sharky-PI Ah, yeah, I know about the spanner, thanks anyways! but if I change it to genre, then I'd have to change it to artist when I want to see artists, and so on.
I'll try the playlist workaround, seems like it could work. Thank you!

Update: After giving the iPod to a friend who reformatted it with iTunes for Windows, Strawberry can now read the iPod. However any music written to the iPod seems to disappear as soon as I disconnect it. I can confirm that files placed on the device manually do not disappear

non-strawberry solution: if your playlists are in a central location (e.g. /Music/playlists/) then you could 'search within files / search file contents' using whatever OS-default search tool you have handy?

Now if you were feeling INCREDIBLY saucy, you could setup a cron job to

scan all your playlists create a database of songs [track URL] (rows) & playlists (columns), with cells filled by the playlist name; have a final column which concatenates all nonblank playlist columns, separated by semicolon Write that final column to the Performer tag of those files [manually/auto rescan collection in Strawberry then) search "performer:MyPlaylist" if you want the contents of the playlist in whichever Collection grouping scheme you've chosen (potentially useful/interesting), or (your main objective) search for the song and look in the tags for the performer, or display the performer tag as a column.

@jonas, Strawberry, the 0% buffering issue persists. It stopped twice in the last hour. Previously, it ran for approximately 36 hours without issue.

I have switched from Fedora 40 to Linux Mint 22 LMDE, and I'm still experiencing the same issue. SO, it doesn't seem like the operating system is the problem.

I run Strawberry on this system 24/7. There is nothing in my logs that indicates anything related to Strawberry. The same thing happens when I start Strawberry with the --verbose option. It just stops. Clicking the stop button and then clicking the play button restarts playback on the same track it stopped on and is always successful. Play continues for a random number of tracks before it happens again.

I was able to get it working and what I had to do was in a virtual environment installed iTunes reset the iPod nano back to factory.

Then I attempted to copy a couple albums over from the strawberry media player in Linux. It said everything copied and then I disconnected properly and there were no music on the player. Plugged it back in and now strawberries says that there is a database problem.

I just went back into the virtual environment and just copied everything that I wanted onto the iPod nano third generation in itunes and it’s good to go.

I use rsync and back up my entire home directory to two external hard drives.

@apt1002 Left click shows / hides the program. If it doesn't, you have a bug in your system.

Just renaming the file from file.webm to file.mka make it work for me. Looks like the container (matroska) is supported by Strawberry, just the extension is the limit.

@jonas
belatedly thanks.

More sleuthing has uncovered something. Puddletag shows various files with Playcounts with 2 values e.g. 0\0, 0\258, up to 0\65335.

I tried to delete those screwy counts in puddletag by overwriting them with 0 but it doesn't seem to have taken. Or they've regenerated.

Checking in kid3 it turns out that one of those files, with 0\258 has
FMPS_PLAYCOUNT=0
FMPS_Playcount=258.

If I listen to it once in strawberry:
FMPS_PLAYCOUNT=0,
FMPS_Playcount=259.
So strawberry increments FMPS_Playcount but not FMPS_PLAYCOUNT.

I wonder what the official/correct tag name is?
https://www.exiftool.org/TagNames/ID3.html this says it's "PCNT" for id3 v2.4
According to https://github.com/strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry/issues/1074 , FMPS_Playcount (Strawberry spelling) is CORRECT, so logically something else has been using FMPS_PLAYCOUNT.

But why do they (second entry, FMPS_Playcount) go up to 65335?
And does overwriting them with 0 in puddletag not work because it's displaying 2 variants of the same tag?
In puddletag I can't create separate columns for the 2 spellings because it automatically uppercases them but displays both.