Treasley

First off I want to say I'm super excited to be jumping over to android and I'm really hoping for some direction. As of right now I'm fairly lost. My number one concern about switching to android is the lack of cut and dry/straight forward music buying/organizing (offline and online) and all in one syncing program. So for someone who wants as few programs and apps as possible for a seem less experience...

Is google music for the desktop a good sub for iTunes for someone moving to android and away from apple?

Basically I want to have my music organized on my desktop (and online) and be able to sync specific songs/artist/playlists to my androids SD memory, all like you can do with iTunes and iPhones. Easy and care free. Thanks.

KENNECTED

Welcome, have you looked at Google Music? I've been using that and I have no problem with my music playback.

UssjTrunks

I use MediaMonkey to organize and sync my music. It's the world's most powerful media organizer. However, it does not offer cloud sync nor can you buy music through it, it's purely for organization/synching.

Another thing you can do, that iOS users are not used to, is just copy and paste your tracks onto your phone and then organize them using your music player app.

As for Google Music, I can't comment on that because it's not available in my country.

Last edited by UssjTrunks; February 11th, 2012 at 07:24 PM.

Treasley

I was thinking of switching over to that for both my desktop client and phone app. Can you sync to an sd card in a phone? And can you make offline playlists that install the music to that sd card. Basically how well does it compare to iTunes?

mmkeel

I use WinAmp, you should give it a shot. Syncs your computer with your phone through WiFi and you can choose to put the .mp3 on your phone or SD card.

Treasley

I was looking at Winamp as well
Do you also use the android app for your phone player? Is it pretty decent? How's purchasing music though Winamp?

RyanB

Not that I use it (I swear by Google Music), but doubleTwist seems to fit the "iTunes" bill

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Treasley

RyanB I'm really liking the idea of google music. But how's the desktop client for offline playing? Also how is moving music and playlists to an sd card for offline playing on a phone .

RyanB

Never tried it. TBH, I didn't even know they had one.

MaxOmus

With google music you can sync your music folders to a cloud & on your phone you can stream everything you have synced, as well as having the option to sync/download it to your sd card for offline use/listening. I don't so much use google music on my desktop to listen to music, I mainly use the desktop app to sync my music with my phone & well anywhere else I want to log in & listen( work, friends,etc.). Yes you can purchase (shop, as well as alot of freebies) & sync music as you were asking. Google music is pretty cool, you'll probably like it once you play around & get it set up to your likings. The cloud storage & streaming is great so you don't have to load up your sd or internal storage...
Go check it out & play around if you haven't already:
music.google.com

Treasley

Does anyone else use Winamp for of and for android?
Does it sync album art

tcat007

I use GM on my PC during the day. Lots of free songs that I haven't bothered to sync to my phone. Works great, but does pause about every 3 hours asking if you're still listening... a bit a pain, but not much different from a Jango commercial.

Meshane83

i dropped itunes and pandora and use spotify on my phone now. Best thing EVERRR. you have to pay spotify 9.99 a month to use it on your phone but it's unlimited music, unlimited playlists you can create. it's better than itunes in my opinion. it works perfectly for me and my needs.

kristiansmart

Another thing you can do, that iOS users are not used to, is just copy and paste your tracks onto your phone and then organize them using your music player app.[img]http://www.******.info/g.php[/img]

RichSz

The Android users I know (and myself) don't bother with syncing. Since our phones connect to our computers as drives, we just drag and drop what we want to listen to. I don't see the advantage of having a middle man handle my listening selections. Maybe the OP can try it without additional software and see how that works for him/her? The other options in this thread are probably excellent if a manager is desired after the experiment.

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aysiu

You don't know me, of course, but I am an Android user who syncs. There are a few advantages of this to me over drag-and-drop--mainly the playlists. I do have one manually created playlist, but most of my playlists are iTunes "smart" playlists that are created automatically, so drag-and-drop would just be more work... not to mention the only songs I want copied over are the ones I rated 4 or 5 stars. A bit difficult to drag and drop only those songs.

basalt

I still use Itunes and sync using Tunesync - I made one large playlist to get the bulk of the music onto my phone it was easier than dragging and dropping eight gig of music one by one. Now I've loaded up the main music I only sync the daily haul of recorded radio stuff and whatever tracks I feel like doing acrobatics to that week.

I tried doubletwist and a few others but found Tuensync by far the easiest

Kicksilver

Wifi file transfer + fast router = paradise of joy

Treasley

Ok well with all the input here, thank you so much by the way, I've decided to keep using iTunes (or use doubletwist for windows not sure yet) with either isyncr or tubesync. Now my issue is the music player on my android. The one I like best is doubletwist for android, simply because it does everything: music, radio, wireless to Xbox/ps3, and video. The fact it does all makes me happy. Can I use this app without the desktop program and with I syncr or does doubletwists syncing also sync exclusively with iTunes and playcounts?

sgosnell

I simply do not understand the iTunes thing. I have no idea why anyone would want to use a slow sync when it's easy to just copy files to the device and be done with it. I buy .mp3 files, or rip them from my CDs, and just copy them to my phone, and I'm done. No DRM, no nothing. There is no way on earth iTunes or any other software can come up with playlists better than I can. I almost always just shuffle everything on my phone, but now and then I want specific music, and I just make my own playlists. If you want to pay Apple big bucks to do that, it's your money, but I have never paid them a cent for anything, and never will. Their earlier DRM policies convinced me to avoid iTunes at all cost, and I will continue to do so. YMMV.

aysiu

You don't have to understand the iTunes thing. Apparently drag and drop works just fine for you. Good. Don't use it.

For some of us, iTunes is great, though. I have some playlists I manually manage. But I also like the smart playlists that dynamically update. I can create a smart playlist for any song rated 4 or 5 stars that's between 2:00 and 4:00 long. I can create a smart playlist that has any song with the words santa, christmas, or snow in the title. I can create a smart playlist of any song I've played more than two times but haven't played in the last two months.

I also hate DRM. Even though the iTunes store hasn't had DRM since 2007, I never bought from the iTunes music store. I can still use iTunes, though. I get free songs from Jamendo and put them in iTunes. I buy non-DRMed songs from Amazon MP3 and they automatically get added to my iTunes.

Sync isn't slow at all. It takes me a lot less time to sync my playlists than to manually go through each song and drag and drop it over to copy.

To each her own, though. iTunes and syncing work fine for me. They don't work for you. No need to judge. If you don't like iTunes, I'm not going to try to convince you to use it. But you also don't have to understand "the iTunes thing." Those of us who use iTunes understand it, and that's all that matters. Use what works for you. Live and let live.

chrlswltrs

Google Music...

Upload your entire iTunes library to the cloud (store 20,000 songs for free), then you can stream them free to your phone or any computer. You can also buy new music from the android market and it is automatically added to your library.

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Kicksilver

This only works in USA, where you have ilimited data plans.

chrlswltrs

I assume you mean unlimited.

And no. In the music app you can mark songs to make them available offline and it will cache those to your phone so you do not use any data while listening. There is even an option to cache only over wifi and you can select to only show music that is available offline. So you can easily use this without ever using any data.

mikedt

"We're sorry. Google Music is currently only available in the United States"

Well that's what I call a fail. Storing stuff in the cloud might be OK, as long as you can get to it.

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Kicksilver

Yes, I mean't "unlimited".

I see, didn't know about this... But Google music isn't available here in Brazil still.

mikedt

Same here. I've got all my music on a 32GB SD-card in the phone. That's it, I'm done. No nonsense, no messing. I know what I want to listen to. I'm not really interested in fancy playlists, or favourites, or genres, or "*" ratings, or the fact I haven't played a certain song in a few weeks.

I found problems with iTunes when I tried it once, like it messed up the directory structure of my Music folder by doing it's own thing. e.g. storing all songs from one album in individual folders, one MP3 per folder. Well that's no good, fortunately I keep a backup. Also problems with some Chinese ID3 tags, by just showing gibberish. Samsung Galaxy S phone deals with these just fine, as does my crappy old Creative Labs thing.

iTunes for Windows runs a load of unnecessary services in the background, even when iTunes itself is not running, probably slowing the PC down, e.g. iPod Service, well I don't have an iPod, and what exactly does Bonjour do? iTunes on Mac OS X maybe much better behaved, because it's an integral component of that OS.

Last edited by mikedt; February 15th, 2012 at 09:24 AM.

Kicksilver

I agree.

Much easier to download and load them all on your phone through wifi...

Svperstar

Late to this thread but I am an audiophile who got my first Droid phone in December 2011.

I am really shocked nobody has mentioned the best music player on Android. PowerAMP.
Poweramp – Music Player for Android

Its far superior to Winamp. PowerAMP is simply amazing. I used to have an iPod and use iTunes but now my Droid X is my full time music device.

I made a simple send-to short cut for Right Click in Windows 7. Then I just went My Music folder. Right Clicked and sent all of my music to I:\Music (my droid drive letter in Windows 7)

It copied it all over, I opened PowerAMP and it Just Worked. All my album art was there, but if you need album art PowerAMP will automatically download album art.

PowerAMP is the way to go.

JR866Gooner

I just wish I had a way of creating playlists by creating a playlist folder for example within music then creating playlists from there.

On second thoughts that would cause duplication's unnecessarily hmmmm maybe have a destop installed app that works with the android music app to create the playlists etc...

Possible maybe?

Adauth

Most people are aware that PowerAmp is king.
Once I discovered PowerAmp pro on my og droid I have never looked back or found another player that surpasses it.

Svperstar

Then why am I the first person to point this out? lol

PowerAMP is 100x better then iTunes