Synch from iTunes to Android

[Guest]

There is only one app that synchs iTunes to Android, and it's old and unsupported, synctunes. Works, but with some bugs. The newer one, isyncr, is expensive and does not work for many people. It won't even install the desktop part if you already have C++ installed. It's time for a functional and supported app.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Agent.Theory said:

 It's time for a functional and supported app.

Are you planning on writing one? iTunes doesn't generally play nicely with the rest of the technological world. Nothing that fits into Poweramp's remit though.

Andre

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, Agent.Theory said:

There is only one app that synchs iTunes to Android, and it's old and unsupported, synctunes. Works, but with some bugs. The newer one, isyncr, is expensive and does not work for many people. It won't even install the desktop part if you already have C++ installed. It's time for a functional and supported app.

Have you tried using a more traditional syncing program that doesn't depend on iTunes? If your music is all within subfolders you can sync those to your device or SD card. You can even export playlists from within iTunes to create standard m3u playlist files and sync those too.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for another app to bridge iTunes and Android devices.

[6b6561]

It's a little bit hard to give advice with the limited information on how you are using iTunes and what you expect to get synchronized. If you expect to get things like play counts and ratings synchronized with Poweramp, then I would say that you are out of luck with any of the COTS solutions. But if you are fine with just the songs with the embedded metadata and maybe playlists, then you could go with something much simpler.

Simplest thing is to share your media folder from your PC and use something like https://play.google.com/store/search?q=foldersync&c=apps to pull the files to your Android. The iTunes Media folder location can be found from iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced.

1. Share the iTunes Media folder on your PC
2. Install FolderSync on your phone
3. Create a Folder Pair in Folder Sync
4. Run the Sync

(1-3 are a one off activity, 4 is executed when you make changes to your library)

Playlists can be exported from iTunes to a separate folder which you also share and pull to your phone using FolderSync. iTunes Playlists are exported by selecting the Playlist and then File -> Library -> Export Playlist.

I was looking for something to synchronize Playlists and didn't find anything sensible. I did at some point setup a script based solution where I could compare my Playlists across my devices and then update the master and have it replicated to all devices... but I gave up on that, it worked but it wasn't worth the hassle. My Playlist master nowadays is my iPhone, so all changes are done there. If I realize that I want to change something while using a Android, then I will just screenshot the player screen as a reminder and every now and then I do the changes to the master. Same goes if I stumble upon typos etc. in the metadata, a quick SS and then take care of it when I have some sparetime at my PC.

I run this setup with 14000 songs, takes a couple of minutes to run the sync. The time it takes to synchronize my iPhone over cable is comparable to the time it takes to synchronize my Androids with WiFi.

 

[Guest]

@MotleyG exporting the playlists along with the music files is what I need. I need to be able to sync selected songs and playlists from iTunes, where all my music is. 

[Guest]

@6b6561 I just want to sync selected playlists and songs so Poweramp can recognize them. For people asking me if I'm going to write such a program myself, I wouldn't be posting here if I could do that.

[andrewilley]

If you are saying that you want iTunes (e.g. on a PC) to export both a playlist AND all of the required individual audio files that are needed to be available to play that list elsewhere, then I don't think there's anything that can do that automatically. iTunes is a pretty closed system and they don't make interacting with the rest of the world very easy. There might be something out there that can do it, but as I don't personally use iTunes I'm not aware of the details. Certainly it is way out of the remit of a music player like Poweramp to do it. Perhaps might be worth talking to @flyingdutchman to see if his Music Playlist Manager could help?

Andre

[6b6561]

Next question is how many Playlists are we talking about, number of tracks and how frequently do you change them? And do you use iTunes due to having iPhones or iPods? Or do you have iTunes due to historical reasons? Maybe the easiest solution would be to completely ditch iTunes and move over to MediaMonkey, Foobar2k or something else to manage your library?

I have a iTunes library because I'm stuck with using both iPhones and Androids... as I wrote, it's easy to extract Playlists to m3u8 format from iTunes and these will be imported just fine by Poweramp. What you have to do is to ensure that all songs are present on your phone, either by manually copying only the wanted tracks or the full library to the phone, the path of the songs must remain the same.

You could probably also have iTunes and another media manager sharing the same media folder on the PC... My iTunes has only read access to my media folder as I don't want iTunes to touch my files, tag changes are not automatically seen in iTunes, but if you play a changed file for a few seconds it will read the updated tags and synchronize the files over to your iDevice on next sync...

iTunes on PC is actually quite open, you are able to get at the music files in either a iTunes managed folder, or in your own folder. Playlists can be exported from within iTunes or extracted from the iTunes database in .xml format.

So there are a lot of options, all comes down to size of library and usage pattern as that determines if it's worth to automate or do it manually.

[Guest]

The responses to my idea seem to be overthinking this. My request is simply that Poweramp include a function to sync from selected iTunes playlists and audio files to Android. It should also remove files that are no longer selected. That's all it would need to do.There are currently two apps that do this. One is synctunes. It mostly works, but is old and buggy. The other is isyncr, which is an incompetent app that often doesn't work at all. I leave it to the Poweramp developers to consider the idea.

[andrewilley]

I really think you should be looking elsewhere. PA's remit does not cover file copying from commercial apps and services. If the music files are already downloaded to your device though, you can use the Music Folders menu to bring that music into PA's library (so Playlists can find them).

Andre

[6b6561]

I do assume that the OP has been talking about music that he has added to the library on his own and that it's not Apple Music files that he is dealing with.

I haven't bought any tracks from Apple Music so I can't advice on it, but I could buy something just out of curiosity and see how that works.

5 hours ago, Agent.Theory said:

My request is simply that Poweramp include a function to sync from selected iTunes playlists and audio files to Android.

This is most likely not going to happen as there is currently no desktop component for Poweramp as Poweramp is currently primarily designed to play music that you already have on your device. And if Poweramp would create an desktop component then I guess iTunes integration would be quite far down on the feature list as I think there aren't that many iTunes & Poweramp users out there. On top of that you have the issue with existing apps that should work that doesn't work.

Due to this we are doing our best to help you with some workaround that isn't to cumbersome.

On 9/20/2024 at 8:23 AM, Agent.Theory said:

@6b6561 I just want to sync selected playlists and songs so Poweramp can recognize them. For people asking me if I'm going to write such a program myself, I wouldn't be posting here if I could do that.

This leads me to think that you only want to copy Playlist and files to Poweramp, and not the other way around. It's also unclear how often this would take place and the number of files. If it's not to frequent then it would be doable to do it manually or otherwise it might be worth to look into adding a Media Manager that can deal with Android.

I found the following manual way that would work.

1. Open iTunes
2. Go to the Playlist
3. Select all tracks in the Playlist (Select first track, scroll to bottom, hold shift and select last track)
4. Drag the files to an empty folder in file explorer (Can also be a folder on your phone if connected by USB, otherwise a folder that you copy in some other way to your phone)
5. Open Poweramp
6. Navigate to the Folder in Folder Category
7. Select all tracks
8. Add to Playlist