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[Q] How do I backup android media playlist?

Whenever I install new rom, I have to lose all my precious playlists. What's the location of playlist files?

Export Android Created Playlists To PC
hi i have managed to find a way to extract phone made playlist to pc but i am not a programmer and I was wondering if anyone here can automate it
url are not permitted here so my blog is kundaistreet at blogspot

diddy47 said:
hi i have managed to find a way to extract phone made playlist to pc but i am not a programmer and I was wondering if anyone here can automate it
url are not permitted here so my blog is kundaistreet at blogspot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So this PlayQ can you import and export (backup/restore) playlists? If so, that's probably what the OP is looking for. Not a way to use his Android playlists on his PC. Although I doubt he wants to buy this Merdian Player in order to export playlists. I suspect it's just data somewhere, but where would be the question.

Has anyone worked out where these are stored?
I have been googling forever and all I read is people
a) Saying where music is stored
b) Saying where m3u files etc... are stored.
It's obvious that the playlists are stored in a database somewhere I just want to know where it is so I can look at it and see what sort of information is stored for songs and playlists.

Android Playlist/s Backup Tutorial
Hi everyone,while playing around with the instructions given by diddy47 on the blog site kundaistreet,I discovered how to backup your playlist on your sd card using a combination of 3 apps from the android market and part of the instructions given by diddy47. Apps required are Androzip,Meridian Player and SDMount,they are all free apps and no purchase required to download.This process seems long but its unreal simple,(1)Dowload all apps as stated above,(2)Go to your android stock player and create a playlist of your liking, if you already have a playlist made then on to the next step,(3)As diddy47 described in first part of post, "desregard the part about export to pc",
"In Meridian Player
•Long press on the playlists you want to export to PC, a pop up menu appears
•Select export to playQ
•choose the appropriate name
•choose audio type
•Export as many playlists as you like using procedure above.Navigate to folder PlayQueues using Androzip,it would be stored on your sd card.
Inside will be all your playlist that you exported to playQ in .mpq format not .m3u" Select any of the created playlist/s created and change the file extention name to "m3u", please note all that is being changed are the words and or numbers after the (dot.) (4)Exit Androzip, proceed by making SDMount a widget on your home screen,select, it would refresh saying in the notification bar "Your SD card has been scanned and remounted, SD Media Remounted" 'please note if you unmount your SD through the settings menu you will have to remove your SD card and put it back into device'.(5)Revert to stock media player,go to playlist and there you should find the name of your playlist/s made.You may see 2 of the same named playlist/s but that proves that it was backed up on the sd card.
Thank you for this opportunity, all credit goes out to kundaistreet for the blog site and diddy47 for his tutorial.

any alternative ?
thx for the solution but , its sad but true , this is a basic function i think it should be here already instead of making us looking for this for hours thru the web.
but isnt there any easier method ? dont want that much of apps just for a simple task (exporing playlist)

Here is what I had to do
I have a Samsung Epic 4g backed up with ClockworkMod, and lost the playlist after installing new ROM. Here is what I had to do to get my playlist back.
Extracted my data.img backup to my PC with unyaffs found here:
Code:
jiggawatt.org/badc0de/android/index.html
I knew my playlist name, so I scanned the extracted files and found it here:
C:\Temp\extraced data.img\data\com.android.providers.media\databases\external-99773e78.db
I then used SQLiteStudio to open external-99773e78.db.
Code:
sqlitestudio.one.pl
Ran the below SQL to generate my playlist.
Code:
select
_data
from
(
select name, _data, play_order
from
(
select
am._data
,ap.name
,apm.play_order
from audio_playlists ap
join audio_playlists_map apm on
ap._id = apm.playlist_id
join audio_meta am on
apm.audio_id = am._id
where ap._data is null
)
union
select name, '#EXTM3U ' || name as _data, -1 as play_order
from
(
select ap.name
from audio_playlists ap
where ap._data is null
)
order by 1,3
)
Exported the result set to a text editor (used PSPad), and created m3u's by copy/paste method. Then moved the m3u files to my SD card. When Android did its media scan it pick up the playlist, but for some reason I can't maintain the play list order. Playlist order was not a priority for me, so I stopped here.
If anyone tries something similar and maintains their playlist order, please post a reply
Thanks

You can backup playlists to .m3u8 files via BlueMuze
Full disclosure: it's my app, but the playlist backup feature is in the free unlimited trial.
Hopefully that's not too promotional -- not trying to run afoul of forum rules here, but I think it's what you're looking for.

alostpacket said:
You can backup playlists to .m3u8 files via BlueMuze
Full disclosure: it's my app, but the playlist backup feature is in the free unlimited trial.
Hopefully that's not too promotional -- not trying to run afoul of forum rules here, but I think it's what you're looking for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the proper way to do it. I just ran into a user who decided to pimp his app in a competing app's very first post.
What you did, in my opinion, is just fine; honest and transparent.

Bluemuze is perfect!
1) backup the playlist.
2) open with notepad++
3) replace /sdcard/ with C:\*path to copy of MP3 folder *
4) rename file to .m3u
Done! Very very simple to do.

s0larus said:
Bluemuze is perfect!
1) backup the playlist.
2) open with notepad++
3) replace /sdcard/ with C:\*path to copy of MP3 folder *
4) rename file to .m3u
Done! Very very simple to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or use Meridian Player (best media player I've come across) to create a "playQ" playlist. this is an independent file as opposed to a database. there are a few steps involved but you can copy the "play Q" file (which has a .mpq extension) to your computer. this file can then be converted to a .m3u file fairly simply. Use Notepad++ to open the .mpq file.
01. Delete all characters before the first instance of "localAudio id"
02. Replace all (" /><) with (\r\n) without the parenthesis. \r\n moves the text to the next line, make sure to select extended mode
03. replace all (LocalAudio id="/mnt/sdcard/Music/) with (D:\Music\) or wherever the music is
04. replace (&) with (&) - there seems to be an error with the & symbol
05. delete "\Items><\PlayQ>" at the end
Here is a link to the original post from where I got the information. I did have a different experience then what is shown here, but very useful:
http://kundaistreet.blogspot.com/2010/12/export-android-created-playlists-to-pc.html

+1 to alostpacket!

alostpacket said:
You can backup playlists to .m3u8 files via BlueMuze
Full disclosure: it's my app, but the playlist backup feature is in the free unlimited trial.
Hopefully that's not too promotional -- not trying to run afoul of forum rules here, but I think it's what you're looking for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey alostpacket! Your app seems perfect for me, only I'm running ICS on my G2 and using the default app Apollo for my music and BlueMuze isn't picking up the playlists I've created. Also BlueMuze crashes whenever I try to view my music from within it. Any advice?

I've found a playlist backup app on the play store
here's link : bit . ly/O9wb8q (can't post links)
Press thanks if I helped you!

import playlist m3u
So let me understand this correcty. There is no way to import playlists from my pc (m3u) and then play them? I have to create on android and back it up????

philipjacobs said:
So let me understand this correcty. There is no way to import playlists from my pc (m3u) and then play them? I have to create on android and back it up????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can find the answer in this thread. Read it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=38841993#post38841993
Or if you want to share your list of songs from your favorite playlists, you can use this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sendmyplaylist

I actually figured out another way. It's a pain but it works fine for me. Thanks!

Empty playlists on SD card

I am having an issue with playlists. I am currently running on TouchMIUIwiz v2.0. I have never encountered this problem before.
Anyway, in a nutshell, my playlists are deleting whenever mediascan runs upon boot. If they don't delete, or even when they do, the playlists are still read in music players, like PowerAmp, AOSP music player, MIUI player, etc., but are completely empty. Playlists show but with no tracks.
Playlists were generated by mounting the phone as mass storage and saving playlists in the same folder as my music (sdcard/Music). I use Winamp to make and save playlists.
I tried formatting my memory card to no avail. I read that this problem happened on some forum after deleting "albumthumbs" folder. But I had that folder deleted on my Optimus V's sd card and it had no problem. Copying that backed up folder to my sd card didn't work.
I tried searching for solutions on many forums. I tried syncing with players, like mediamonkey. The problem still persists.
Is this a ROM issue? Or is it an sd card issue? Would Odin'ing work to fix the situation?
Edit: I have flashed Revolution's and John_2K2's Sensekick v1.0 rom and did not have this problem. It lies within TouchMIUIwiz. Though, it's weird. I had v1.1 and did not experience the problem. Now on v2.0 it happens. When restoring my v1.1 nandroid the problem exists. I tested the problem after a fresh install of TouchMIUIwiz v2.0 and it was still there. It must be some error in the rom. I'm hoping for a a fix.
Edit 2: Nevermind. Sensekick has deleted playlists as well. But media scanning isn't as bad. The playlist may be deleted but it still shows on music players with the tracks intact. I'm going to Odin to see if it will resolve the issue.

Sorry posted by accident was gonna reply then saw the edit
Sent from my SGH-T839 using XDA App

I'm going to Odin. Sensekick finally replicated the problem. So the issue may be lying within my phone itself.
Edit: I Odin'ed and flashed back to TouchMIUIwiz v2.0 and the problem still persists. I have no idea what's wrong. I also formatted my sd card via phone settings and still had the same problem. I don't know what to do at this point.

badboi_zero said:
I'm going to Odin. Sensekick finally replicated the problem. So the issue may be lying within my phone itself.
Edit: I Odin'ed and flashed back to TouchMIUIwiz v2.0 and the problem still persists. I have no idea what's wrong. I also formatted my sd card via phone settings and still had the same problem. I don't know what to do at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I redid everything you did, and im having the same problem..im confused as well, i hate the stock ringtones and rely on my phone for music. when i use Astro to check if the music is even there, it is, and so are my ringtones. i just cant play them using "Music" from google (or anything else) and i cant select my custom ringtones.. some times if i connect my phone to my computer and go to /sdcard then discconect, my music is there and it works for X amount of time (always different) then it cant see them again..

It's a problem with the TMW rom. Ayoteddy says he's looking into it. I ultimately reverted back to the stock deodexed KG2 rom. No problems whatsoever. No cool themes like TMW and may not be as fast. But at least my music, which I hold very important, plays fine with playlists.
The reason custom ringtones didn't work either is because of media scan. The way media scan runs on TMW is flawed somehow. The way it reads media is off. It won't start at boot, it misreads or deletes playlists, etc.
I miss using TMW. But until it gets fixed I'll have to stick to the old trusty stock KG2.

It's been fixed, try this http://www.multiupload.com/TQRZPPP411
This fixes the media scanning issue, and may also fix the gallery deletion issue.

I don't know the technical stuff behind this, I think I figured out the cause of the deletion of playlists. It happens when I restore a TB backup of Poweramp. Upon flashing a rom, media scan scans my sd card to see what files and playlists are on it and so on. So that playlist file path is saved. When I restore Poweramp, the restore file has the playlist saved within it already. So when I restore, it duplicates the playlist entry under one file path (again, this is my explanation, as I don't know the technical stuff behind it. Pretty much my educated guess). This causes a conflict and so while the playlist may still be existent within media players, the actual file is deleted due to the same file path conflict.
In TWM, media scan was edited in some script or something, explained by teddy and sduvick. It wouldn't scan on bootup. But after that was fixed, the playlist conflict was still existent.
Right now I am on GCv2 (GingerClone v2). Media scan worked fine and playlists read upon flashing. But deletion occurred after restoring Poweramp via TB. To fix this, I went into TB and wiped data for [PLAYLISTS] Media Storage 2.2.1. After that my playlists weren't deleted.
Sorry if it seemed I made it look like the TMW rom was at fault. I knew it had to be something on my end, one of my settings or backup restores. So thanks to everyone who helped try to solve this issue for me.

[Q] change rom will format my sd (music) how to prevent?

Hi all,
I want to change rom, but after I installed that rom, it formats my whole SD right? including my music pictures etc..
Is there a way that it won't format it?
Or an EASY way to backup all my data so I can easily restore it back after the rom upgrade?
Thanks

No way to avoid the format. Music and pictures can easily be backed up using the Zune software, though (they, and movies, are the only things that can). In fact, by default they should be backed up automatically. You can force a sync by going to the Phone pivot in Zune, selecting all the music/pictures/whatever, and dragging them to the PC icon in the lower left (same as how you drag media to the phone from your collection).

GoodDayToDie said:
No way to avoid the format. Music and pictures can easily be backed up using the Zune software, though (they, and movies, are the only things that can). In fact, by default they should be backed up automatically. You can force a sync by going to the Phone pivot in Zune, selecting all the music/pictures/whatever, and dragging them to the PC icon in the lower left (same as how you drag media to the phone from your collection).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to put it in a specific map like: Phone music backup.
Is that possible? because otherwise my music library on my pc will be a mess
Thanks!

nickislauw said:
Hi all,
I want to change rom, but after I installed that rom, it formats my whole SD right? including my music pictures etc..
Is there a way that it won't format it?
Or an EASY way to backup all my data so I can easily restore it back after the rom upgrade?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you should backup your data with Zune befor you change rom,and this is the best way...

samuel_Ro said:
you should backup your data with Zune befor you change rom,and this is the best way...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah but HOW can I backup with zune? I can't see the backup button or something...

Isn't all your music already on your PC? I mean, how did it get onto your phone in the first place, if not via Zune?

GoodDayToDie said:
Isn't all your music already on your PC? I mean, how did it get onto your phone in the first place, if not via Zune?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah its already on my PC. but I got LOTS of music on my pc that I dont wan't on my phone.. so I only want to backup specific albums on my phone that are currently already on my phone.

same for me. i dont understand how to backup with zune. if i change rom i must search all mp3s step by step of my big mp3 folder. its a mess....

ahlMAR said:
same for me. i dont understand how to backup with zune. if i change rom i must search all mp3s step by step of my big mp3 folder. its a mess....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
!!!!!!
10char

Change the directories that Zune scans for music/videos/pics to something else for a small time on your PC.
Then change the sync settings to "Items I Choose" for everything on your device via Zune.
Then plug you phone in and once Zune see your phone select "phone" at the top
Then select music or videos or pics and select all the media on your phone, right click, and "copy to my collection"
Then update your rom and then re sync your phone.

voluptuary said:
Change the directories that Zune scans for music/videos/pics to something else for a small time on your PC.
Then change the sync settings to "Items I Choose" for everything on your device via Zune.
Then plug you phone in and once Zune see your phone select "phone" at the top
Then select music or videos or pics and select all the media on your phone, right click, and "copy to my collection"
Then update your rom and then re sync your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WTFFFFF I did that, and connected my phone to PC and BENG it was deleting ALL MY music on my phone:S:S I just saw it erasing man? wtf I hate zune:SS:S:
Why did it do that?

nickislauw said:
WTFFFFF I did that, and connected my phone to PC and BENG it was deleting ALL MY music on my phone:S:S I just saw it erasing man? wtf I hate zune:SS:S:
Why did it do that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must have neglected to change the sync settings to "Items I Choose" if you don't do that then it will sync the phone to your current collection which since you change the dirs is nothing. I'm sorry perhaps I should have bolded that step or something.

No problem dude. I got everytging synced back and running a new rom now
Thanks anyway!

[Q] Application to periodically backup a directory to a cloud service?

Evening fellow individuals reading this. I am wondering if something along these lines exist for android. I'm aware of ES file explorer (as everyone else is). It's a beautiful piece of software with amazing functionality the way it integrates my dropbox, box, google drive and my skydrive together well but one thing I would kill for is the ability to have a directory from my internal or external memory periodically copied and replaced to any other directory in a cloud I choose. I don't believe you can do this in that app and I looked a bit. I didn't imagine you would really need root for something like this. Any ideas? Thanks immensely in advance.

A quick search of the Play store brought me to an app called Backup your folders
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fiistudio.fiibackup
From the description I think this might be what you're after.
I also remember the developers behind Titanium backup coming up with an app that did cloud backups. According to the Play store, that would be Titanium Media Sync
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas.MediaSync
That one's a paying app.
Hope these help

Android 11 and .nomedia file

I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!

pacaveli420 said:
I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.

android1977 said:
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.

pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks that's what I did and got lucky, I was so desperate I signed up to XDA just to comment I gotta say XDA I love your site and been reading for a couple year's now, enjoy the information provided, thanks guy's for all your hard work

pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for saving my media library! I've been tortured by this issue since using the new phone, finally!

hello, i just get Android 11 on my MI A3, and those folders ( music, pictures, movies )appears on my sd card, they are useless for me, is there a way to delete them?
before Android 11, i didn't have this problem because i choosed " use sd as external support " instead of "use sd as extended memory" when inserting the sd card, but now even if i make the same choice, the folders are there and i can't delete them.

Sort of off topic but not really:
How do I stop it from creating these default folders? It's extremely annoying. I don't have my SD card structured that way and never have. I've deleted the default music, movies, etc folders numerous times now as they just clutter up the root directory and they keep reappearing. Is there a solution to this?

This seems to be a part of Android 11s default folder structure which no one ever bothered to do something about. I wouldn't be surprised if it's there for "security reasons" as well as a communist one. As in you only have the option to use these "secure" folders or else it won't show up in your apps at all.
This might be a way for Google to slowly faze out SDCards entirely while only giving you the option to use said folders for your "private" stuff akin to how IOS (kinda) works. In other words, they are doing it on purpose and no one ever bothered to read the fine print.
Obviously private music and other media collections is the root (see what I did there) cause of the problem. They don't want you to have those at all, And want you to use streaming services instead (tinfoil hat). Which is probably what these folders will probably end up being used for.
Netflix and Spotify allow you to store music on your device, but it's encrypted and will probably end up there at some point in Androids lifecycle. Obviously these files don't need .nomedia since the files are encrypted and will only show up in said app either way which makes the above meaningless.
Most of this is speculation obviously, but we've slowly been moving towards this trend if you look at how System apps were split into app and priv-app and so on. At some point in time only certain apps that has had the blessing of Google will be allowed to read anything off your storage. This happened with Chrome not to long ago where they blocked side-loaded extensions from running.
You will slowly see Android turning into IOS because they (Google) and big-tech in general wants 100% control of what you can and can't do. And everything based on AOSP or LOS is gonna follow suit because no one gives a flying fudge because that's too bothersome. The fragmentation of custom builds based on LOS/AOSP in general already shows that this has always been the case for the last 10 years. Linux in general is no different either as can be seen with wokeism. Except that was through decimation via woke people and not big-tech.

I was going crazy thinking this issue was specific to my samsung's stock rom. I started searching about this once I noticed it on LOS 18. Glad I'm not alone
I tend to be a little OCD about my folder structures but at this point I don't mind making a separate folder to avoid album arts in my gallery.

I believe I found a solution to this. It's been about a week or two with no further incident now. My solution was to delete the default folders from the root of the SD card because I don't use them, then create blank files that used those names. Haven't had a problem since.
I use the top level pictures folder because of a compatibility issue with programs that have small file path character limits that cause the program to hang. I don't use them anymore but I haven't had a reason to move it back where I had it previously and that would only make the default folder issue worse if I did. Or at least it would have until now with this discovery.
I do not use the movies and music folders, and if I move my pictures folder back where I had it I won't use that one either. Having them pop up on their own to clutter my root directory on both my SD card and my phone itself was very annoying. After deleting the movies and music folders off of the root of my SD card for the billionth time and getting rid of the empty default folders on my phone again, I created two blank files on my SD card root called Music and Movies. Ever since then the default folders haven't reappeared. On top of that, it hasn't created any ".thumbnails" folders all over the place like it always used to do either. That includes doing so on the internal phone storage. Creating those files on the SD card seems to have broken the whole process. I imagine the same would work vice versa for OP since it sounds like they use those default folders. Find an empty default folder on internal storage, delete it, create a file and name it the name of the folder you deleted (case sensitive), and that should disable the annoying default folder management process too. I can't vouch for that method, but I can vouch for it working when you do so on the SD card.

I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.

pool_shark said:
I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you pool shark.. i tried what you did/suggested and it worked. thanks.