Transferring music

[kazlh]

This is my first post for help. I have the Poweramp unlocker my music is stored on my sd card. How do I transfer all my music onto a new phone.

[andrewilley]

The simplest way would be to take the SD card out of your old phone and put it in your new one. Otherwise, copying via a USB cable to a computer and then back onto your new phone (also via USB cable) would be the next easiest option.

A couple of things to consider:

1) The new device may use a different name for its SD Card location. Poweramp should still find it, but it would be worth going in to Settings > Folders and Library > MusicFolders once you have installed PA, and untick any locations that you don't want scanned, and just tick only the music folder located on your SD Card.

2) Such a change in directory naming can cause problems with playlists as they could now be referring to files in non-existent folders. Poweramp should be able to work this out, but if not you may need to edit the files to reflect the new directory path format (M3U or M3U8 files are just plain text list of paths/filenames, and are really simple to edit if you need to).

3) If needed, remember to export/backup your PA Settings and any internally-created playlists from your old device and then re-import the settings on the new one. The Playlist files can just be copied over (see 1 and 2 above). Things like ratings and most-played counts will not be transferred, and nor will downloaded album art.

You may find that forum user TheoKlink's "New Playlist Manager" app might help if you have a lot of internal playlists, ratings, etc that you want to retain between devices. 

Andre

[jcgc50]

On 7/27/2017 at 1:31 AM, andrewilley said:

 

3) If needed, remember to export/backup your PA Settings and any internally-created playlists from your old device and then re-import the settings on the new one. The Playlist files can just be copied over (see 1 and 2 above). Things like ratings and most-played counts will not be transferred, and nor will downloaded album art.

Andre

2

How do you export/backup and then import settings? I need to do a reset on my phone and would like to keep that information.

Jim

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, jcgc50 said:

How do you export/backup and then import settings? 

Settings > Export Settings

Then copy the resulting file to somewhere safe before wiping your device. Then use Settings > Import Settings to restore from the saved file.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

The best way for me is to use iSyncr on my desktop and phone to sync iTunes playlists to my phone.  Been using this app since 2012.  Works nice.  i can just lay in bed or whatever and access my playlists over the wifi and sync to my phone.  It's easier to work on playlists on the computer then sync to the phone.  it is to tedious to build playlists on the phone itself.  and why recreate the wheel when i already have tons of playlists on the computer.  It took  a few years to figure why the playlists in all mixed up on the phone.  apparently either Android or iSyncr don't play well with the automatic sorting on iTunes so i have to manually sort my playlists in iTunes.  so annoying but at least i finally can have my albums and tracks in order on my phone.

[andrewilley]

@hypomaniac-eric Of course that does assume you use iTunes, which personally I have never allowed on any hardware that I own (phones, tablets or PCs).

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

12 hours ago, andrewilley said:

@hypomaniac-eric Of course that does assume you use iTunes, which personally I have never allowed on any hardware that I own (phones, tablets or PCs).

Andre

What's wrong with iTunes?  I have a love hate relationship with it.  Microsoft dumbed down they're offerings.  I read recently there's a musicbee windows program and android app does the same thing as isyncr.  the windows program is the music player and it syncs directly with the app i believe.  i haven't tried it yet but might sometime.

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, hypomaniac-eric said:

What's wrong with iTunes?  I have a love hate relationship with it.

I guess I have more of a hate-hate relationship with Apple products in general. Great hardware, but their software is far too keen that you do things "their way" and lock yourself into their ecosystem rather than allowing you to work the way you want to.

Andre

[hypomaniac-eric]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I guess I have more of a hate-hate relationship with Apple products in general. Great hardware, but their software is far too keen that you do things "their way" and lock yourself into their ecosystem rather than allowing you to work the way you want to.

Andre

A few years ago I got brave and switched from Android to an iPhone 6+.  took me almost a month to get used to iOs.  I enjoyed the phone after that till i got my GS7.  I was so glad to be back on Android.  the reason i got a iphone is because i got frustrated with the android hardware.  the iphone 6+ camera was awesome.   But the software is too awkward and restrictive.

[Torence]

This is a happy tour for me to read on your site, since I have learned how to transfer music in easy way from follow the comment guide. Thank you so much. 

[Ronald Harvey]

"Things like ratings and most-played counts will not be transferred, and nor will downloaded album art."

These are huge feature gaps that paying users have been asking for years.  I don't even bother to use star ratings anymore (which is a real shame) because I KNOW I'll lose them with an upgrade/reset.

[flyingdutchman]

If you have read this thread then you will find there is a way to backup and restore your ratings.

[m babjak]

I just installed power amp onto my new phone and the music 'came over' in a total mess.  I have A LOT of music and having to edit all of this is really not much of an option.  Since I have never had to put power amp on a new phone before, if I had known all the ins and outs I would have just copied the music over separately.  But there was warning or information on how the 'reinstalls' work.  This really gripes me!

[andrewilley]

26 minutes ago, m babjak said:

the music 'came over' in a total mess. 

You'll have to be a bit more descriptive than that!

Music can't come over "in a mess" - if you copy the folders over (or use the same SD Card) then it's just there, or it's not. If you can explain what the problem is with your music, we can try to help.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

You do not really explain what the mess comprises of. Poweramp would have no involvement in copying music, it simply detects the new tracks, reads the main mp3 tags and builds its media database. If you mean by mess, your library eg artists, albums, genres etc are missing/incorrect thenyour music willshow up "a mess" in any music player as the tags are missing. Once you copied your music, it is best to reboot your device so everything gets rescanned.. You could clear Poweramp data and rescan using the  Poweramp option

[Ronald Harvey]

On 10/28/2017 at 7:47 PM, flyingdutchman said:

If you have read this thread then you will find there is a way to backup and restore your ratings.

I HAVE read this threat and I don't know what you are talking about. Per the above: "Things like ratings and most-played counts will not be transferred, and nor will downloaded album art."

If you can direct me to where ratings, most-played, and the many thousand of "per-song" attributes are saved and able to be transferred to a new phone COMPLETELY, I am all eyes and ears.  

Also, I have stopped saving my music to an SD card on Android. It works fine until your SD card dies or you run out of space and have to move to a new SD card. It just isn't worth it. I have bought a new phone with 512 GB of internal storage and will use that instead.

Please, users just want an EASY way to transfer EVERYTHING Poweramp stores from one phone to a new phone. Really, how hard can this be?

[andrewilley]

9 minutes ago, Ronald Harvey said:

I HAVE read this threat and I don't know what you are talking about. Per the above: "Things like ratings and most-played counts will not be transferred, and nor will downloaded album art."

Your best option would probably be the New Playlist Manager app (written by @flyingdutchman above), as that can backup and restore a number of items which PA stores in its internal database (such as ratings for example) which are otherwise liable to loss on a complete re-install for example. Downloaded album art is local to the app too, but you can manually copy the folders from /Android/Data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/ which should transfer them over to your new setup.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

1. Export your playlists from Poweramp

2. Export setting from ppoweramp

3 follow this link http://www.theo.klinkweb.nl/Poweramp.html which hopefully explains what you are looking for

With regards to the sdcard issues, yes if it gets disconnected whilst your device in switched on it will rescan and remove tracks it no longer can find. That is why you should backup playlists by exporting as m3u8.

Ps, i am about to release a new version of my app from which you can manage all your Poweramp playlists and ratings.

 

[Ronald Harvey]

Thank you andrewilley and flyingdutchman for your followups. I'll try these solutions, but I've already lost so much from changing SD Cards, phone re-sets, new phones, etc. that I've accepted losing 90% of my Poweramp data and slowing re-adding them as as inevitable. I wish there was a better player out there, but there isn't - which is why I paid for Poweramp.

My point is (as I think a lot of other users agree) that one has to jump through unnecessary and complicated hoops and/or install (and sometimes pay for) external tools to do what Android and/or Poweramp should do on its own. It is SO COMMON to want to transfer ALL your Poweramp settings to a new phone or copy your music and playlists to a new SD Card and expect to have it not break everything. In fact, editing the unique SD Card ID for playlists when copying to a new SD Card should be AUTOMATIC - it's not that hard! But today we have to do it manually. 

I think this is what the recent poster is referring to as a "total mess" if you just copy your music files over to a new phone.

Again, thank you for your followups.

[andrewilley]

You can transfer all your Music, PA Settings, and Playlists to another device. What you can't so easily transfer are the 'transient' things that you set up per track - things like downloaded album art, personal ratings, play counts, etc. Other than embedding them all back into the physical music files (which would be my personal choice, but Max says there would be too much of a performance hit, not all file types support all changes, and also the risk of damaging files) the only thing you can do is use an external app such as @flyingdutchman's, or re-creating them on your new device.

Andre

[LEFTERIS]

I bought yesterday Poweramp. I was downloading for hours album art for my 5000+ songs in my collection. Today I just copied my music from my phone to my tablet. All the files in the sd card as my phone. All the same names. Didnt change names of files or songs or anything. Just copy-paste. I installed Poweramp, replaced all the files in the internal storage, android, data, _com.maxmpz.audioplayer with those in the exact place from my phone, I ve chosen to show sd card files, renew my library and all my album art was there exactly as my phone.