When my wife had her iPhone, she was regularly updating her music on it by setting up her iTunes playlists, plugging in her phone, and happily watching while it sync'd, seamlessly and painlessly.
Now she's got a Galaxy Note, and as yet does not have her music on it, and it's driving her nuts (fortunately she still has her iPhone to plug in in the car, or I'd never hear the end of it).
So far the closest approximation I've been able to find for Android is Winamp: IN THEORY, you install Winamp on your PC and an Android device, and you can then create your library and manage playlists in Winamp on the PC, and then sync over cable or WiFi to Winamp on the phone. Easy, right? Just like iTunes?
Except, well... it doesn't quite seem to be that easy. I've got Winamp to sync between my DHD and my laptop... TRIED to do it on her Note and had a royal runaround of failed transfers until I found a suggestion to delete and recreate the pairing... that seemed to do it, and I set up a nice big playlist of about 400 Christmas songs for her, and left it to sync overnight.
Or not. She went happily off to work the next morning... came home in the evening and informed me that she only had a dozen or so songs in one "Christmas Tunes" playlist, as well as another empty "Christmas Tunes" playlist. GAH.
I'm not expecting Winamp support here, I already have an account on the Winamp forums... what I'm looking for is something better. DLNA players won't do it - I mean, I do that on MY phone, because I have a 6GB data plan... her 1GB data plan won't withstand that for more than a week. No, I need something that will make it just as easy as iTunes to create her playlists on her laptop, and then sync them all to her Note, without a lot of farting around and troubleshooting and headaches and support-forum visits. It doesn't even have to do WiFi, since the first thing she usually does when she gets home is plug her Note into her laptop to charge.
Please, for the love of all things, and to save a marriage... someone point me at something that will accomplish this, that (and this is the important part) I won't have to babysit for her!
(PS. yes, I did see the "music players" thread in the Apps forum... there's only one other that appears to fit the bill, and I'm going to check that out, but I don't want to spend all my time installing different players on my phone and computer so I can figure out if they're going to work for hers... and seriously, "Find me an iTunes equivalent" has GOT to be a more common question than my forum searches would indicate!)
I don't know about playlists, but you can just drag and drop the files between phone and computer.
You can also export iTunes playlists and then drag that into the folder with the music, but since I no longer use iTunes, I would have to Google for the answer a bit more.
Pennycake said:
I don't know about playlists, but you can just drag and drop the files between phone and computer.
You can also export iTunes playlists and then drag that into the folder with the music, but since I no longer use iTunes, I would have to Google for the answer a bit more.
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Click to collapse
I have just shy of 50,000 mp3s, many of them in "unknown" folder trees - very badly organized on the filesystem (I know, I know) but of course, easy to search in an app like Winamp or something else that reads the ID3 tags. Drag'n'drop won't work for her - this is a former iSheep we're talking about, remember
The last iTunes files died with her previous laptop too, so I don't have that to import (and that only included the very limited number of songs that were on her laptop anyway).
The one thing I really liked about iTunes was its "Keep library organized" feature, where if I edited anything in a song, it would automatically keep it sorted in an artist\album\songname.mp3 structure - I could highlight an artist's entire catalog, right-click, edit the artist name, and regardless of how scattered the files were, it would put the same name on all of them (amazing how many different ways people find to spell an artist's name), and plop them all into the same folder on the disk, using that name. I found Winamp lets me batch-edit, but it won't alter the file trees. I'm tempted to install iTunes on my desktop just to let it properly organize my filesystem.
I owned a Mac and an iPod once, but I had the capacity to learn something different when needed and desired.
Letting iTunes organise everything might be a good idea. I'm too finicky to let an artist's name be spelled multiple ways, I'd have a heart attack! I always made sure everything was correct from the get-go.
If you Google search a bit, there might be apps developed to sync with iTunes itself, even.
Have the same problem
Is there no good equivalent of iTunes for Android? How do people sync their music on pc with their android phone who use players like foobar2000, winamp etc. We do not want to sync entire music folders from PC to phone. Rather looking for something that can identify music file tags and let us select criteria for syncing with the phone.
Not sure why this thread is dead... couldn't find a solution on other threads.
Related
I get ~500 new tracks per month and I heavily rely on Windows Media Player's 5-star rating system to keep track of the ones I liked/disliked. I'm looking for an app that has the ability to read AND add/edit the rating, aka ID3's "RATING WMP" tag, of mp3's that I will manually load onto sdcard. I've tried many different music apps but none fit the requirements... any suggestions?
Thanks!
I guess nobody knows and I'll have to figure this out myself... as always
ok, made some progress... found a way to seamlessly "sync" music libraries:
set up samba (windows) share on pc
used Mount Manager to mount that share on Evo as /sdcard/share/audio
reload media, all mp3s now show up in HTC Music as if they were physically on sdcard
ps: if i'm not on WiFi, just VPN into my home linux box and everything shows up as "local"
now all that's left is to find something that would write the ratings back into mp3s... i found this iSyncr app that does it but there are some quirks that needs to be worked out before its usable. will report back once that is done
wifi sync was a hassle and iSyncr froze my phone for 5 mins each time i remounted sdcard, and also wifi sync is much slower than traditional usb sync anyways so here's what i worked out instead:
set Songbird to monitor my "New songs" for mp3's
set Songbird to auto-sync music as soon sdcard is mounted to pc
unmount/eject and use PlayerPro to listed & rate music
once done, in PlayerPro, export song stats to xml (Settings > Media library >Export music stats > Songbird)
use Songbird's "RatingFile" addon to import ratings from that xml
since in Songbird i set 'songbird.metadata.ratings.enableWriting" to "true", it writes the new ratings to mp3's ID3 tag "RATING" field
use Mp3Tag macro to batch-move RATING field value to RATING WMP
viola... my new ratings now show up in WMP
long and tedious process but so far that's the only one where i managed to successfully sync new ratings back to WMP
PS: doubleTwist can do two-way ratings syncing WAAAAY easier with their AirSync addong but i haven't found a way to move the new ratings from doubleTwist to WMP... any ideas?
Did you ever come up with a clean solution to this problem? I have so much new incoming music all the time that it is a real pain to have to sit in front of my primary PC rating music all the time; it would be so nice if I could sync it to my phone or tablet, rate music as I drive, and then sync the ratings back to my computer...
get PlayerPro... that dev implemented the ability to read/write ratings to actual mp3 files. both WMP and MediaMonkey id3 rating system. then, to make sure the ratings are same on both your phone and your computer, install microsoft's SyncToy and set up a two-way folder sync.
frifox said:
get PlayerPro... that dev implemented the ability to read/write ratings to actual mp3 files. both WMP and MediaMonkey id3 rating system. then, to make sure the ratings are same on both your phone and your computer, install microsoft's SyncToy and set up a two-way folder sync.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks; I actually came across PlayerPro in the same search that returned your thread. The only problem I see is that I use WMP's autoplaylists to only sync 4 or 5 star rated items to my device. If I am using SyncToy to synchronize folders, that makes the whole dynamic rating thing kind of useless, doesn't it?
hmm, in my case i didn't have a need for dynamic playlists and PlayerPro fit the bill perfectly, so yeah, i'm not sure how you'd deal with syncing back the ratings from cell to pc... i manage my library using files and folders so i guess i lucked out here
I guess so. I have WMP setup to auto sort music into a folder structure that maps to Artist > Album > [Track Number] [Song Title], and then I only synchronize the songs I've rated 4 stars or higher. That way when it syncs to my car (using my phone as a storage drive), I can browse the file system by Artist, Album, etc., and I only have the songs I like synced up.
Great
Sick bro, love it.
SolusCado said:
I guess so. I have WMP setup to auto sort music into a folder structure that maps to Artist > Album > [Track Number] [Song Title], and then I only synchronize the songs I've rated 4 stars or higher. That way when it syncs to my car (using my phone as a storage drive), I can browse the file system by Artist, Album, etc., and I only have the songs I like synced up.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for asking the question, I was looking for the same thing. Maybe I can help you out too. I don't know about the sync tool you use but MediaMonkey can sync songs based on dynamic playlists too. So you can create a playlist based on ratings (or more) and MM will sync it automatically. However you have to have the paid version but IMO it's worth the price.
octavia said:
Thanks for asking the question, I was looking for the same thing. Maybe I can help you out too. I don't know about the sync tool you use but MediaMonkey can sync songs based on dynamic playlists too. So you can create a playlist based on ratings (or more) and MM will sync it automatically. However you have to have the paid version but IMO it's worth the price.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does MediaMonkey add anything I don't already get with WMP?
many things... with folder-sync being one of them
EDIT: Tl;DR
PlayerPro can modify and read the Windows Media Player star rating.
I've verified that tracks with less than 4 stars are removed from my device. However, I expected to see more removals. I'll continue to update here
I had an issue with PlayerPro, the 'stars' (rating) disappeared from the top of the screen. I solved this by tapping the track picture in the center of the screen. The star rating on top of the screen reappears after that.
---
Awesome threat.. Just got a Nokia 9, first Android phone
Same issue.
I manage my music with auto playlist and star rating since I had a HTC Wizard and Windows XP, I think
Anyway, PlayerPro seem the way to go.
The problem I now have is that I can't seem to change the star rating anymore, in PlayerPro.
This: https://www.aplayerpro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3305
.. seem to be hopeful but alas. I'll continue the quest on a later day and update here.
1.) Download and install
For Windows iTunes Agent.
For Mac iTuneMyWalkman.
2.) Once installed, the application runs in the system tray and monitors iTunes.
3.) Plug the Infuse into your computer's USB port and mount it.
4.) Create a folder on the mounted Infuse called Music.
5.) Right-click on the iTunes Agent icon in the system tray.
6.) Click Preferences.
7.) Leave all defaults checked and click the New button.
8.) Give the device a name. (Infuse in this case)
9.) Leave Synchronize pattern: set to iTunes.
10.) Click the Choose button and select the Music folder you created on the Infuse.
11.) Click the Create button and select the Music folder you created on the Infuse.
12.) Click Save and then Close.
13.) Launch iTunes and you will see a playlist folder called My Devices, under which you will see the Infuse.
14.) Simply drag the music you wish to synchronize from your iTunes library to your Infuse into this playlist
15.) Finally, right-click on the iTunes Agent icon in the system tray and select Synchronize devices
You could do all that, which seems OK. Here's the easier version (none of this sync business):
1. Sort your music by kind. This will find your music that is protected. Convert your library from the protected format by right clicking on your library and converting to mp3 within itunes. I have about 2000 songs and it took about 30 minutes. This is good because it takes any DRM off of the files and allows you to put them wherever you want. Once done, I deleted the Itunes DRM protected versions so I wouldn't have duplicates in my library.
2. Drag and drop onto your phone. I created a music folder on my sd card.
This was the one task I did not want to go through when I swapped from my IOS to Android, but it was quick and painless.
hehe, or you could just download DoubleTwist on your Mac\PC, and DoubleTwist on your Android phone and it'll do it all for you... playlists, organization, etc. Takes about 1 minute to get it started the first time, and it's all wireless and totally automated. Not sure why anyone would go through the OP's laundry list of instructions, haah.
bella92108 said:
hehe, or you could just download DoubleTwist on your Mac\PC, and DoubleTwist on your Android phone and it'll do it all for you... playlists, organization, etc. Takes about 1 minute to get it started the first time, and it's all wireless and totally automated. Not sure why anyone would go through the OP's laundry list of instructions, haah.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Woah. Super polished software... Thanks for the recommendation! If i like it i might upgrade to airsync
bella92108 said:
hehe, or you could just download DoubleTwist on your Mac\PC, and DoubleTwist on your Android phone and it'll do it all for you... playlists, organization, etc. Takes about 1 minute to get it started the first time, and it's all wireless and totally automated. Not sure why anyone would go through the OP's laundry list of instructions, haah.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey I have Double Twist, but this software is not seeing my memory card which is bigger than internal memory of My SGS II, is there any option which will allow me save my track there?
sugfawlo said:
Hey I have Double Twist, but this software is not seeing my memory card which is bigger than internal memory of My SGS II, is there any option which will allow me save my track there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Google music. Done. Install the Google music manager and then it will bring all of your music from your computer and sync it to the Google servers, and then you will be happy. If you want it locally, just plug in and open in mass storage mode. Done.
Thanks >>
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why use bull**** apple software. iTunes may be the biggest piece of crap ever to come out of any major software company. apple should be ashamed of how ****ty it is especially with their reputation for stable quick software.
the phone has an mpt transfer mode that works with kies full (available in foreign markets) and I've heard media player works as well. why not use media player? it comes with windows. or forget the slow mtp sync which I find annoying and just copy the files to the phone.
obviously android offers countless options in music, You can sync to the cloud with Google music, copy/paste over usb, mtp transfer with kies or media player, mount the phone as network drive via FTP, webdav, or other technique, play remote content over dlna or upnp or other options. not to mention the market apps. why in the hell are people working to make our device which is superior in this respect to work like the worst feature of the out dated and limited iPod with maybe the worst mtp application on the market.
why not explore the options that set android apart from the iPhone instead of atemting to use the things that limit the iphone. it doesn't make sense to me.
Dani897 said:
why use bull**** apple software. iTunes may be the biggest piece of crap ever to come out of any major software company. apple should be ashamed of how ****ty it is especially with their reputation for stable quick software.
the phone has an mpt transfer mode that works with kies full (available in foreign markets) and I've heard media player works as well. why not use media player? it comes with windows. or forget the slow mtp sync which I find annoying and just copy the files to the phone.
obviously android offers countless options in music, You can sync to the cloud with Google music, copy/paste over usb, mtp transfer with kies or media player, mount the phone as network drive via FTP, webdav, or other technique, play remote content over dlna or upnp or other options. not to mention the market apps. why in the hell are people working to make our device which is superior in this respect to work like the worst feature of the out dated and limited iPod with maybe the worst mtp application on the market.
why not explore the options that set android apart from the iPhone instead of atemting to use the things that limit the iphone. it doesn't make sense to me.
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Click to collapse
Perfectly said. Itunes.. Smd. Lol.
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I found for Mac, isyncr works really well too. I had at of issues figuring out how to get my phone working with Mac software. Such a pain in the a$$. Especially when it comes to flashing roms (or trying to get back to stock) anyways isyncr worked like a charm rip get my music from iTunes to the phone
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Uninstalling itunes was one of the happiest days of my life.
Use Itunes and GMusic together
IMO ITunes is the best music manager for rating, tagging and searching. I use it to organize my music then point Google Music manager to upload the library.
BAM! Google Music has all my tracks with full info from ITunes. Now if Music had a better auto playlist generator....
iTunes was my primary reason for moving to Android.
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sugfawlo said:
Hey I have Double Twist, but this software is not seeing my memory card which is bigger than internal memory of My SGS II, is there any option which will allow me save my track there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FYI, I know on double twist's "airsync" app their is an option in settings to switch to external memory for saving music. It does warn that it is an experimental feature??
bella92108 said:
hehe, or you could just download DoubleTwist on your Mac\PC, and DoubleTwist on your Android phone and it'll do it all for you... playlists, organization, etc. Takes about 1 minute to get it started the first time, and it's all wireless and totally automated. Not sure why anyone would go through the OP's laundry list of instructions, haah.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the software recommendation, this will help save a lot of time.
I have a Galaxy S3 (9300), and an OTG cable that allows me to manage files on external media. Are there any apps out there that will enable me to manage music/playlists etc on an ipod shuffle via this route ? I would love to be able to ditch iTunes, and this is one of the last remaining things I need to solve!
I'd like to be able to sync music to my S3 using DoubleTwist, and then copy it over to my shuffle by playlist.
Do you leave the Shuffle away from home and need to be able to use the phone for this ? Just unsure why you couldn't just use the computer to do this ? Seems simpler than managing on the small phone screen (could you copy-and-paste as-is ?).
I've never used DoubleTwist, do they not support iPods ?
Does the Shuffle specifically need something that is more than the usual music management ? I've never had one, so I'm not sure and perhaps this is the problem I'm not seeing.
Pennycake said:
Do you leave the Shuffle away from home and need to be able to use the phone for this ? Just unsure why you couldn't just use the computer to do this ? Seems simpler than managing on the small phone screen (could you copy-and-paste as-is ?).
I've never used DoubleTwist, do they not support iPods ?
Does the Shuffle specifically need something that is more than the usual music management ? I've never had one, so I'm not sure and perhaps this is the problem I'm not seeing.
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The Shuffle is the last ipod we have in the house, and I have migrated all of our music to Google Play Music. I would like to be able to ditch itunes totally. The files appear on the shuffle in a the right format, but the namings do not reflect the song titles. Also, I assume there must be a database on there to manage the playlists as there arent anything simple like .m3u files.
Since the Shuffle is so simple, it might be easier to just buy a cheap non-Apple MP3 player instead ($20-30).
I haven't used my iPod for a few months (I'm not even sure where it is), so I don't quite remember how it was set-up (and I never had a Shuffle). I'd check out, "manage iPod Shuffle without iTunes" or something. I use Winamp, and I think it can manage iPods, but I've never tried it (your music is still on the HDD, right ?).
Hey guys!
I've got my N5 several months ago and I was to set up the GMusic service straight away.
At first, that was a perfect solution to do everything wirelessly and not to occupy the precious memory space (I have 20 Gigs of music for 32 GB phone. Sounds tough.)
Ever since I got my first iPod back in 2007, I was organizing my entire music library all neatly in iTunes, transferring that between numerous computers over time being.
Google Music manager works perfectly with uploading that, however, I got to know that this syncronisation is kind of "one way" only.
You only get to UPload the music from the computer and that's it.
If you delete something from your PC/Mac music library, or download some music on your phone, there is no way to sync it with Google.
Same happens, when you correct wrong tags in your music library (e.g. "Royksopp" to "Röyksopp"), it doesn't reflect whatsoever on Google or your phone.
So, after messing around with that a bit, I tried to come up with a solution like iTunes does with iPhones.
I personally haven't got any iPhone for years but they have iTunes Match for your music library to be stored in cloud and be easily manageable from your computer (I mean, if you delete it from your computer, you delete it from the cloud)
Unfortunately, all those ideas available (like do a dropbox folder sync to a GMusic) is nothing but useless.
Is there a way to kind of establish that all-ways PC <--> GMusic <--> Android syncronisation?
I mean, I am perfectly alright with switching services, players (let it not be iTunes and Google Music)...
Just tell me guys what did you come up with?
ioffer007 said:
Hey guys!
I've got my N5 several months ago and I was to set up the GMusic service straight away.
At first, that was a perfect solution to do everything wirelessly and not to occupy the precious memory space (I have 20 Gigs of music for 32 GB phone. Sounds tough.)
Ever since I got my first iPod back in 2007, I was organizing my entire music library all neatly in iTunes, transferring that between numerous computers over time being.
Google Music manager works perfectly with uploading that, however, I got to know that this syncronisation is kind of "one way" only.
You only get to UPload the music from the computer and that's it.
If you delete something from your PC/Mac music library, or download some music on your phone, there is no way to sync it with Google.
Same happens, when you correct wrong tags in your music library (e.g. "Royksopp" to "Röyksopp"), it doesn't reflect whatsoever on Google or your phone.
If you download music on your phone from Google play, it does add it to your library. But I think the strange thing is, you have to pin it on a playlist or something otherwise if you just hit "on device" it will be greyed out, or you have to manually add it to the phone.
For what it is worth, if you go to the labs section of settings inside chrome inside the google play music store (if you use it) you can drag and drop songs in the window and it will add them to the library.
So, after messing around with that a bit, I tried to come up with a solution like iTunes does with iPhones.
I personally haven't got any iPhone for years but they have iTunes Match for your music library to be stored in cloud and be easily manageable from your computer (I mean, if you delete it from your computer, you delete it from the cloud)
Unfortunately, all those ideas available (like do a dropbox folder sync to a GMusic) is nothing but useless.
Is there a way to kind of establish that all-ways PC <--> GMusic <--> Android syncronisation?
I mean, I am perfectly alright with switching services, players (let it not be iTunes and Google Music)...
Just tell me guys what did you come up with?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel your pain, I think the Google Play Music app is severely limited. Maybe they will address this at their I/O conference next month I am a little confused but I think I know what you are saying.
You can edit info inside google play of your browser, just pick the song, click the three dots, and edit the info.
I may be shot for saying this but..... Sometimes I use iTunes, download the track, and upload it to my Google cloud. I also keep an external drive that I keep all my music in. You are able to add folders to the Google Music app to it will sync those to the cloud if you use say amazon, itunes etc.. My problem with google play music manager is that it continuously downloads the same songs for some reason and I have a lot of duplicates, I think it is a limitation of the manager.
Would it be possible to implement synchronisation of the last played position across devices? So when I stop playback on one device and open the same file on another, it asks me to resume where I left off on the first device.
Some reading apps do this (e.g. Moon+ Reader) but I haven't found any media players with that function.
memokun said:
Would it be possible to implement synchronisation of the last played position across devices? So when I stop playback on one device and open the same file on another, it asks me to resume where I left off on the first device.
Some reading apps do this (e.g. Moon+ Reader) but I haven't found any media players with that function.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It would be possible if save playback history on a server.
But I am not sure it is really necessary feature.
Anyway I will make a note
memokun said:
Would it be possible to implement synchronisation of the last played position across devices? So when I stop playback on one device and open the same file on another, it asks me to resume where I left off on the first device.
Some reading apps do this (e.g. Moon+ Reader) but I haven't found any media players with that function.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason why readers can do it is because it stores the "last read" position in your account info, on the reader's server (ie on Moon's server). Media players play files on your device, and not from some central server where you have an account, so media players wouldn't have anywhere to put this info.
I'm not sure if Google Play Services could somehow be used to store this in your Google account (if you decide to opt-in). Personally, I wouldn't want Google knowing even more info about me than they already do.
Hello!
+1 on this one. I'm watching videos on both my phone and my tablet, and it is annoying to manually find the resume point.
One (more) easy way to implement that would be to store the resume point on disk, in a text file for example. If the video folder is synced between the devices by another program (this is my case), the resume point would be automatically synced.
+1!! Any news? you could use the space on Google of course only for those who want it.
I'd love to have that feature as well. A file written to an accessible file path, e.g. one line hash:time per file would even be enough as a poster above suggested. Another tool could then take care of all syncing.
+1 old subject, but I would love to. Perhaps a file sync on GDrive or Dropbox, optionally.
+1 for this even though it's old thread.