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Yabz

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OK, so: anyone had success getting Poweramp to work on a Pixel Phone? I've managed to get everything transferred to it, and it MOSTLY works, but my playlist M3U files are showing as having zero songs listed in them.

I've tried rewriting them with different file paths (never needed to before but figured it was worth a shot), and still nothing.

I've also spoken to some incredibly unhelpful "support" people at Google, who claim that M3Us won't work on a Pixel phone, at all ... and when I ask if that's actually Pixel or ANY phone on Nougat get an answer that usually sounds like they are saying Pixel.

Anyone? Ideas? HELLLLP!

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Poweramp handles playlists and music files using its own database, Android's system media library is irrelevant.

Do the songs which are listed in the M3U file show up in the general Poweramp library songs list? If not, make sure Settings > Folders and Library > Music Folders is set to include the path(s) to your song files. Songs need to first be in Poweramp's library before any playlist will be able to display them. What does the Pixel use as its path to the external SD Card, as I assume you have edited the M3U files to reflect that absolute path?

Andre

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Don't forget, no need to worry about the path in a "foreign" m3u playlist. New Playlist Manager is capable of importing these playlists and recreate a new internal android playlist which you subsequently export to play in Poweramp. Alternatively, Poweramp can import android playlists. If you want to preserve your playlists, it is always a good idea to export them as m3u (m3u8) playlists.

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Everything is there. Everything shows up. And having used Poweramp for quite a while, my memory is that it reads the file locations correctly even though what the M3U files SAY isn't right because of the import from a computer and the paths being different.

 

When I open one of the M3U files, either from the Android file manager ("use Poweramp"), directly inside Poweramp, it doesn't work. And the closest thing I have to a clue why is that Poweramp is eeing the M3U as having 0 songs in it (it doesn't. See attachedScreenshot_20161029-112909.png

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That M3U file seems OK. It contains relative paths though, so it would need to be stored in the same folder level as your various artist folders (i.e. the same location that also contains your folders called "David Gray", "Coldplay", "Oasis", etc). Is that where you have saved it?

The #EXTINF lines are optional for Poweramp (but won't cause any problems) but you could try removing them to make the file cleaner if you like. Technically, Android paths use forward slashes rather than the regular Windows backslashes, but again PA should cope fine with either format.

Andre

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That's the thing: they M3Us ARE in the same folder as the artists are. Exactly as they always have been (prior devices, pre-Nougat).

Like I said, the support people at GOOG claim that M3Us "won't work with Pixel Phones", which I find incredibly unlikely unless they've gone out of their way to break them somehow. But I'm flummoxed. 

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Strange, everything looks correct then. Google's claim that M3Us won't work on Pixel phones seems bonkers to me - both from the point of view that these are merely plain text files so it should make no difference to an app like Poweramp reading them, and also why would Google break that functionality in Android's own media database anyway?

Could you try editing one M3U down to its barest minimum, just leaving several lines of "path/filename.mp3" only, with no #EXTxxx lines? You could also try including absolute paths and see what happens, and even try moving a few songs and a matching playlist over to internal device memory rather than the SD Card to see if it's related to the way Pixel is handling external SD Card path names.

Andre

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Ahhh ... interesting thought; the EXT references COULD be a problem, since access to root level stuff (which worked until this phone, albeit as read-only) has been cut off. In other words: they've clearly locked down something in Nougat (or the Pixel version of Nougat) that didn't used to be locked down.

So I did what you suggested and ... nothing. Still shows up as "0 songs" when accessed within Poweramp, The Music Player app built into ES File Explorer (Pro) also fails when I try to open it directly from the folder, as does Poweramp, and ... no surprise ... Play Music.

I suspect this isn't a Pixel thing, but a Nougat thing (despite the answer from Pixel support, which is awful); like I said, they have locked down some behavior that previously worked. I've also spoken to Play Music support, which was NOT awful, and after we walked through a LOT of scenarios they believed it was Nougat ... and seemed kind of horrified.

So diagnostics-wise the question is whether anyone NOT using a Pixel has Nougat yet and whether M3Us will work. If not ... wow, we have a problem; at that point Google will have kinda iPhoned it up ... "we will tell you how you can use your phone".

 

Arrrrgh.

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I am pretty cofident that as the playlist shows up with 0 tracks, the path contained within is incorrect. You confirmed the tracks exist on your device., do they show in the stock player?. If so then just use my app and import the playlist. It will restore your playlist. If you do not want to buy yet another app, simply use it and request a refund.

 

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Root access is not required, playlists would be stored in a user-accessible location (you might have a Grant Access issue on the SD Card if you want to write to them, but that can usually be bypassed and if your playlists could be written in the first place then they should also be able to be edited). What is the exact path to your music folders and your playlist files, is your SD Card set to appear as an external storage device or mounted as a folder within the regular internal filesystem (the latter can cause issues due to odd path names)?

What happened when you tried putting some music and playlist file on the internal device memory rather than on the SD Card?

Andre

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Theo: thanks for the pointer at your App; I'll give it a try if nothing else works.

Andre: The Pixel has no SD card slot; this is all internal (128GB device, my collection is 70GB, and was the reason I bought the 128G model). And this is what I've been driving at when I add information about the possibility that there might ACTUALLY be something wonky in the Pixel devices; file manager software doesn't look the same in this device as it has in previous versions of Android (OR ... I don't really know what the problem is, right? ... on phone-that-aren't-Pixel). Some File managers see only one memory location, while others still see "an SD card", which of course isn't really an SD card at all. But NONE let me browse the root level of the device, and I just don't know whether that's a Nougat thing or a Pixel thing.

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It's not normally possible to browse to root levels on a non-rooted device, only to the user-accessible directories (where you find folders like Pictures, Music, Android, etc). What does something like ES File Explorer show as the path to your music folder, and will it load the playlist files for editing?

No SD Card slot on the Pixel? That's another phone off my shopping list then. :(

Andre

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"Ha" re the SD Card; I hear you, and my position was that since I could buy one with enough internal storage to cover my needs for what I'm guessing the life of the device would be it was OK with me. And as far as being able to browse to areas I can't play with being non-root ... you'll need to to take my word for it that on my prior devices I was able to do so (most recently an HTC One M8 (2014 phone) )

As for editing the files in-place on the Pixel using ES to browse to the music folder and then its built-in editor : yup, not a problem.

This is weird beyond belief; nothing about it is amiss except the distinct possibility that Google has gone out of their way to disable M3U functionality in either the Pixel phones or the latest version of Android. That would be consistent with "we want you using the Play Music Store and that doesn't use on-device lists", but it would be deeply troubling, ESPECIALLY if it's Nougat 7.1-wide (still bad on their phones, but I guess not AS bad ... if they revealed the information, which they don't).

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I just can't see how Google could have broken M3U files for Poweramp - all PA does is see the file extension (which it must be doing, otherwise you wouldn't see it at all) and then read the contents of that text file and look for the associated song files line-by-line. It doesn't use any of Google's Android library media code at all. Somewhere between PA reading the file and looking for the song file something is going wrong, and I can only assume it's path related.

What paths do you see in ES File Explorer?

Try creating an internal playlist within Poweramp, using Add to Playlist, for a few of the songs in question. Then export that new playlist to an M3U8 file using Settings > Folders and Library > Export Poweramp Playlists. Then see what's in that file.

Andre

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Holy Cow, this actually gets worse.

First, yes, creating a playlist in Poweramp works exactly in the way you said; file goes in the Playlist folder, is named .M3U8 , and is just a text file, containing location-specific file pointers. But then everything else is bad.

*moving the MP3s to that folder doesn't work

*renaming theme as M3U8 while in that folder doesn't work

*CRAZIEST OF ALL: copying an exported M3U8 and placing it in the PLAYLISTS folder doesn't work!

So: Poweramp may be creating external files to represent the playlists, but it only plays them when referenced internally. External lists, whether in the playlists folder or not and whether M3U or M3U8, and despite M3U8 being identical in format to M3U, works ONLY when the file was created in PowerAmp (and, like I said, is referenced as an internal playlist—even if it's stored externally).

This behavior is consistent whether I try to play the M3U8 files in Poweramp or using the EsFileExplorer App to play "as Poweramp" externally.

The solution, inelegant as it would be, would be a manual import feature in Poweramp. I'm not sure what the "Import System Library Playlists" feature is supposed to do, and the "How to Import Playlist Files" tells me what Poweramp is supposed to (always has done) do with the file-based lists, but doesn't actually do anything useful.

Incredible. Truly, Android 7.1 (or the Pixel phone) is literally refusing to allow the processing of the M3U or M3U8 playlists by the system.

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I wouldn't expect you to put your music in the same place as the exported playlists (they are saved to the 'Playlists' folder in the user-accessible area of your device memory). The fact that the files contain absolute paths should make them location-independent on your device. What do the description lines in these new M3U8 files look like? (M3U8 is basically the same as M3U, it just uses UTF-8 character-set instead of plain ASCII encoding for international filenames)

'Import System Playlists' won't help, all that does is copy any Android system playlists into Poweramp's library, and if Android isn't reading them anyway there will be nothing to copy.

If you rename one of these exported playlists and copy it into your regular music folder, does Poweramp see it and display it as that new M3U8 playlist name when you rescan? But still with the problem that it it empty when you try to open it?

Andre

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Bizarre, that's an absolutely regular path description.

And you saved this new copy of the playlist under a new name in /storage/emulated/0/Music/ , and it scanned into Poweramp correctly as that new name, but the new list was still empty when you opened it even though the old (internal) version works fine?

Andre

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Yessir. I know ... makes no sense.

For you guys, if I've uncovered something that y'all are gonna have to figure out how to work around as Nougat gets real in the world (or even if it's actually JUST a Pixel issue that Google's built), well ... uggh.

For ME: the fact that I can export a playlist AND IT PLAYS, suggests that there's something about the export process that isn't just "file dump to disk"; something inside Poweramp is retaining memory of ... something. That would be a workable starting point for me to keep using your app and my playlists. But you said that the exported M3U8's are JUST exports and that the app has nothing "in it" (or in a configuration file somewhere?), so I just don't know what to do now.

The most interesting clues are what I described about GOOG support: built-in Pixel support was adamant that their devices and ONLY their devices are simply not M3U compatible. This, and their  ... <ahem> off-shore demeanor ... suggests that they were coached to say that to get people off the phone ASAP. OTOH, the PlayMusic support team seems to be trying to provide support, and are capable of real discussion , but are actually not in a position to help since there's the online/offline/how'd your music get in their library issues AND it doesn't have file-based playlists. And like I said, they seemed horrified that perhaps Nougat itself was now disallowing that. And let's face it: their job is to support Google's app, not playing it in someone else's.

If there IS something being kept inside Poweramp that seems like the only workaround at this point (and if you can identify it and explain how to use it). Otherwise ... I think it really does look like either the Pixel line or Nougat are going to be causing you problems soon.

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BTW: Just for giggles I've tried Rocket Player. It doesn't work, either. Still dunno WHY, or exactly WHERE, but I feel more and more like M3U is incompatible in either Nougat or on Pixel Phones. Very ugly development.

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M3Us are a really dumb format, all they really need to contain is a pointer to the file as plain text. I can understand Google/Pixel not implementing that as a feature, but I can't see how they can stop another app from reading ASCII text line-by-line from a file. Indeed, PA is able to read the file from what you've said, it's just not able to access the files that are referenced within it.

If you get to the song via PA's library, and then use Menu > Show Tags to see the content, does the path/filename look exactly the same as the line in the M3U(8) file?

Andre

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Exactly the same. from the M3U8 file:

/storage/emulated/0/Music/Aimee Mann/One More Drifter In The Snow/10 Calling On Mary (2016_08_26 03_55_16 UTC).mp3

(I'd include a screen grab showing the same, but at the moment your software is rejecting my attachment)

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