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Why is it so hard to find a decent music player?

It's things like this that makes me frustrated about Android. There is so much noise about hotspot, or tethering, or other geeky stuff that are pretty useless for regular users. But the music player, a standard feature for every phone nowadays, is really bad.
All I want is to transfer the damn songs with playlist and play on my phone!
Well, the stock player doesn't recognize playlist.
So I have to use other music apps.
I have tried doubleTwist. It doesn't recognize playlist created by its own desktop app. And also, you have to use its desktop app to sync music. And the syncing is not so good, lots of Artwork is missing.
I then turn to Cubed (superscript 3). It's cool. It reads my playlist. But it creates duplicated ones. In other words, every time you sync your music, it creates new playlist. I did a little research, it turns out it's the problem of the OS. If you copy your songs to external SD, the OS will scan them and then create duplicated list. Music players just read the list from the OS.
Another problem of Cubed is, if I manually copy music to SD card, all my artworks are gone.
I have tried other *free* music players on the market. None of them works perfectly. And I am so cheap that I don't want to pay for a feature that a smartphone should easily have.

mwxiao said:
It's things like this that makes me frustrated about Android. There is so much noise about hotspot, or tethering, or other geeky stuff that are pretty useless for regular users. But the music player, a standard feature for every phone nowadays, is really bad.
All I want is to transfer the damn songs with playlist and play on my phone!
Well, the stock player doesn't recognize playlist.
So I have to use other music apps.
I have tried doubleTwist. It doesn't recognize playlist created by its own desktop app. And also, you have to use its desktop app to sync music. And the syncing is not so good, lots of Artwork is missing.
I then turn to Cubed (superscript 3). It's cool. It reads my playlist. But it creates duplicated ones. In other words, every time you sync your music, it creates new playlist. I did a little research, it turns out it's the problem of the OS. If you copy your songs to external SD, the OS will scan them and then create duplicated list. Music players just read the list from the OS.
Another problem of Cubed is, if I manually copy music to SD card, all my artworks are gone.
I have tried other *free* music players on the market. None of them works perfectly. And I am so cheap that I don't want to pay for a feature that a smartphone should easily have.
Click to expand...
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Are you coming from an iTunes? Many of the problems with artwork deal with the way the artwork is embedded. AAC files do tags poorly and I had to rerip all my files to MP3 and make sure that the artwork was embedded in the tags and not in a folder. I used MediaMonkey to sync my music to my phone. I don't use playlists - I just put about 2GB of music on and pick what i want. The stock music player works great for me in this regard.
The stock music player allows local playlists, but so far doesn't import them. I think it is a matter of discovering name and format.

alphadog00 said:
Are you coming from an iTunes? Many of the problems with artwork deal with the way the artwork is embedded. AAC files do tags poorly and I had to rerip all my files to MP3 and make sure that the artwork was embedded in the tags and not in a folder. I used MediaMonkey to sync my music to my phone. I don't use playlists - I just put about 2GB of music on and pick what i want. The stock music player works great for me in this regard.
The stock music player allows local playlists, but so far doesn't import them. I think it is a matter of discovering name and format.
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Thanks for your reply. I have a relatively big library in iTunes so playlist is kinda of necessary for me. It really sucks that the stock music player can't do it.
I didn't know about the iTunes artworks problem. All my song files are .mp3. I thought artwork was embedded in the file.

I've had pretty good success using an app called "isynchr" available in the market. It's not free, though! But it allows you to take your playlists from iTunes, copy them (and the songs) over to your phone and play everything using the music player that came on the phone.

Try this:
hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=751429
It works great for me and along with the mp3tagger pro app that lets you edit the ID3 tags and download artwork, its been a huge timesaver for me.

I feel your pain; I've had trouble finding a music player I really liked too. As of now, I'm just using the stock Samsung Music Player.
...which actually isn't that bad. It works well enough and the 5.1 feature is awesome.

check doubletwist. very good GUI and has itunes compatibility but I have not used that personally

DoubleTwist is a good music player and can export your playlists from itunes. They syncing is a bit slow tho.

I really had a hard time with doubletwist, and it took forever to start up on the pc.
I would recommend 'Songbird' on the desktop. It's built on top of a Mozilla Firefox framework, has great plug-ins and extensions, and via MTP can sync playlists with M3Us to the captivate, and then mixzing as the player on the captivate.

noidd said:
Try this:
hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=751429
It works great for me and along with the mp3tagger pro app that lets you edit the ID3 tags and download artwork, its been a huge timesaver for me.
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Thanks a lot. The Android music player is much better than the Samsung one. Though I have a few bugs for just 10 min of try. Well, it's actually not a big of a deal. Playlist works fine, album art works fine. And that's all I am asking for.

closeshave2 said:
I've had pretty good success using an app called "isynchr" available in the market. It's not free, though! But it allows you to take your playlists from iTunes, copy them (and the songs) over to your phone and play everything using the music player that came on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on this app, you can use the stock samsung player, and double twist recongizes the playlists as well. it was much easier and faster on my computer as well. syching around 6 gigs of music only took around 15 mintues as opposed to over 2 hours with double twist.

ANOTHER good and easy to use apps is called "itunes agent". All you have to do is plug in the phone as USB drive and use it to sync you songs. Check it out. I use it for my WinMo phone and it is probably one of the best tool for sync songs to my phne.

mwxiao said:
Thanks for your reply. I have a relatively big library in iTunes so playlist is kinda of necessary for me. It really sucks that the stock music player can't do it.
I didn't know about the iTunes artworks problem. All my song files are .mp3. I thought artwork was embedded in the file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had all my music in iTunes (many files were AAC - ripped that way before i knew better) and I learned the hardway that iTunes some funky things. I actually used MP3tag to fix the tags - lots of Android phones don't like the tags if some fields are empty - this has the effect of showing uknown artist and maybe empty album art. iTunes added some funky stuff to some of the tags, so once i got it all cleaned up and made sure the album artwork was embedded in the tags all was good.
As for playlists - you could try Samsung Kies - it does sync with the phone and allows you to make playlists. I have not tried it for syncing yet.

How to manage music in Windows Phone 7?

So I'm kind of an exception case for music, where I hunt for all my music via music blogs. The problem with this is that most of the songs I download aren't part of an album, and most of the time are pre releases, or bootlegs.
In these situations how do I organize my music through zune?!
Editing tag information in Zune REQUIRES an album name. Adding albums that don't have an album name are tagged "Unknown Album {Date Added}".
Is there any way to just have the songs without album names hidden? I've even tried using a space, but then it started grouping all of those together as an unknown album .
Other than that do you guys have a particular way in how you organize music?

mesofly said:
So I'm kind of an exception case for music, where I hunt for all my music via music blogs. The problem with this is that most of the songs I download aren't part of an album, and most of the time are pre releases, or bootlegs.
In these situations how do I organize my music through zune?!
Editing tag information in Zune REQUIRES an album name. Adding albums that don't have an album name are tagged "Unknown Album {Date Added}".
Is there any way to just have the songs without album names hidden? I've even tried using a space, but then it started grouping all of those together as an unknown album .
Other than that do you guys have a particular way in how you organize music?
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Click to collapse
Uhm. I would just make a bogus album name (aka song name). There's no way to just have album so just do it that way. You can always just look at different ways to look at ur music, by artist, song, etc...

Zedox said:
Uhm. I would just make a bogus album name (aka song name). There's no way to just have album so just do it that way. You can always just look at different ways to look at ur music, by artist, song, etc...
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Click to collapse
That's what I do for any artist where I have b-sides or demos in addition to the regular albums. I create an album called 'singles' and group all the non-album tracks under those. You could create different albums like this; demos, singles, bootlegs, etc.

Music and Android?

I think this is the one area Apple beats Android, you connect your iPhone it syncs no hassle, On android its all a bit of a nightmare.
I've tried Double Twist but the damn thing is painfully slow to sync, can't edit duplicates and whatever else, it looks good but thats about it.
Winamp looked good on the surface, I made my playlist went to sync it took forever, then when I added more songs to a particular playlist and went to sync again rather than adding to the original playlist on the phone it created another playlist, so you actually have 2 playlist of the same playlist old and new.
So basically I need a way to sync and a player on the phone. I appreciate you can just dump all your tracks on the music folder but its impossible to organise 1000+ MP3's this way, so they would need organised prior to going onto the phone.
Any advice?

Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!

em.20 said:
Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!
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Click to collapse
Lol same here, mp3tag owns.

Winamp works fine for me; no duplicate playlists. Maybe give that another shot? I love winamp on the PC though, so my perception may be skewed a bit by fanboyism. You could try the Google Music Beta as well. I thought I wouldn't like it, but having my entire 200 GB music library streamable is pretty handy. Personally, I prefer to manually sort and tag my tracks on my PC.

Combo Winamp + mp3tag.
But i do'nt sync with winamp, putting mp3 on the folders is much faster...

i've been using google's music beta service to stream music to me laptop/phone. works great. only issue is the new music app has no controls in the notification center or lockscreen.

slugger09 said:
its impossible to organise 1000+ MP3's this way
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I don't understand. Your music app will automatically find your mp3's and categorize them for you. Just put your MP3's anywhere on your SD card and you're done.

Make music folder, drag and drop
I hated how ipods have to sync, like if I go to my friends house want want some songs then delete my songs then put all of his songs grrr iTunes...
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App

drag and drop to SD card. never used 3rd party... seems silly.

em.20 said:
Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately and I can't speak about mp3tag, but dragging and dropping at least doesn't compress the audio file to save space at no reduction of quality. Itunes does this, and Itunes really isn't all that hard to use either.
Audio from Apple devices are better quality most times, but multimedia is one of Apple's strong parts.(Although also a lot of times you won't notice a difference) The original music app for Android is okay for just music, HTC's is okay, Miui is pretty nice, and the new music app from Google is pretty nice too. The audio support for Android is getting better.

I originally used doubletwist but it kept doubling, trippling, and even quadrupled the number of times a song was in my library. Finally went to ISYNCR &isyncrwifi. Works great, fast.
Sent from my SCH-I800 using XDA Premium App

rumblee1 said:
I originally used doubletwist but it kept doubling, trippling, and even quadrupled the number of times a song was in my library. Finally went to ISYNCR &isyncrwifi. Works great, fast.
Sent from my SCH-I800 using XDA Premium App
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It did that to me as well and that's the problem with most of these syncing solutions, there is no common sense.
And as for putting all on 1 folder in the SD card, Now say I want song 3 from album A on a playlist followed by song 6 from Album E and so on there is no easy way of organizing this on the phone which is why I like it done on the PC, I have various genres of music, I don't want a hardcore trance song followed by country.
Google music doesn't work in the UK either

Great post and some really useful tips there. I love resource lists like this. Have social bookmarked it in the hope that others can also benefit.

thanks for the tips

I also do drag and drop, but yes apple is smoother in this area.

slugger09 said:
It did that to me as well and that's the problem with most of these syncing solutions, there is no common sense.
And as for putting all on 1 folder in the SD card, Now say I want song 3 from album A on a playlist followed by song 6 from Album E and so on there is no easy way of organizing this on the phone which is why I like it done on the PC, I have various genres of music, I don't want a hardcore trance song followed by country.
Google music doesn't work in the UK either
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Click to collapse
What you are describing here is what I do on "PowerAmp". I have folders (has option for folders or library), then if I want I use the built in "Que" to select songs from different folders. You can also edit tags in PowerAmp.

Wow. And here I thought I was the only one who uses mp3tag.

mp3tag , is a great

+ 1 mp3 tag
Sent from my GT-i9100 with MIUI 1.7.8 - xda premium app

Gorship said:
drag and drop to SD card. never used 3rd party... seems silly.
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i use meridian only to play mp3 for a single directory

Best way to manage music?

Anyone know a good way to manage music with a g2x??
I have well over 2k songs on my itunes. I have them all on my g2x, but it seems to have a poor music managing system.
Songs/Artists/Playlists are duplicated many times, playlists duplicate the songs within them sometimes, etc.
I'm wondering if theres a good software to manage the music on my phone?
Something comparable to itunes preferrably
I just want to be able to make playlists on my computer without them duplicating on my phone.
I've tried doubletwist, itunesagent (which doesn't copy playlists), and even winamp.

i'm just using Google Play

I'm just using Google Play Music as well and transfer my files via mass storage. Now I use the cloud for Google Play Music and just keep a few albums on my SD card. I have no problems with duplicates or any other issues.

You have to get a tag editor and
Make sure there filled out right... iTunes fixes them but the music players don't.
Sent from my LG G2x using Tapatalk 2

Kplaylist + MediaMonkey + Google Play
All my music is on an a private web server that can stream all my music. I stopped using iTunes a long time ago, but all my music is on this web server.
http://www.kplaylist.net/
If you can setup an Apache Service with PHP, you will love this app. Its the only thing I use and get my music anywhere.
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MediaMonkey
http://www.mediamonkey.com/
I only use this to update the ID Tags of all my songs and add the album picture from the web. Its a bit tricky, but what I do is, when I decide I want to add and album to Google Play I tag and add the picture album then upload them.
I have like 40 gigs of music, and slowly have converted to Google play. I fix the tags and albums as I go. Its worked so far
Sometimes the picture or the album name comes out wrong, have to re-upload or manually correct it once its inside Google. It happens sometimes, especially if mediamonkey can't find the rare song online.
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Google Play
If done right, all the songs will be properly tagged and the album picture inside. Its running better now then when it was called (Google Music). Used to crash alot. The only decision you have is "Make available Offline"
In the end, when its nicely organized, I use Google Play way way more.

yoo992 said:
I've tried doubletwist, itunesagent (which doesn't copy playlists), and even winamp.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been using Doubletwist and it copies my playlist from itunes just fine

I use Banshee Media Player. I have it set up to sync one specific playlist. It works in one-click and it even converts my FLAC files on the fly to V9 mp3! Even better, even though I have it set to sync one playlist, it keeps track of which tracks belong to other playlists too. I use it on Ubuntu but I think the sync options work on Windows too.
Edit: It also keeps my media tagged, downloads album art and sorts the files into an [Artist]>[Album] folder structure.

Are there any apps that will find and download mp3 tag information

Basically here is the problem, I have 1,000+ songs without tags, IE Untitled.mp3 by Unknown Artist.
I am trying to use MP3 Album Cover Grabber but it only works with the Song name, Artist, and Album Tags already put in.
My current methood is using soundhound while playing the song, writting down the information and manually editing the tags (Really time consuming). Is there anything out there to automate this process?
Thanks

DroID3tagger from Google play is what your looking for. It uses a process similar to Soundhound,etc. to Id the unknown files
Sent from my XT907 using xda premium

You, my good sir are truly a hero, thanks and props goes to you
Odd, its not showing any of my music in my music folder
Nevermind my phones internal storage is called SD Card and there is also a music folder there lol