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Suggested ways to sync/transfer music and create playlists


jasonv

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Hi;

I've been searching the for different ways to sync or transfer music to my android phone and then create playlists, I'm currently using Media Monkey and it works fine, but I'm wondering if people are using other tactics to do this. What do you do if you use ChromeOS? Do you copy all your MP3s to your phone and then create playlists by selecting each song and adding to a play list? I cannot find a generic way to easily do the following ...

  1. create playlists based on criteria and copy them alone with the MP3s to your phone
  2. copy your MP3s to your phone and created playlist based on criteria from an android music app
  3. use ChromeOS to do any of this

If it wasn't for Windows & Media Monkey and the Media Monkey android app I'd be stuck. How is everyone doing this?

Thanks.

JasonV

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I keep the folder naming / nesting structure the same on my PC and my phone (from the root music level anyway) and then I create M3U playlist files with relative paths (rather than absolute ones) as needed, and just copy them over from the PC to the phone. The same files should thus work seamlessly on either platform. It's perhaps not very user-friendly to actually do though, as I paste the path/filename info directly into the M3U files using a text editor.

Andre

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Hi Andre;

Thank you for your prompt response.

Are you using a Windows PC?

So how do you arrange your folders? Are the folders the actual playlist or do you create playlists that traverse over multiple folders?  (I.E. Artist, Genre, etc )I'm guessing you don't reconfigure the folders very often which would require you to recreate the playlists. If possible could you provide a brief example of your folder structure?

Are you using a direct copy and paste or are syncing them somehow. If you are using direct copy/paste, do you just copy the new tracks along with the updated playlist over to the phone?

As I sort of mentioned briefly, I'm trying to figure out a way to do this on Chrome Book and I find it difficult.

Thanks.

- Jason

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I tend to be fairly old-school and just copy new stuff over manually, as I don't want everything from my PC's 400GB+ music collection in my phone at one time. I use a local (LAN) wifi FTP service running on my phone, so I don't have to bother plugging a USB cable in, I just drag files/folders from the PC straight into the relevant window for the phone's matching folder structure.

The exact folder structure is up to you. I have several top level folders for overarching categories (such Podcasts, TV Shows, Films, Radio, Music) and then subfolders inside those which are based on appropriate subjects such as podcast names, TV show names, film series or one-off titles, etc. In the Music folder there's an extra level of Artist folders, with any Album folders inside each one, plus a separate "(Songs)" folder for all the miscellaneous single tracks that don't easily fall into artist/album layering. Once created, I very rarely change a folder or filename structure  though, I merely add new subfolders or files wherever they should be placed.

I use playlists pretty sparingly to be honest (normally my folder structure ordering is sufficient for my listening tastes) but when I do create playlists they usually do span several folders. For example, inside my "TV Shows" folder I have a subfolder for "Doctor Who" which contains further subfolders for season's soundtrack CD. I don't often want to listen to every single track in order though, so I created a playlist with a couple of dozen of my favourites which I placed in the root of that overall "Doctor Who" folder. It uses relative paths to point to the track files, as per the following extract:

Doctor Who Series 1/02 Westminster Bridge.mp3
Doctor Who Series 5/09 I Am the Doctor.mp3
Doctor Who Series 3/26 The Stowaway.mp3
Doctor Who Series 1/30 Love Don't Roam (performed By Neil Hannon).mp3
Doctor Who Series 1/15 Song For Ten (Performed By Neil Hannon).mp3
Doctor Who Series 3/08 My Angel put the Devil in Me.mp3
Doctor Who Series 5 (A Christmas Carol)/28 Abigail's Song (Silence Is All You Know).mp3
Doctor Who Series 5/33 Chances - Athelete (used in Vincent and the Doctor).mp3
Doctor Who Series 8/12 Don't Stop Me Now (feat. Foxes).mp3
Doctor Who Series 4/06 Songs of Captivity and Freedom.mp3
Doctor Who Series 4/26 Song of Freedom.mp3
Doctor Who Series 1/14 Rose's Theme.mp3
Doctor Who Series 4/02 A Noble Girl About Town.mp3
Doctor Who Series 5/13 Amy's Theme.mp3
Doctor Who Series 5/11 Amy in the Tardis.mp3
Doctor Who Series 6/01 Growing Up Fast.mp3
Doctor Who Series 6/35 The Majestic Tale (of a Madman in a Box).mp3
Doctor Who Series 3/01 All the Strange, Strange Creatures.mp3

It could just as easily be songs from my artist and album folders though.

Andre

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Hi Andre;

Thank you for the detailed explanation.  This is very helpful. I'm going to make an attempt to emulate what you are doing on a Chromebook. Hopefully I can. I think I will see if I can create some scripts to create playlists. All I have is music at the moment so maybe it won't be complex at first.

Thank you very much.

- Jason

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I use a program called TagScanner on my PC for editing tags and artwork in music files, and one of its side functions is that is has a very configurable (script-based) system for creating playlists. So if you scan your music collection - or part of it - into TagScanner, not only can you check all the embedded tags in a nice line-by-line layout, you can also multi-select songs and get it to create a playlist file for them (with relative paths based from wherever you create the playlist file if you want). There is a learning curve of course, but once you get the hang of it (and maybe tweak your own scripts) it's pretty simple.

image.png

The above created a playlist file in the 'Playlists' subfolder of my main music artists folder as follows (the "..\" at the start of each line means to move up one folder layer before looking for the next part of the path):

..\Barclay James Harvest\1981 - Turn Of The Tide\05 - Echoes And Shadows - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1981 - Turn Of The Tide\09 - Life Is For Living - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1981 - Turn Of The Tide\10 - In Memory Of The Martyrs - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1982 - Berlin - A Concert for the People\01 - Berlin - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1982 - Berlin - A Concert for the People\08 - Child Of The Universe - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1982 - Berlin - A Concert for the People\09 - Hymn - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1983 - Ring Of Changes\08 - Paraiso dos Cavalos - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1983 - Ring Of Changes\09 - Ring of Changes - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1984 - Victims Of Circumstance\06 - Victims Of Circumstance - Barclay James Harvest.mp3
..\Barclay James Harvest\1984 - Victims Of Circumstance\09 - I've Got A Feeling - Barclay James Harvest.mp3

Andre

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