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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...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.

[Q] Playlist Syncing ? (Galaxy S i9000+ Froyo)

Hey people,
I'm having issues syncing playlists from my computer to my phone.
Been searching all over the net for a proper solution but no luck with this.
Here's my issue;
Basically when i sync playlists from my PC to my phone, it saves the playlists on my phone as .PLA format.
Now the only player that actually reads those playlists is my stock player.
I have tried several android players, but non of them will recognize the playlists.
On my PC for syncing i have tried
-WMP
-Winamp
-MediaMonkey
-DoubleTwist
All of these create playlists in PLA format on my device when transferring them, which wouldnt be a problem if i wanted to use the stock player.
As for android apps/media players i have tried:
-Cubed
-Winamp
-Mort Player
-Media PlayerPro
-Mixzing
-Astro Player
When i create a playlist using any of the apps on my phone, every other app is capable of reading them.
However, the playlist file can not be found on my phone, or my SD card. so i have no clue what format they are saved to, or where they are saved too.
I'm basically looking for a way to transfer my playlists from my computer to my android phone, and have the other apps actually read the playlists.
The phone im using is the Samsung Galaxy S.
Been trying to work this out for days now, but with no success what so ever.
So if there is anyone that has a clue on how to get this done properly, id appreciate it.

Music Setup

I don't think there is a lot of discussion about this, so I thought i would start one. Good evening, my name is Gregg and I am a recovering Ioser. It started out with just an ipod...you know it was convenient, it was shiny. It worked well. Buying music was a simple process. You clicked and could listen immediatly. At first it was just occasionally, but I got into the podcast scene and itseemed to fit me perfectly. Podcasts would let me listen to things while I was doing chores around the house. Eventually though podcasts on my ipod weren't enough for me. I also had to carry around a phone on the side, so I decided that maybe it would be OK to try a little iphone. The first click was awesome...phone and tunes...podcasts done well. I was hooked.
For two years I was doing a lot of Ios, but eventually the shiny IOS had me hooked. There were bills for apps that did nothing but make funny noises, their was music that I paid for but never listened to. I was hooked. I probably hit rock-bottom last year. My iosing was out of control and I thought I would go cold turkey. So I got my G2x.
Sorry for the goofy intro, but I though this would set me up a bit. Here's what I have itunes on the windows side. So getting music and podcasts from itunes to the g2X involves multiple layers.
1. Moving music to the machine.
2. Moving and managing podcasts
3. Playing and managing music (which includes playing, rating music and searchng through my music)
So I will start with the first question. From what I understand there are really two ways that I know of to move music and podcasts from itunes to your phone. One is doubletwist, the other is isyncr. There might be others, but these are the two that I worked with. of the two I went with iSyncr and here's why. Doubletwist has a lot going for it. Really a nice interface, and a nice music player on the android side. Its trying very hard to give me, an ex-ioser a bit of what I am missing. The sync app looks like itunes and allows me to sync my playlists. The app looks a lot like itunes. It plays music fine. The player struggled with my phone, though. Somehow it didn't cooperate with the cm7 ROM I am using. It wouldn't play well on the lock screen and seemed buggy. The syncing was buggy too. Genius podcasts wouldn't refresh when they changed on my itunes. There were workaround(relaunch itunes and doubletwist).
Isyncr is a 2.99 purchase. Its simple. You install the app on the android(you pretty much install and forget it) and it syncs when you launch the windows EXE on the memory card when the phone is docked to the computer. It works well. It syncs podcasts, and ratings. To me, that was important because I have this theory that I will rate my music into organization in itunes.Its flawless. I haven't tried the wifi setup, but I might in the future. It doesn't play your music, so its just a solution for syncing.
As for podcasts, I tried very hardto find a solution on the android side that will satisfy my needs right on the android. I bought the full version of pocketcasts. There are a lot of good things going for it, but there are bugs. One that was kind of a deal breaker was that if you try to advance the podcast in the player while its playing you lock up the app. Restart is the only solution. So, it was a good, pretty solution, but it had to go. I tried a couple other apps, but I wasn't sold.
So, ultimately, isyncr is my solution for podcasts too. It woks well, but it will require a daily sync. The advantage ultimatley of syncing from the desktop is also that I am able to make Mp3 CDs of podcasts as well as sync my podcasts from the same source. Simple, efficient and workable.
Which brings me to playing. I love google music(I have two more invites if anyone wants one), and it allows me to access my music when I am around wifi seamlessly. It allows me to make instant mixes based on a song. That's a killer feature. Combined with wireless access to all my music via the cloud its excellent. Advancing and moving within tracks and podcasts works well. Its not a full-feature app, but it works.
Almost there, there is one last aspect. I would like to rate music from my library while its playing. Isyncr has a nice widget that allows you to rate and see your playing apps and see the album art. Its part of the package. The ratings and playcounts go right back to itunes.
My preferences represent my unique quirks in terms of music and listening: I am a podcaster and a music listener and I prefer to rate my music. Because of this I am happy with: Isyncr and google music.
Long set-up, but ultimately I am asking you what your music listening setup is. Thoughts?

I use the standard music app since it has DTS for the g2x. Google music as well for some streaming music. Google Listen app for podcasts. I also like BeyondPod.
I drag and drop music. It's not fancy but I don't mind.

Power Amp with some EQ modifications and Voodoo Sound is how I enjoy my music. I used to use Doubletwist for syncing my music to my phone, but each update made more and more bloated, along with random freezes, so I just uninstalled it. Sony's Media Go software good is good for adding music, but I prefer to drag and drop into organized folders.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2x using XDA Premium App

If you're using a stock ROM, I'd recommend sticking to the stock player because of it's DTS feature. It greatly improves sound quality if you have it selected.

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.

Music Storage

What is the best to store music. I have double twist, but it is a pain to sync my checked songs in Itunes. I am coming from a iphone, had one since 08. I also uploaded most of my music I listen to to Google Music. Is that the easiest? I am afraid with double twist it will sync all of my music. Also will stock music app play songs that I have on Google Music?
Thank

I have DoubleTwist, but I only use it for AirPlay, not for syncing, so I can't speak on that part.
The Play Music (Google Music) player is the only player that will stream your Google Music from the cloud. However, within Play Music, you can download songs to your device. At that point you need a third-party app to convert the downloaded Google Music songs to regular mp3's for use with other apps like the stock app or DoubleTwist.
Sorry, I can't recall what any of these third-party apps are called, but if you google around, you should be able to find them.

If you want to keep music on your phone (which is of course handy for when you don't have a data connection), I use Syncr, which seems to have an easier interface, and less buggy than DoubleTwist. I just dump the music I want into playlists, and sync the playlists to my phone using Syncr.
Haven't used Doubletwist in a while. But when I did, it seemed that more times than not, it would try to synch all my music to my phone, regardless of the fact that I indicated to only sync certain playlists. Since I have something like 40+ GB of music, it lock up my computer, and fail to sync successfully anyway (since there is obviously not enough storage on the phone). Then I would have to start over synching, and on subsequent attempts, it would finally do what I wanted.

I find the solution I use to be quite useful and actually pretty awesome.
I've uploaded my entire music collection to Google Music. Yeah, it takes a while, but just leave your computer on for a couple of nights and it will finish.
Next, I made sure everything was well-organized. I only keep complete albums (like buying a CD), so sometimes there will be a song or two that need to be manually grouped into the album. Do this!
And finally, go into the Google Music app for your phone, select a few albums, and make them 'Available Offline'. It takes a minute or so to get an entire album transferred onto the device. Make sure you do this while on WiFi.
Since my phone can't hold all of my music, I select about 10 albums or so- more than I can realistically listen to while I'm out, and swap in/out albums when I get new ones or want to listen to something else.
It's also pretty useful if you stumble into anywhere with WiFi and want to listen to your entire music collection- something a lot of us cannot do even with 32GB phone storage. You can also make some more music 'Available Offline' when you find WiFi out in the wild.
This has worked wonders for me so far.

So does Google music not let others tie into their service? Big disappointment IMO, I am coming from windows phone and iPhone that have these app silos. Android has a file system and I thought this could be avoided.
I want to use the new HTC Music Hub and at first thought that it was going to tie-in from Google music and bring down all of my music as well as tie-in with local music I have on the phone. Which I am realizing is not the case. All the HTC Music Hub is going to do it let me launch Google music... Disappointing
New question though. Can Google Music two-way sync from the phone? Let's say I download an album from the internet onto my phone. If I put it in a certain folder will it sync? or is there an option in Google Music to upload music from the phone to Google Music?
And last but not least, can the Google Music player play music stored locally on the phone?

You can only add songs to Google Music from your computer, for now.
If you make music 'Available Offline', it becomes stored locally and you can listen to it without an internet connection.
You cannot use Google Music to listen to non-Goolge Music locally stored music.

danada said:
I find the solution I use to be quite useful and actually pretty awesome.
I've uploaded my entire music collection to Google Music. Yeah, it takes a while, but just leave your computer on for a couple of nights and it will finish.
Next, I made sure everything was well-organized. I only keep complete albums (like buying a CD), so sometimes there will be a song or two that need to be manually grouped into the album. Do this!
And finally, go into the Google Music app for your phone, select a few albums, and make them 'Available Offline'. It takes a minute or so to get an entire album transferred onto the device. Make sure you do this while on WiFi.
Since my phone can't hold all of my music, I select about 10 albums or so- more than I can realistically listen to while I'm out, and swap in/out albums when I get new ones or want to listen to something else.
It's also pretty useful if you stumble into anywhere with WiFi and want to listen to your entire music collection- something a lot of us cannot do even with 32GB phone storage. You can also make some more music 'Available Offline' when you find WiFi out in the wild.
This has worked wonders for me so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly what I'm thinking of doing if I get the One X. Some questions...
Is is simple to swap in/out albums for offline listening? (When on wi-fi.)
So the music is stored locally when downloaded for offline listening? For the One X would that mean the 'phone storage'? (The 9.8 available for media.)
Any idea how long it would take over wi-fi if I hypothetically chose 6 GB of music to download for offline listening?
How well organized is your music once you use the Google Music app? Any bugs? (Songs missing, artist listed twice, anything else.)
Thanks in advance for your answers.