How to fix "Selected playlist is empty" in Android 4.1.2?

I have an old phone that I use as a dedicated MP3 player after my actual MP3 player died. It's a ZTE phone running Android 4.1.2 with an SD card that has all my music on it. I use the default music player on the phone. I've been having an odd problem recently where adding new music to the device causes the music player to be partially unable to play music. I'll move a song over and then when I start the music player and it loads to my song list clicking any of the listed songs merely gives me the message "selected playlist is empty". I can still play any of the songs if I switch over to any of the other tabs (organization methods?) like "Artist" or "Album" but not from the "Songs" tab. If I go back and remove the song that I moved over I can play music from the Songs tab again like normal. This is getting very annoying because I can't put more music on the device I listen to music on. How do I fix it, without installing any new apps?