How do I manage a playlist on Android with no files on PC [#13910]

[donphillipe]

Here is the situation. I have been without playlists for some time now since I switched to Android from Creative media player. I loaded all my music on the SD card in the Android phone. I tried a dozen Android players and was finally delighted to discover MMA as the only sensible player out there that works the way I want and is reliable.

But now I am in a dilemma because I can't figure out how to manage playlists on the android via my laptop (with only MM loaded on the laptop, none of the actual media (MP3s)). I plug in my Android device and I see my Andnroid phone appear in the file tree on the left of MM on the laptop. Then from MM running on a laptop, I open the Music folder of my phone's SD card and I select a number of music files, then the only thing I can figure out is to click Send To and select a playlist but I can't figure out how to reference the music files in a playlist residing on the phone. (When selecting music on the phone and clicking Send To Playlist, it creates an "New Playlist" on my laptop, which I don't want.)

I really don't want a copy of all the music from the phone onto my laptop if possible; I just want to use the laptop to manage playlists on the phone if that is possible. But I will do whatever is required because unless I am missing something, MediaMonkey is the only thing that works like iTunes and my old Creative Labs stand alone MP3 player that had laptop software that would manage playlists on the device.

I don't want streaming and all that other junk everyone wants so sell these days, just a way to gain back the playlists for the files I have on my latest media player, an Android smart phone. Thanks!

[donphillipe]

I see this question goes unanswered in several other posts as well.

Some investigation found the following. I have a Blu Studio (cheap generic) Android. I was able to find the location of the playlists for MMA (MediaMonkeyAndroid) on my phone:
Computer\STUDIO6.0HD\SD card\playlists\hidden

The new test playlist I created via MMA creates a file on the SD card in the phone at the above location:
New playlist 1.fuaml

The format of the playlist file is:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:161,For What It's Worth
/storage/sdcard0/Music/Buffalo Springfield/Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth.mp3

I suppose I could create these playlist files manually and add them to the phone via manual editing, but it would be nice to understand how to do it via the MM for Windows software, to use the software on windows to generate playlists from the music on the phone and add the links to the playlists on the phone without having the music collection copied to the PC.

[donphillipe]

Possibly I could create playlists via MM on the windows machine, edit the files, do a global change the link syntax from Windows to Linux format and save the multiple playlists to the Android. Then I would have to hope the MMA app did not use some database algorithm matching its database to the files that actually exist in the playlist/hidden directory and that would not render playlists introduced from outside sources inaccessible.

[donphillipe]

I just tried duplicating the existing playlist "NewPlaylist1.fuaml" to "test.fuaml", rebooted the phone and sure enough to my disappointment this method does not work. Apparently MMA will not recognize any foreign file introduced to the /SDcard/playlists/hidden directory on the phone.

[donphillipe]

Apparently the directory Computer\STUDIO6.0HD\SD card\playlists\hidden on the android is a left over playlist from another application. I discovered that even though the file in this directory is initial read by MMA, changing the files in this directory are not read by the MMA on the Android even after an Android reboot.

If I start fresh and create a playlist on the Android itself, the file is created in the "playlists" directory in the form of "playlistname.m3u". I also found that copying this file off to my laptop and adding an entry to it would not be read by MMA even after rebooting the Android. The format of the m3u in the folder "Computer\STUDIO6.0HD\SD card\playlists" is as follows:

/storage/sdcard0/Music/ArtistName/SongTitle.mp3

Again, editing this file on windows, adding new songs and copying back to the playlist folder on the Android does nothing for the Android version of MM to pick up on your edits from the file itself (if you did not use MMA to edit the list). This is true even after a reboot of Android. Apparently MMA keeps it's own database of playlists and writes changes to the file but any changes you insert into the file from an external source are never "read" by MMA.

[donphillipe]

I may have just found a loophole! Apparently if you create a raw file using Windows in the specific format required my MMA (see above), then Media Monkey Android will accept the file as a valid play list on first discovery . I haven't tested it yet, but I believe that the file is likely read into the MMA database and from then on out you may be required to edit it with MMA if you ever desire any changes. Getting around this would require editing it externally, placing it with a different name in the /playlists/ directory of the Android and having MMA discover it all over again.

There must be an easier way of doing this.

[donphillipe]

It's interesting also that creating a new playlist on Windows results as a new entry under the Playlists file tree title to the left but it remains empty. This title will be created along with the other headings of "Accessible tracks, Favorites (4) categories, the playlist I created, followed byt Last 50 played and Recently added. But nothing from the phone can be added to it.

Now in the left explorer tree under my phone, STUDIO6.0HD - SD Card, I can still see all my titles under the "Music" subfolder under the phone portion of the file tree on the left. If I open the Music folder under the file tree heading of my phone's SD card, I can attempt to drag entries from the music list from the phone to both the new playlist name I created under the master file tree heading "Playlist" and I can also attempt to drag entries from the Music directory of the phone to the folder "STUDIO.../Playlists/TestPlay" (this is a playlist I created with MMA on the phone). But the playlist is not altered in any way.

Dragging songs from the phone Music folder to any windows based playlist fails as well as trying to drag a MP3 from the Music to the Playlist heading under the phone tree on the left.

[Peke]

Hmmm. Can you please send LOG from Android Menu -> About -> Send Log and write down (Screenshot) of log id here so that we can look why MMA do not have access to playlists.

Also Can you give us MMA , MMW version you use. I would suggest that you use latest MMA 1.2.0 Beta.

[donphillipe]

I will have to check the version number. I updated them to the most current ones available online but not the beta versions.

MMA uses MMA playlists find. MMA also appears to import M3U playlists in the /playlist directory on the andorid into the MMA data base.

The problem is that the MMW software does not allow the cross movement of songs from the MMA folder on the phone into the MMW playlist, if the music directory has not been synced (if duplicate library on the PC does not shadow (sync) the one on the phone.

I was hoping that Media Monkey for Windows would work like the Creative Labs software which allowed you to manage your player playlists from Windows. From what I understand so far, MediaMonkey Windows is for Windows and playlists there and MediaMonkey Andorid is for Android and playlists there and the only option someone has to do cross-management on playlists is to create an exact mirror copy of the music library on the two devices (Windows and MediaMonkey), manage playlists on the seperate systems and hope that a sync would make the two a mirror of each other.

This leaves those like me, who only want to use Media Monkey Windows to manage music libraries and a playlists on an Android, without the capability to do so. (This is probably only a concern with those who have larger music collections.) In my case I do regular system backups and it is a serious storage contention problem to have multiple copies of my music collection floating around in backup archives.

[BionicDance]

I have my Galaxy S6 hooked up to my PC via USB, and I'm trying to edit the playlists that are on the phone.
Here is a very relevant point to consider first:

I do not wish to sync my device with my PC; there are tracks on my phone which are not on my PC, nor do I want them on my PC. They are ripped from CDs that, were I to play the tracks on my computer, I would use the CD itself, rather than an MP3 I ripped to the computer.
As this is not an option on my phone, however, I have put the track directly on the device.

With that in mind, my goal is to create/edit playlists that are on the device, but using MediaMonkey on my PC as the interface (because making playlists on the phone itself is a gigantic, cumbersome pain).

So my question is this: does this functionality exist in MediaMonkey and I'm just too stupid to find it? Or does MM not have this capability...which it bloody well should?!

[UeliF]

Same problem here: I am creating play lists with Media Monkey on my computers harddisk. When I send the songs to my Samsung Galaxy Tab A (Android) the songs do get posted but no playlist. How do I manage that playlist do get copied and updated ?

OK: I have just found the solution. I will post it here next week. It is in the sychronization settings of MM to Android.

Here it is:
On left panel of MM screen. Choose 'Tablet' (in my case it reads 'Galaxy Tab A - Card').
Now a window opens where it let's you set your synchronization options.

[emkay4597]

Hers the easiest, best, least painful work around I found... super simple but not 100%.. like 98% if that makes sense.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3EMi ... k95cFBuZkU

its a pdf file.

[Ludek]

Thanks for feedback,
I added it as a feature request into Mantis http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=13910 to be implemented in a future version.

[donphillipe]

Hello Don Phillipe from 4 years ago, this is Don Philliipe from the future and I see no one seems interested in this topic but, I mean me LOL. No I started reading this and thinking, wow, it's nice to see someone else is interested in the same topic as me and it ended up being me.

I must have figured out how to make this work with my old phone but still can't make it work with either for two phones, a Huawei Y5 or the old samsung. I finally crashed the screen of my old Blu and I've been without music playlists for a couple of years now. Wish I could get it working again.

[donphillipe]

Whoever deleted my post - why did you delete it? There was no reason. I am trying to resolve this "hole" in the published, or better described, known to the universe ways to manage playlists. Basically I just want to create my own playlists without doing a lot of syncing and having to worry about what is going on behind the scenes and worrying something might happen like just happened to me today which is my entire playlist directory got wiped out when I created a new one via the phone itself.

So long story short, after hours downloading terminal and file manager apps, pouring through Linux commands and trying to figure it out, I couldn't find how the file structure was laid out in my phone (assuming now that finding to this level must require rooting). Turns out that after taking a break it occurred to me that if I created a test playlist on the phone itself, I could copy it to windows (you'll need the Google USB drivers from their development kit) and once I got it copied to windows then I was able to open the playlist with Windows Notepad and there it was, the file structure that looked nothing like anything I had seen before in any of the Linux command attempts.

Playlist structure for old decomissioned BLU Android:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:161,For What It's Worth
/storage/sdcard0/Music/Buffalo Springfield/Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth.mp3

Playlist structure edited for my Huawei Android:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:161,For What It's Worth
/storage/1319-35DF/Music/Buffalo Springfield/Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth.mp3

So I made a copy of all my playlist files (MMA erased them all out of the Playlist folder on the SD card when I created the test one) and I used the CONTEXT programers editor to drag them all onto that application which opened the all, letting me do a quick global change from sdcard0 to 1319-35DF. After the edit and global change in each list, I copied them to the Playlist folder on the Android and restarted it. Now I went to media and tried to add the Playlist folder to the media directory and it again told me the Playlist folder had nothing in it. However this time the Playlist started populating with all my playlists from the Playlist folder on the sdcard and I again checked and the Playlist folder was never added to the media library.

So the bottom line is it works. I don't complain too much because this is the only descent Android player on the market (something that doesn't try to over-sell every online feature that most people don't care about or if they do, there are plenty "audio sales" outfits waiting to receive your credit card.

Note: Ensure you have a backup copy of your playlist, especially if you just moved the SD card from a crashed phone to a new one. Now go into MMA and create a test playlist with only 1 song. Now use Windows USB drivers or simply remove the card and place in a windows drive. Now make a copy and edit all the files (CONTEXT is a good free editor) and do edit, replace all to change the sdcard0 to the one you read that your own phone created. Your name won't be the same as my phone and that may even vary phone to phone. Best of luck to you!