MothraMoon

I did the one big "dump" but would be adding to it piecemeal once a month or so (it's only about 100-200 songs a month and thus not terrible. But yes, it sounds like it will not be horrific. The only thing I thought might be bad would be putting new albums by artists I already have into in "old" folders. Like "The Kinks" is a large folder, but I am always adding more to it. And the only reason I use itunes at all is A) the ability to download from the itunes store B.) it lets me rip CDs many of which I burn from vinyl, C) it serves as an index for when I really can't find something. [I had files get lost in OneDrive because it used a foreign character like "Garcons" with the french "C." Thus I can easily find the file path using the itunes interface, and then find the file in onedrive. (Which is why being consistent across all copies of the song file is kind of key). I agree it sucks, but it is too much work to fix it and not really worth it. Probably thee most annoying thing is that it will take a single artist comp, and not only put it in the compilations pile instead of artists, but if it is like "20th Century Masters" it will dump everything in there like it is one album even though it is a series featuring multiple artists. I know I could uncheck the box and fix it, but then I would have to fix it multiple places which would cause playlists to stop working etc. And, I was not even thinking about damaging the SD card until I read something about how you should never delete photos from your camera because when you take subsequent photos, it fills "the hole" where the deleted file was and can cause it to fail.

OK, follow up. I spent all morning on this. I tested out half the music library in the "traditional" folder structure, and yes, it seems to be working much better in terms of the app actually reading the songs without spinning for several hours. (It took probably ten minutes for 18,000 songs). I erased the drive in the phone, but copied the files from my USB to my SD card via the laptop. This was only moderately painful (as it was averaging about 20 megabites per second). I am going to load the rest of it in this manner and hope for the best. At least now I know that individual songs in a giant folder is bad.... still not sure why, but I will never attempt it again. Of course, slotting the files in manually on an SD card to keep it in the same order that itunes does also seems like it may cause damage to the card, but at this point I don't care. Not sure if I am the only one who ever thought to flatten the folder structure to avoid that nonsense, but it doesn't work. I just hope the app will continue to work and not crap out on me every week forcing me to rescan every time. Of course, if it takes ten minutes as opposed to ten hours, I may be able to live with that. [I would consider some program that "syncs" but I did not really want to do it for all 30000 songs in one go. iTunes has not "synced" in years, and I used to just drag the songs into the player via the software. That's where I got the idea to sort songs by date].

It's a Dell XPS 13 purchased in about 2019. (I also have another one purchased in 2018). It still works pretty well but it's not as lightning fast as it used to be. But compared to many of the other lemons I have owned, I am still overall happy with it and not looking to replace it yet. Overall it is pretty good, but I try to avoid doing behemoth tasks on it. I also have major problems with photoshop now that that program has become so bloated, but I am stuck with it for now. In any case, I don't like to set something running and just leave the house. Something always goes wrong when I do that. I am pretty sure that all my files have enough metadata embedded which is whyit never occurred to me that the app would be reading folder names. I would love to redo the entire thing but I know I will just end up redoing the same things over and over after itunes comes along and redoes it (like a single artist "greatest hits" album giong underr "compilatoins.") Thus, I have accepted the fact that are forced to deal with less. Like in 2009 we could have songs, and album art, and it would not take 17 hours to load when you add a few new songs. But if I have to jettison all these "nice" things in order to hear the entire collection on random shuffle, it is literally all I care about. It's beginning to look more and more like an impossible dream, but I am going to reformat the card -- erase it totally -- and copy everything from my San Disk Extreme SSD to the card -- in the hated iTunes folder order. It's going to mean endless futzing to make sure the sd card version and the phone version matchup. I already spend time matching up copies in OneDrive (which is where everything is stored in case the house burns down). And I run itunes off of a completely different laptop and SSD on my other Dell. There used to be a basic Windows Media Player that acted a lot like itunes that let you rip cds, burn cds, and make playlists. My motto for the last ten years has been: IT WAS TOO GOOD AND USEFUL. IT HAD TO GO.

OK. It's a brand new card but could have been destroyed scanning so many times. It's a Lexar brand which may be crap... I don't know. But at least I have a better idea what to do.

Okay to answer the question about the sd card. I put it in the card reader slot on the laptop. It took a long time because I broke the task up into small batches because I did not want to strain the laptop. Maybe that is just paranoid. But I think it copied at the rate of about 24 mbps which is pretty abysmal. It's a UHS I which is not the fastest, but I thought it was capable of at least 100 mbps.

I don't know. The file data is embedded in the mp3 files. That's why I did not think it would be a problem to ditch the folders (I keep a copy in itunes folders view anyway so I have two copies of the music on a 1 TB drive). However, I thought it would be a pain to manually track it on the phone/player because I would have to keep lists of everything I added. For instance. If I have a ton of Beatles stuff already, and then I add another item to the Beatles folder, I have to manually go to that folder and copy that album to the phone version and insert it into the right folder. Just seems like a pain compared to seeing everything by date. [Like you can't just sort by date to see the most recent things added]. And never mind the compilation albums which itunes really made a mess of. Thing is, I really don't care as long as I can play the files. But if this is the problem I guess I cannot do it this way which makes me question whether I want to bother at all. It was such a hassle putting everything on the sd card to begin with that I think I would rather stab my eyeballs out than do it again. But I guess I will suck it up. If it still doesn't speed up the card reading process it will have been a huge waste of my time. Thing is, I know my collection is not really all that huge, but compared to most peoples' it is.

Okay, I see you answered the question above. "hundreds per folder not thousands"

How many separate folders does it need. What would be the maximum per folder? I even eliminated the artwork because that was slower to load than the songs themselves. It took two weeks to copy all the music onto the card because I was afraid to do it all at once (because it takes such a long time it will burn out the fan). If I have to do it all over again, I think I will just give up. I could do it by date but anything else would defeat the purpose (because the way itunes structures the folders would be a nighmare to maintain manually)

I also want to add that I even went tot he app settings in android and unselected the "remove permissions if unused after a few months" or whatever it says. Somebody mentioned that restarting the phone will undo this setting which super frustrating. I have not been able to test the theory. In any case, I never go months without using the phone. I only downloaded it two weeks ago and I have been futzing with it almost continuously since then. But why would removing the card have any impact on the file paths stored in the app if they do not change. I mean, I have my itunes pointed to an external hard drive, and if I remove it, itunes does not lose all the settings and have to rescan it. That is why I don't understand how to add new music. If it would just remember that it scanned everything before a certain date, and then only look for new stuff that would be the perfect solution.

Thanks. I am not sure where to put all this info since you said you moved it. I will refer to my reddit thread which is longer than War and Peace. However, I installed the trial version, then I got it working after much hand wringing agony. I bought the unlocker. It stopped working (like it just would not respond or play music when I hit play). I did everything short of a factory reset of my phone, and had to start over. (And this was not the first app I used. I have scanned and rescanned my sd card many many many times which is why I am ready to drive off a cliff. There truly seems to be no solution and I am a big believer in the old adage, NO MUSIC NO LIFE. In short, I deleted the app and the unlocker app. Then I reinstalled it. I had to do a full rescan which consists of the spinning icon with no real info showing. This went on for several hours and I had to leave it overnight. I began the ordeal at 8:00 not realizing I would have to babysit it until 4:00 am. This morning it continued scanning, only this time I saw the progress where it would say something like 100/17,000 files. That took three hours and that was only half the music. It finally finished and showed all 30,000 songs. However, I just know that I am going to have to go through it all again if I ever have to restart the phone. I don't know how else to add the music. I can plug the phone into a laptop and drag them to the music folder on the sd card (if it is not 30K songs it should not be sooooooooo horrible), or I remove the sd card and add songs that way. Downloading them from the cloud would be a massive PITA so I am at a complete loss. I mean, it is so messed up now that it seems to have ruined my phone. Yesterday it was hanging for over an hour "calculating" and trying to read the card. It's a big file, but I thought if it can handle a 512 GB card (this one is only 256 and only half full) I am like WTF?????? I really want this app to work I am sick of this. I have been obsessing on this for two months ever since my iPod died. Why was I able to drag a few files over and have it work using 2009 technology, but today it is MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. (And btw, I totally eliminated the itunes folder structure and put all 30000 songs into one giant folder. Could that be what is messing things up? The reason I did that is because I thought managing so many folders on the phone would be a nightmare. This way, I could just add things after a certain date. But I don't know. Why does it seem to work for literally everyone else on the planet except me. Could it be that my phone is a Samsung A515F (which is not a u.s. model but comes from Argentina. That was another rip off that I was unaware of at the time. Since Tracfone switched to verizon, the phone has been basically a doorstop until my ipod died. I am trying to throw out every conceivable reason why this thing will not work)

PS, i HAVE SCOURED THE INTERNET FOR DAYS AND WEEKS LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION. THERE SEEMS TO BE NONE. I HAVE ASKED ON REDDIT. AND NOW I AM ASKING HERE. I KEEP THINKING THERE MUST BE A SOLUTION AFTER SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE COMPLAINED FOR SO MANY YEARS.

Someone siad it is a ten minute ordeal. I WISH!! It is more like a ten hour ordeal. I feel like giving up. I thought it was working okay, but hten it stopped for some reason. I had to empty and start all over with a fresh instlll of the app and it took SEVEN HOURS!!! I turned off auto rescan. I did everything. This is the fourth complete rescan (which I did not initiate). It's so god awful I cannot bear it. WHY WHHAT AM I DOING WRONG. DOES THIS MEAN I CAN NEVER ADD ANY NEW MUSIC TO THE PLAYER WITHOUT HAVING TO START OVER EVERY TIME???? CAN I POSSIBLY BE THE ONLY ONE WHO LIKES TO ADD NEW MUSIC EVERY WEEK WITHOUT ENDURING 12 HOURS OF EXCRUCIATING AGONY??? I assume anyone who is willing to endure this rather than "just get spotify," is like me and finds it totally inadquate. I like to add songs every week. I even got rid of the album art folder because I ONLY CARE ABUOT LISTENING TO THE MUSIC IN RANDOM SHUFFLE MODE. WHY IS THIS SO HARD?????????