Best app for synching music library

RainyDay

Folks

Any suggestions for a music app for my Windows PC and Android phone that will synch my music library in the same slick way that iTunes used to do? My key requirements are;

- Identify new music on my PC and transfer that to phone with each connection
- Pick up album cover art and track names when ripping music to the PC
- Update 'last played date/time' back from phone to PC
- Let me build 'smart playlists' based on date imported, date played etc
- Let me rate tracks on the phone, which gets updated back to the PC library
- Allow me to delete tracks when I'm on the phone, which then get deleted on the PC

I have Samsung Kies, but I can't see how that can be used to identify new music, or cover the other functions listed above.

mossie

I use Mediamonkey for this. I've used it on the PC for ages and now use it on android to and it seems to work well for syncing.

Riesen_Meal

Surely Google Music would be close enough to what you want OP?

It also has a Spotify style service aswell should you require it but I just upload my own music direct to Google Music, then I can access it on phone, tablet, PC and so on....

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.music

RainyDay

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. MediaMonkey does look interesting, I'll dig into that a bit more.

Does Google Music actually synch my library? I thought it was just an online copy, that required an online connection (e.g. data) for each use.

Dudda

RainyDay wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. MediaMonkey does look interesting, I'll dig into that a bit more.

Does Google Music actually synch my library? I thought it was just an online copy, that required an online connection (e.g. data) for each use.

Google music does sync your music.

When you get a song on your computer (download, rip a CD, copy it from a usb stick, etc) then Google Music Manager which is a small app that runs in the background on your computer checks that song to see if it recognises it from it's large database. If it does then it just makes a copy of the song in your online cloud with all the correct title names, cover art etc. If it doesn't recognise it then the song is uploaded. This makes syncing incredibly fast as it doesn't even have to upload.

On your mobile device when you listen to a song from your library it's saved to your phone for offline use. You can also pin songs, albums or playlists for offline playback. If you listen or pin some music while in wifi on your phone then Google Music doesn't really use a large amount of data. I've about 4GB of music on my phone which would be the good stuff with easy access to probably 10 times that in the cloud (Google counts songs in the cloud not GB so not sure how many GB I have in the cloud). Storing all that music, most of which I don't listen to on my phone would take up a huge amount of space leaving less for photos and apps.

Once the song is in the cloud it's pretty safe. My last laptop died and if it wasn't for all my Music in the cloud I'd have lost it all. You can delete the song from your computer if you want to free up space and redownload it from the cloud again if you want later.

Google Music also have playlists you can create, automated playlists like latest added, thumbs up and if you thumb up a song on the computer or app it syncs to all other devices.

It's free so I'd suggest you give it a try.

RainyDay

Thanks Dudda for that detailed and constructive response. I'm not sure I'm ready to go into the Cloud just yet. I see the advantage of backing up, though I'm fairly religious about backing up my laptop anyway. And I'll have a copy of my library on the phone now. I'm not feeling too warm and fuzzy about Google these days, with all the NDA/Prism stuff. And I don't like the idea of having to flag all my stuff in order to download it to the phone.

Mossie - Media Monkey looks it can meet my needs, and do more besides, such as volume levelling. Does it do two-way synching of updates - so if you delete a song off your phone, does that get deleted from your laptop then?

donspeekinglesh

Doubletwist might be worth a look. I think it'll even sync with your laptop via WiFi (might be an add-on though).

BionicRasher

+1 for Google Music.
It's straight forward, easy to sync, free, and will do all the media cover art and even additional data on artists automatically.
It builds smart Playlist and we use it for a family as in shared account for 3 people across devices such as phone, pc, tablet, Internet radio etc.

Worth a try I reckon!

RainyDay

Jaysus lads, this is hard work, especially when compared to iTunes fairly seamless import and synch functions. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I was really having 2nd thoughts about my Android phone.

So I tried MediaMonkey - the user interface was fairly dreadful, like a 1980s green-screen app running on dumb terminals. There were way too many functions and options for me. Updating album art was fairly painful, and had to be done with each album one-by-one. Even at that, I had to choose a few options for each album. I tried setting up the synch, and I got lost in a maze of device settings, and help texts and options. I gave up.

So I jumped to Google Music. The initial process was fairly straightforward. The interface on the Android app was a bit tricky, trying to force you to 'try' the paid service. The upload of my library of about 8000 songs took longer than I expected, about 48 hours in all, but seemed to go in fits and starts. It didn't like some, though not all, of the tracks that I bought through iTunes. The synching feature for new tracks worked perfectly, with them being uploaded automatically. The 'thumbs up/thumbs down' feature is a bit limited, compared to the Windows 1-5 star rating system. But then the fun started.

I tried listening via the streaming service on my phone. It was good, better than I expected, but still had occasional interruptions, presumably when the network got busy. So I set a large playlist to download to my phone.

Despite have a loads of space on my external card, it ran out of space on the download. It seems that the option to redirect downloads to the external card only works on kitkat, and I'm stuck on jellybean. I did find what I think are a set of instructions for hacking it to use the sdcard http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2003930 but I'm not sure if I can do this, as my phone is not rooted.

I don't think my requirements are that unusual or hardcore, so I'm surprised that it is such hard work to synch a library and take my music on the go.

BionicRasher

Never had any issues with Google music I must say.
It’s always played fine for me and even plays uninterrupted when I am in and out of WiFi range for example if out in the garden it switches between WiFi and 3G connection without a hiccup
I have never tried downloading more than about 50 songs so I am not sure if there are issues with larger playlists however I tend to not download and I tend to just stream. The paid service is good as we share it between lots of devices for all the family. I will try it out on the daughters Moto G 8GB as she has not got a large data package so I will see if I can run a few tests on her phone by downloading some playlists. Then again that’s running KitKat so I may not see your issue. I could also test on a Sony Xperia S so that might give me an idea of your issue.

As for Album art I have found Google Music to be great. You could always use something like Album Art Grabber on the phone or on the PC you can edit the songs from the web app and add art. However I have found its best to get album art and meta data sorted prior to uploading to any service.

White Heart Loon

What Samsung have you, Some like the S4 support moving Google Play Music to SD without Kitkat
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57614747-285/how-to-enable-sd-card-support-for-offline-google-play-music/

RainyDay

BionicRasher wrote: »

Never had any issues with Google music I must say.
It’s always played fine for me and even plays uninterrupted when I am in and out of WiFi range for example if out in the garden it switches between WiFi and 3G connection without a hiccup
I have never tried downloading more than about 50 songs so I am not sure if there are issues with larger playlists however I tend to not download and I tend to just stream. The paid service is good as we share it between lots of devices for all the family. I will try it out on the daughters Moto G 8GB as she has not got a large data package so I will see if I can run a few tests on her phone by downloading some playlists. Then again that’s running KitKat so I may not see your issue. I could also test on a Sony Xperia S so that might give me an idea of your issue.

As for Album art I have found Google Music to be great. You could always use something like Album Art Grabber on the phone or on the PC you can edit the songs from the web app and add art. However I have found its best to get album art and meta data sorted prior to uploading to any service.

Thanks for the update. On the album art, there are still a about 20-30 albums in my collection where it didn't find any artwork. I'll check out those apps you mention.

White Heart Loon wrote: »

What Samsung have you, Some like the S4 support moving Google Play Music to SD without Kitkat
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57614747-285/how-to-enable-sd-card-support-for-offline-google-play-music/

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, I don't have that option within my Google Play Music settings.

White Heart Loon

RainyDay wrote: »

Thanks for the update. On the album art, there are still a about 20-30 albums in my collection where it didn't find any artwork. I'll check out those apps you mention.

Google Music doesn't find album art, it uploads the one you have already, blame iTunes for not having a folder.png in the folder or having the artwork embedded in the individual song files, the way they should be. This is why I used MediaMonkey, once you setup the preferences correctly it will work automatically and add decent quality artwork. Avoid adding artwork to your collection with WMP, it adds it in very low quality which will look poor in Google Music on the high res of your phone

Dudda

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Google Music doesn't find album art, it uploads the one you have already, blame iTunes for not having a folder.png in the folder or having the artwork embedded in the individual song files, the way they should be. This is why I used MediaMonkey, once you setup the preferences correctly it will work automatically and add decent quality artwork. Avoid adding artwork to your collection with WMP, it adds it in very low quality which will look poor in Google Music on the high res of your phone

Not true. Google won't override anything existing automatically but that doesn't mean it can't. In Google music on the desktop you can edit info and click the "Use Suggested" button and Google will override the existing album art, names, genre, year, etc. and with the right high quality album art where it can find better quality.
They said they'd bring the edit track info to the app eventually but at the moment it's only on the desktop.


Edit:
If you prefer 5 star rating system instead of thumbs up and down then in Google music go into settings and Google music labs and enable 5 star rating system. Not sure how this works on the app. Never tried it. I prefer the up and down feature.

beauf

Does itunes allow you delete on the phone and then synch that to the library. I didn't think it could.

I use Media Monkey its fairly complicated but it does most things. Interface isn't that pretty for sure. Takes time to get comfy with it. But it does things the other apps don't do.

RainyDay

Dudda wrote: »

Not true. Google won't override anything existing automatically but that doesn't mean it can't. In Google music on the desktop you can edit info and click the "Use Suggested" button and Google will override the existing album art, names, genre, year, etc. and with the right high quality album art where it can find better quality.
They said they'd bring the edit track info to the app eventually but at the moment it's only on the desktop.


Edit:
If you prefer 5 star rating system instead of thumbs up and down then in Google music go into settings and Google music labs and enable 5 star rating system. Not sure how this works on the app. Never tried it. I prefer the up and down feature.

Thanks for the suggestions. Can you just clarify, when you refer to 'Google Music', what specifically are you talking about? Is this the Google Music facility running in your browser? Or the Google Music Manager app?

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Google Music doesn't find album art, it uploads the one you have already, blame iTunes for not having a folder.png in the folder or having the artwork embedded in the individual song files, the way they should be. This is why I used MediaMonkey, once you setup the preferences correctly it will work automatically and add decent quality artwork. Avoid adding artwork to your collection with WMP, it adds it in very low quality which will look poor in Google Music on the high res of your phone

Sounds good, but MediaMonkey isn't finding art for new albums, or finding track names either. Any idea what I'm missing?

beauf wrote: »

Does itunes allow you delete on the phone and then synch that to the library. I didn't think it could.

No, in fairness, iTunes didn't do this for me either - would be great to find an app that does do it.

---

So here's an update on the story so far;

I've continued to work with Google Music, and I've made some progress, though it's still far from perfect. I found the 'lower quality on mobile' option, and this reduced the number of times the sound stops (while streaming presumably) while out and about. But it still gets a bit jumpy at times. I also find that the player freezes or gets stuck at times, even when listening on wifi. This probably says more about my phone than about the app, but it certainly happens more than when playing music directly on the phone.

I tried 'faking' a star rating system with playlists, one list for 1-star, one for 2-star etc. This does allow me to flag up songs with a particular rating. But when I'm playing a song, I've no way of checking whether I've already rated the song, or what its current rating is.

The facility to delete a song from the cloud library works fine, though it is not replicated back to my original folder library. So if I want to delete, I've been adding songs to a 'delete' playlist. When I get back to the desktop, I delete the song from both the playlist and the folders - a bit clunky.

RainyDay

I saw a post from Style Jukebox, recommending the Style Jukebox app. I presume the mods removed the post as advertising.

If anyone does use the app, I'd be interested in hearing if it can solve the problems detailed above.

beauf

RainyDay wrote: »

...Sounds good, but MediaMonkey isn't finding art for new albums, or finding track names either. Any idea what I'm missing?

Works for me. Are you behind a company firewall?

You can run iTunes on your library (organise folders off) then manage it with Media Monkey. I used to do this to find where tags were missing. But fix them in MM. Its much bettrer at that.

RainyDay wrote: »

No, in fairness, iTunes didn't do this for me either - would be great to find an app that does do it.

I think the problem is there isn't one app that does all you are looking for.

But sounds like iPhone/iTunes comes closest. Personally I found itunes incredibly slow, and limiting. Most people iPhones/iPods I look at their music is a horrible mess. I tend to use itunes alongside other apps.

RainyDay

beauf wrote: »

Works for me. Are you behind a company firewall?

Nope, no firewall at home.

beauf wrote: »

You can run iTunes on your library (organise folders off) then manage it with Media Monkey. I used to do this to find where tags were missing. But fix them in MM. Its much bettrer at that.

Sorry, can you clarify, when you say 'tags' - are you referring to track names, or artwork, or something else?

I might try your suggestion and to back to iTunes on the PC.

beauf wrote: »

I think the problem is there isn't one app that does all you are looking for.

But sounds like iPhone/iTunes comes closest. Personally I found itunes incredibly slow, and limiting. Most people iPhones/iPods I look at their music is a horrible mess. I tend to use itunes alongside other apps.

You might be right, it just seems horrendously complex to replicate the clean, simple, intuitive iTunes/iPhone interface on Android.

beauf

RainyDay wrote: »

Nope, no firewall at home.


Sorry, can you clarify, when you say 'tags' - are you referring to track names, or artwork, or something else?

I might try your suggestion and to back to iTunes on the PC.


You might be right, it just seems horrendously complex to replicate the clean, simple, intuitive iTunes/iPhone interface on Android.

Tags refers to all the information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

Try to do anything iTunes doesn't want you do and its no longer simple. Its only simple because its limited and locked. Because of this it can lock a library to a device. Which then allows you to pass information back and forth like you are doing.

Did you look at the library feature in MediaMonkey? I can't really help you as I don't use my MP3 players or library as you do. I manage it myself.

White Heart Loon

RainyDay wrote: »

You might be right, it just seems horrendously complex to replicate the clean, simple, intuitive iTunes/iPhone interface on Android.

Give MediaMonkey another go, it does all you ask. Play about with it and you'll get used to all it offers. It's miles more advanced than iTunes, but you'll have to go into Options and configure it to get it to exactly how you want it. You'll have to pay for the pro version if you want it to scan and update artwork in the background otherwise you'll have to do each album individually. Be sure set it to add a folder.jpg to file folder in Options->Library->Tags and Playlists->Artwork. You can even download different skins, look for the slim ones they may suit you better
http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/browse/skins/

My own opinion is that iTunes is the worst POS software you could ever put on a Windows PC, it's slow and restrictive.

Dudda

RainyDay wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions. Can you just clarify, when you refer to 'Google Music', what specifically are you talking about? Is this the Google Music facility running in your browser? Or the Google Music Manager app?

It's on the browser in "Settings" >> "Labs"

Dravokivich

I just use explorer to drag and drop albums. What more do you really get from using a media manager?

beauf

Dravokivich wrote: »

I just use explorer to drag and drop albums. What more do you really get from using a media manager?

This?

Dravokivich

beauf wrote: »

This?

Thats just novelty to me. Those types of features arent really anything.

AndrewJRenko

Just picking up on this old thread to see if anything has changed in the six years since. I know almost everyone else in the world has gone to streaming music, but being a bit of a Luddite, I'd prefer to continue to manage my own music library on my laptop and synch it to my Android device.

Are there any nice ways of doing this, particularly ones that don't require iTunes to manage the library?

selephonic

I switched from iTunes with iSyncr to a program called MusicBee. It does pretty much everything iTunes does but syncs with Android over usb or wifi. It does nested smart playlists, album art, replaygain, skins, and loads of other things either in-built or through plugins. Its light weight too, starts up quickly, doesn't have huge updates like iTunes, despite being updated regularly.

It will import your itunes library except for the smart playlists but I bit the bullet and just rebuilt these and I haven't looked back.

AndrewJRenko

selephonic wrote: »

I switched from iTunes with iSyncr to a program called MusicBee. It does pretty much everything iTunes does but syncs with Android over usb or wifi. It does nested smart playlists, album art, replaygain, skins, and loads of other things either in-built or through plugins. Its light weight too, starts up quickly, doesn't have huge updates like iTunes, despite being updated regularly.

It will import your itunes library except for the smart playlists but I bit the bullet and just rebuilt these and I haven't looked back.

I owe you a pint. And I owe the MusicBee developer a pint.

This is excellent - really does what I need. I had a bit of trouble getting the wifi sync to work, but that seemed to be down to () characters in the device name. So it worked tonight, syncing new songs down to the Android.

Great to be rid of Apple iTunes, and great to be able to really enjoy my library again.

Cheers, much appreciated.