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What app(s)/method(s) should I use for syncing music across many devices (windows and androids)?
I want to thank anyone who answers this in advance. I am usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out but at this point my head is spinning.
I just bought and Asus 300 tablet for house use. I mainly bought this for our 4 year old for learning apps and entertainment. I then realized that I have her music on a bunch of other devices so I figured that now would be a good time to get everything synced up with one another. I am mainly concerned about the music aspect of syncing and if an app(s)/method(s) included other things like pictures and videos I would not be opposed. The main devices I want to sync are as follows:
2 galaxy s3’s
2 older Android phones that will be used as media (music devices like an ipod) which are a Epic 4G and a Evo
1 Asus Transformer 300
2 computers running Vista and Windows 8
And maybe if it wasn’t a problem an XP desktop, an XP laptop, and an Ipod nano.
The nano is not a big concern since I know how Apple is about sharing and I could just take most of my music to another system/use another method. I have looked into Amazons Cloud Player and have heard about some other Apps like Double Twist but I am still a little lost. I am basically looking for something that is more or less fully automated (or pretty close to it).
Have you checked out Google Play Music. It works on all android devices and windows computers. It holds up to 20,000 songs and it's absolutely 100% free. It's also automated. As long as you use the same google account to access the info on all of these devices, you will immediately have access to all of your music instantly. Once setup properly, every time you add/delete music from the google play music application on your windows pc, these changes will automatically show up on your devices without you needing to do anything else. Lastly, your music is available using any web browser with internet access. This type of setup works for all google systems/apps, including documents, pictures, videos. Hope this helps.
I would also like syncing of playlists, I can't believe I forgot to mention that. It would be great to have the ability to have a playlist in a play list or something like that.
Example:
Mia's music playlist"s"
...Mia's sleep music playlist
......song 1
......song 2 etc.
...Mia's fun music playlist
......song 1
......song 2 etc
Have you checked out Google Play Music. It works on all android devices and windows computers. It holds up to 20,000 songs and it's absolutely 100% free. It's also automated. As long as you use the same google account to access the info on all of these devices, you will immediately have access to all of your music instantly. Once setup properly, every time you add/delete music from the google play music application on your windows pc, these changes will automatically show up on your devices without you needing to do anything else. Lastly, your music is available using any web browser with internet access. This type of setup works for all google systems/apps, including documents, pictures, videos. Hope this helps.
It seems like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music mirror each other besides the limits correct or?
Dropbox offers 2 gb for free which is expandable up to 16gb, 500mb per referral, but a new promising sync cloud has emerged named jottacloud which offers 5gb at first and 5 gb per referral for up to 100 gb. If your musics are more than the dropbox capacity, jottacloud remains a better sollution. The android program specifically syncs media and other mobile related stuff. If you like pm me and I will send you my referrals for jottacloud. It seems that there is no limitation per file too, as I easily uploaded a 4 gb movie. But I noticed that you have s3 I think you can get 50gb for 2 years from drop box and that would be a good but temporary solution :-)
Last edited by ipersian; December 6th, 2012 at 02:53 AM.
Someone mentioned Winamp (have not used it for like 10 years lol). I downloaded bother the Android app ( very simple looking) and the desktop version but it seems that I am not the only one having problems syncing it via wifi, a ton of people are! Ok, delete that last sentence. I stopped writing this so see if it was working and it was.
So how similar is double twist to what Winamp does?
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For mobile devices using FolderSync with Dropbox will let you choose any file(s) or folder(s) to sync and set syncing rules and schedules. Some apps have integration with Dropbox built-in, but not all.
There's many apps available for Dropbox for mobile devices and desktops that make it by far the most capable, configurable of all cloud storage services.
Not sure why the focus on Dropbox... Try iSyncr will sync itunes library, playlists, ratings, play count, etc from android back to PC. Then you'd have one installed on each device going back to the same itunes library on the desktop. This is designed for music and works well. I still have SugarSync which is similar to Dropbox, but using an app designed for a purpose like iSyncr always works better.
what exactly does syncing music do? I have my own android with X many songs on it. My wife has one with Y many songs on it. My kids will have their own soon. And I have an external drive connected to my router with XYZ+AA+AB amount of songs on it scattered over various folders. What exactly will music syncing do in this case? I've never done it, so I just don't fully understand how it works.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveSyd
Not sure why the focus on Dropbox...I still have SugarSync which is similar to Dropbox, but using an app designed for a purpose like iSyncr always works better.
Because the OP said he also wanted to be able to sync other files like pics, videos, etc.
Dropbox offers 2 gb for free which is expandable up to 16gb, 500mb per referral, but a new promising sync cloud has emerged named jottacloud which offers 5gb at first and 5 gb per referral for up to 100 gb. If your musics are more than the dropbox capacity, jottacloud remains a better sollution. The android program specifically syncs media and other mobile related stuff. If you like pm me and I will send you my referrals for jottacloud. It seems that there is no limitation per file too, as I easily uploaded a 4 gb movie. But I noticed that you have s3 I think you can get 50gb for 2 years from drop box and that would be a good but temporary solution :-)
Yes I have the 50GB. I think I need to google "dropbox music" etc. to find out what this would look like. I always thought of dropbox as "catch all" random file and picture service.
Not sure why the focus on Dropbox... Try iSyncr will sync itunes library, playlists, ratings, play count, etc from android back to PC. Then you'd have one installed on each device going back to the same itunes library on the desktop. This is designed for music and works well. I still have SugarSync which is similar to Dropbox, but using an app designed for a purpose like iSyncr always works better.
Yeah, I don't get that either. Basically all your (the OP) music is at home on PCs and phones/tablets so the first thing I would do is ensure that you have all of it in one place. Then you can think about syncing it to other devices. No need to use the "cloud", just copy it (copy and paste would be the simplest) directly to each device. I just use Microsoft's Synctoy to sync music on my PC to my phone (though a 'sync' in this case is just a copy of my PC folder(s) to the phone).
what exactly does syncing music do? I have my own android with X many songs on it. My wife has one with Y many songs on it. My kids will have their own soon. And I have an external drive connected to my router with XYZ+AA+AB amount of songs on it scattered over various folders. What exactly will music syncing do in this case? I've never done it, so I just don't fully understand how it works.
Syncing would allow you to have all of it on every device (assuming you have enough storage on your phone of course). Alternatively, you would be able to sync individual folders to individual devices if you didn't want everything on every device. The nice thing about this is you can buy an album from your computer, and then have it automatically show up on every other device you own.
I'll be looking for a syncing solution for Android also. I used to use Rsync to sync my tablet and NAS, which was a pain to get setup, but worked pretty well after I got it working. I had to reflash a few months back though, and haven't bothered to try and figure out how to get it setup again though.
Syncing would allow you to have all of it on every device (assuming you have enough storage on your phone of course). Alternatively, you would be able to sync individual folders to individual devices if you didn't want everything on every device. The nice thing about this is you can buy an album from your computer, and then have it automatically show up on every other device you own.
I'll be looking for a syncing solution for Android also. I used to use Rsync to sync my tablet and NAS, which was a pain to get setup, but worked pretty well after I got it working. I had to reflash a few months back though, and haven't bothered to try and figure out how to get it setup again though.
Ahh, so it'll auto d/l the mp3/whatever to my phone/whatever. Hmmm, no, my phone won't hold all my music. I doubt any phone would unless it has well over 100gb.
For mobile devices using FolderSync with Dropbox will let you choose any file(s) or folder(s) to sync and set syncing rules and schedules. Some apps have integration with Dropbox built-in, but not all.
There's many apps available for Dropbox for mobile devices and desktops that make it by far the most capable, configurable of all cloud storage services.
but will it pair up a folder of playlists (if allowed) with a desktop program?
Ahh, so it'll auto d/l the mp3/whatever to my phone/whatever. Hmmm, no, my phone won't hold all my music. I doubt any phone would unless it has well over 100gb.
Which is why I won't buy a phone without expandable storage. My 3 year old phone has 32GB + 64GB. I'm having to take a bit of a temporary step down in storage when my Note 2 comes, since it will only have 16GB of internal storage. But I have a relatively small collection at around 40GB.
But you can use sync with subset folders rather than the entire collection, so your wife can have a folder and your kids get their own folder, etc...that way you still have anything that you put in those folders automatically get pushed out to the appropriate devices (At least that's how it worked on my Nokia, I'm assuming I can find something with at least that level of functionality on Android.)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sliver108
but will it pair up a folder of playlists (if allowed) with a desktop program?
Dropbox can do almost anything you can imagine, either natively or through add-ons, etc.
To answer your question, well, I'm not sure *exactly* what you mean, but assuming you're running Windoze, I think Dropbox + Belvedere on the desktop and Dropbox + DropSync on mobile devices will do what you need.
Last edited by Crashdamage; December 11th, 2012 at 01:33 PM.
Not sure why the focus on Dropbox... Try iSyncr will sync itunes library, playlists, ratings, play count, etc from android back to PC. Then you'd have one installed on each device going back to the same itunes library on the desktop. This is designed for music and works well. I still have SugarSync which is similar to Dropbox, but using an app designed for a purpose like iSyncr always works better.
I have been wondering the same thing, why dropbox. Most of my music is not on itunes so what now?
what exactly does syncing music do? I have my own android with X many songs on it. My wife has one with Y many songs on it. My kids will have their own soon. And I have an external drive connected to my router with XYZ+AA+AB amount of songs on it scattered over various folders. What exactly will music syncing do in this case? I've never done it, so I just don't fully understand how it works.
Here are a couple examples:
my cell - my music, my 4 year olds music, and it would be nice to have some of my wife's music
my wife's cell - her music, my 4 year olds music, and she may want some of mine
the family tablet - all of our music
etc etc etc
So instead of trying to always sync new music with particular devices i figured that just syncing everything would same some time.
Google Play Music is nice in that you just download a free Google program to your PC, point it to you PC's music folder(s), and it uploads all of your music to the cloud so that it's availalable to any device that signs into that account. (You, your wife, and your kids could have separate accounts and keep you music folders separate.) Google Play Music, lets you store songs, albums, or playlists of songs locally so that you don't have to stream them from Google's cloud. Works great, but it's not easy to create playlists.
I also run WinAmp because I like its UI, various features, like Internet Radio, and WiFi playlist synchronization.
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+1 for Google Play. I was able to sync everything with that
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Still can't understand what this preoccupation with the "cloud" is. In this case, just get a master copy of all the music onto one of the PCs and sync to each phone individually. I'm sure that there will be (almost) no need to have all the phones sync'ed exactly ALL of the time so sync from a PC would be more than adequate.
Yeah, I don't get that either. Basically all your (the OP) music is at home on PCs and phones/tablets so the first thing I would do is ensure that you have all of it in one place. Then you can think about syncing it to other devices. No need to use the "cloud", just copy it (copy and paste would be the simplest) directly to each device. I just use Microsoft's Synctoy to sync music on my PC to my phone (though a 'sync' in this case is just a copy of my PC folder(s) to the phone).
Dave
The music all being in one place is becoming a nightmare lol. I am getting it done but it is taking a while.
Syncing would allow you to have all of it on every device (assuming you have enough storage on your phone of course). Alternatively, you would be able to sync individual folders to individual devices if you didn't want everything on every device. The nice thing about this is you can buy an album from your computer, and then have it automatically show up on every other device you own.
I'll be looking for a syncing solution for Android also. I used to use Rsync to sync my tablet and NAS, which was a pain to get setup, but worked pretty well after I got it working. I had to reflash a few months back though, and haven't bothered to try and figure out how to get it setup again though.
I have been testing out winamp and it seems to be working. I am trying to start with a good foundation for my music so in the future it is easier to deal with. Like organization with file names, titles, singers, and albums to start off with. Then I want to do genres and playlists. Am I correct in saying that having universal playlists is a pain in the ass?
Ahh, so it'll auto d/l the mp3/whatever to my phone/whatever. Hmmm, no, my phone won't hold all my music. I doubt any phone would unless it has well over 100gb.
I believe that is a feature in Winamp, the auto dl thing. I have around 5 gigs and 1000 songs so far. I guess after I add everything in like cd's and my wifes music I will be over 10 gigs but 100 gigs...how lol?
Which is why I won't buy a phone without expandable storage. My 3 year old phone has 32GB + 64GB. I'm having to take a bit of a temporary step down in storage when my Note 2 comes, since it will only have 16GB of internal storage. But I have a relatively small collection at around 40GB.
But you can use sync with subset folders rather than the entire collection, so your wife can have a folder and your kids get their own folder, etc...that way you still have anything that you put in those folders automatically get pushed out to the appropriate devices (At least that's how it worked on my Nokia, I'm assuming I can find something with at least that level of functionality on Android.)
I do not have a storage issue as of yet. Wow, 40 GBs...how?
The music all being in one place is becoming a nightmare lol. I am getting it done but it is taking a while.
It's worth it! That, and using an app (phone or PC) to ensure all the mp3 tags are correct on all your tunes. Takes a while to get sorted but anything added afterwards is straightforward.
Tried the sync method this weekend using Win. Media Player. After a few tweaks, I was able to sync music to mine and my wifes phone. However, we notice that there can be two entries for one song even though theres only one file. Whats the deal with this?
EDIT: I realized what happened when I saw Lady Gagag on my phone. I have music folders setup for my kids inside my main music folder. I created a new folder called "phone music" in which I put all the music I wanted in that folder then tried to sync just that folder. But instead it synced ALL the folders inside my main music folder.
Last edited by arej00dazed; December 18th, 2012 at 08:01 AM.
Dropbox can do almost anything you can imagine, either natively or through add-ons, etc.
To answer your question, well, I'm not sure *exactly* what you mean, but assuming you're running Windoze, I think Dropbox + Belvedere on the desktop and Dropbox + DropSync on mobile devices will do what you need.
Google Play Music is nice in that you just download a free Google program to your PC, point it to you PC's music folder(s), and it uploads all of your music to the cloud so that it's availalable to any device that signs into that account. (You, your wife, and your kids could have separate accounts and keep you music folders separate.) Google Play Music, lets you store songs, albums, or playlists of songs locally so that you don't have to stream them from Google's cloud. Works great, but it's not easy to create playlists.
I also run WinAmp because I like its UI, various features, like Internet Radio, and WiFi playlist synchronization.
Jottacloud is aloso very cool, it gives you plenty of storage which is expandable to 100gb for free :-) and it supports windows and Android! If you sign up with a referral link and install the android app, you will get 12gb!
What app(s)/method(s) should I use for syncing music across many devices (windows and androids)?
