Individual Music-Genre Folders

[GerryMac19b]

Hi

 

Although I've been using Poweramp for several years, I'm a comparative newbie when it comes to fine-tuning the app, so I'd be grateful for help on this topic.

I am interested in several genres of music - Traditional Irish dance music, Old Time American dance music, Folk Songs, Classical Music, Pop and Jazz.

I would like to create a Library or Folder in Poweramp, on my phone and tablet, dedicated to each individual genre in order to organise my music collection as I can do in File Manager on my PC - ie, a classical album would be filed away in the 'Classical' folder and so on.

 

Can anyone advise me how to set this up?

 

Thanks in anticipation.

 

GerryMac

[flyingdutchman]

The best way to "organise" your collection is to tag your mp3 tracks. Assuming you know nothing about mp3 tagging, I will try and explain. A music track on your device contains the music information of course but in addition, it can contain additional information. For instance, it can also hold the Artist name, Composer, track title, genre, year and so on. From reading your post, properly tagging the genre will give you what you are looking for. There is no need to organise into folders as the music apps can present the tracks in a number of ways using the tags. I find that the easiest way to tag your music is to do this on a PC. I use mp3 Tag Tools but there are many programs available.

Once you have your music tagged you can create playlists which are simply collections of tracks selected using the mp3 tags. Poweramp has the functionality to create playlists using the tags. For example, in PA when you list genres, you can select one or  more genres and add to playlist. 

[GerryMac19b]

TheoKlink

 

Thanks very much for your prompt reply and suggestions.

 

However, if I understand you correctly, you can only tag individual tracks. I'm actually looking for a method which puts entire albums of a particular genre into a folder or directory which I then can play as the humour takes me. In tagging tracks, I would imagine you'd need to break them into playlist manageable chunks in order for them not to be too large and unwieldy. Does that make sense or have I misunderstood you?

 

I have made playlists before but when I tried to create extra 'dedicated' folders in my phone's storage card via File Manager, PA recognises the new albums but lumps them all together in the one existing general collection.

 

So, basically that's my problem. I have a large collection of albums of the various genres and a large memory card on my phone. If I could find a method to organise them as outlined - and through PA! - I would be one happy bunny.

 

Any further suggestions would be welcomed and thanks again.

 

G

[flyingdutchman]

I think you misunderstand the way in which media apps use the tags. Yes you do need to tag each track but this is easy, You would tag lots of tracks in one go. 

The thread below is from someone who has the same problem as you do 

 

http://forum.powerampapp.com/index.php?/topic/8121-disable-media-library/

 

As far as playlist go, as far as I know they do not become too large or unwieldy. Remember, PA is a very good music player in the first instance, not a file manager.

Have a look at New Playlist Manager on Google for a playlist manager with lots of functionality.

[GerryMac19b]

Hi TheoKlink

Thanks once again for your help.

My frustration arose out of using an old iRiver player several years ago on which you could create folders/directories until you were blue in the face as it had an excellent file manager written in. When I replaced this with an iPod, it was a little more awkward but you could eventually work around it although I benefitted as iTunes put me off Apple products for life!

As to my current problem, apart from trying to get my phone to replace most of my other gadgets!, your suggestions have been excellent and have helped to give me a better understanding how PA works.

I've read your supplied link and was smiling at the list of similar frustrations from the other guys. Meanwhile, I'll have a look at the Playlist Manager and give it a try.

Much appreciated & best wishes.

G

[flyingdutchman]

The next release of New Playlist Manager will allow you to import external M3u playlists. It will process this list and build an android playlist irrespective of the path. Poweramp has this intelligence too but creates its own playlist.

[andrewilley]

I tend to do this manually using folders and subfolders rather than tags, it just feels that I've got more direct control that way.

Andre

[GerryMac19b]

Thanks guys.

 

1. I've installed the New Playlist Manager. It looks interesting and I'll give some feedback when I'm up to speed.

 

2. Re Andrew's suggestion, I refer back to my own experience in that, when I tried folders & subs on my PC and transferred them to the device, they all ended up in the one general folder. For example, there's a default folder named 'Albums' in the Card directory of the phone as shown in File Manager. It currently holds around 60 albums of Irish Trad. I created another folder in the same parent directory named 'Albums OT' (for Old Timey music). I loaded several albums of OT music into it, refreshed it via the scan mode in PA on my device and then went into the Albums directory in Library. *ALL* albums (Irish and OT) were in that one library.

So, either I'm doing something completely wrong or that's the default mode of PA.

 

One other point re tagging. On my PC I use Media Monkey as a player. It has a column which displays the genre of the album/track. Depending on whoever inputted the tag info into the album (at source) - even within the two genres listed above - tracks are variously described as 'Folk', 'Irish', 'World Music' and 'Country'. You therefore cannot depend on using the given genre of a track to make a dedicated playlist. So, back to a manual input!

[andrewilley]

If you are using folders and subfolders to categorise your music, make sure you are also using 'Folders' mode in Poweramp's Folders/Library screen, otherwise they will all still be sorted by tags.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

If you want to move tracks to folders,There is an app Playlist2Folder which will copy or move playlist tracks to folders

With regards to tagging, use a tagging tool. You can update eg genre tag with irish folk for instance for all relevant tracks in one fell swoop.

[GerryMac19b]

Thanks again, Andre & Theo.