Advice on Syncing & Managing Audio Library
Reply #2 – 2015-03-08 00:32:07
Following on from Daeron's advice, I would also recommend the use of a synchronisation tool to keep your library mirrored across your phone and PC. As well as BTSync, there's also the free and open-source SyncThing. But be warned, they may be all well and good for ensuring the music files are mirrored but they may not address the other problem: playlists. See, corporations know that by holding a user's playlists or metadata hostage there is a greater barrier for exit from their music service or eco-system. By making it difficult to export or transfer a user's playcounts, ratings and/or playlists, it is hoped that the user will not bother with the effort of moving to a competing service. Most of them seem to do this to varying degrees. With Android, Google appear to have designed the system to store playlists in a database in the data partition. It appears to do this with playlists created in the system media player, as well as with any playlists that are copied to the device storage. They are then read by apps which request details from the playlist media store. This makes things a little more difficult than simply copying a playlist file from one location to another. Apparently, PowerAmp (playlist export) can liberate system playlists but I have no experience of either of those apps. Personally, I resolved a long time ago not to have my data held hostage by any programme so I liberated my playlists by re-creating them in .m3u format. Since m3u playlists are simply text files listing songs, they can be created and edited in any text editor on any device. If you choose to do this, just be sure to make the first line is #EXTM3U, as in this example:#EXTM3U ./Path/To/Song.ogg ./Mr. Blobby/The Blobby Song.ogg ./Even/More/Silly/Song.ogg ./Runtlethrop & The Lust Maggots/Breakfast Jihad/Uncle Potato.ogg ./And/So/On.ogg Save the file as NameHere.m3u, and Bob's your mother's fraternal relative. I popped a copy of the m3u playlists in the music folder of your SD card. So, while Android will read these playlist contents and re-create them in the media store, they can still be synced along with the music files themselves. Also, you can transfer playlists as easily as popping the card in a new device. The downside to this approach is that editing playlists is a little more fiddly than simply dragging songs; instead new entries must be typed into the m3u text files. Alternatively, explore whether DoubleTwist for Android solves your problem. Again, I have no experience of it but apparently it can sync.