Help Sync Songbird with my Droid?

[TivoTron]

First of all --- greetings. It's very nice to be off the iPhone!

Now, I am playing with my fancy new Droid and have been told that Songbird is the program of choice to sync music (and video?) with my Droid --- is that the case?

I have fired everything up here, but the sync button is greyed out, so I'm guessing that there might be a setting on the Droid itself that I need to enable in order to sync with Songbird?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[vincentp]

Give this guide a shot. It's from the summer but it should work fine for the Droid.

Lateral 8 - Syncing Your G1/Android Device with Songbird

 

[Eugene]

I tried to install the foldersync addon for songbird and it says its not supported in this (current) version of songbird.

 

[Steel Cobra]

I installed Songbird last night. Make sure you have mounted your Droid. Your phone should then appear in the list and from that point you should be able to drag and drop your playlists and songs into the Droid. The one thing I am trying to figure out is how to get the playlists from iTunes on the Droid. If I drag a playlist over, it adds the songs just not the actual playlist itself.

 

[MicroNix]

I installed Songbird last night. Make sure you have mounted your Droid. Your phone should then appear in the list and from that point you should be able to drag and drop your playlists and songs into the Droid. The one thing I am trying to figure out is how to get the playlists from iTunes on the Droid. If I drag a playlist over, it adds the songs just not the actual playlist itself.

I noticed that same thing and had to dig for some info on it. Turns out there is a feature request to add playlist support for multiple Android devices including the Droid. Apparently there were some tests done and Android does some funky things with playlists. For instance, just drop on a PLS playlist with music (manually). Now delete the playlist and go into your player. Notice the playlist still shows? From what I've been reading, Android maintains some sort of internal database and this is where the issues come in. Syncing alone via USB can't manipulate that database.

Now I've done some testing with playlists and found that making changes within a playlist already on the Droid does properly sync to what you see in the music players. It seems to me that the only negative about the playlists is when they are removed from the SD card and the Android database doesn't update. And this wouldn't be just related to Songbird. It would be with any form of syncing.

I guess you can get playlists to write the to Droid with Songbird by adding some lines to the SBsettings.xml file that Songbird puts in the root of your SD card. In the testing they did they said they added some lines to the config file for playlist formatting and it started syncing. I tried what they had and maybe I didn't implement it right but it wouldn't work for me

I've been going nuts trying to make this work. Why? Because Songbird is simply one of the best music players I've seen on the PC, its open source, can accept add ons like Fire Fox does and has great potential. Its features like auto lyric downloads, auto album art downloads, artist info and concerts give it that extra music experience you don't get with something like iTunes and the interface is not messy like MediaMonkey.

 

[MicroNix]

The one thing I am trying to figure out is how to get the playlists from iTunes on the Droid. If I drag a playlist over, it adds the songs just not the actual playlist itself.

Ok, I have a temporary workaround until they fix the playlist sync. There is an addon for Songbird called "Playlist Export Tool".

1) Click Tools > Addons and then click on "Get Extensions"

2) Search for and install the playlist export addon.

3) Go back to Tools > Addons, select the new addon and click Options.

4) Point the default export folder to the folder that SB is dumping your music to on your Droid.

5) Go to File > Export Playlist(s)... and check off the playlists that you are syncing to your Droid.

6) Viola, the playlists are now on your Droid!

I really wished it was automatic, but I'm sure they'll figure it out. Until then this is working good for me.

 

[Steel Cobra]

Ok, I have a temporary workaround until they fix the playlist sync. There is an addon for Songbird called "Playlist Export Tool".

1) Click Tools > Addons and then click on "Get Extensions"

2) Search for and install the playlist export addon.

3) Go back to Tools > Addons, select the new addon and click Options.

4) Point the default export folder to the folder that SB is dumping your music to on your Droid.

5) Go to File > Export Playlist(s)... and check off the playlists that you are syncing to your Droid.

6) Viola, the playlists are now on your Droid!

I really wished it was automatic, but I'm sure they'll figure it out. Until then this is working good for me.

Thanks for the update, I'll have to check that out. I really like Songbird and think it is a great alternative to iTunes so if this is what needs to be done until the next update, so be it.

 

[stevel]

(full disclosure, i'm one of the developers working on Songbird)

We didn't manage to get playlist support for certain Android devices integrated into the latest public release, we do have it in the nightly trunk builds for the Droid, Hero (and as of today, the Nexus One). If you're brave and want to try a nightly build, and grab the nightly MSC add-on to go with it, you should have magical playlist syncing support.

As MicroNix pointed out though, this is only for the initial import and changes... deleting the playlist won't remove it from your Android device since the playlist is imported into the Android's SQLite media library database.

If other folks have Android devices they wanted supported, let us know the usb pid/vid and we can try it out.

 

[MicroNix]

(full disclosure, i'm one of the developers working on Songbird)

We didn't manage to get playlist support for certain Android devices integrated into the latest public release, we do have it in the nightly trunk builds for the Droid, Hero (and as of today, the Nexus One). If you're brave and want to try a nightly build, and grab the nightly MSC add-on to go with it, you should have magical playlist syncing support.

Thanks for the update Steve!

 

[malzfreund]

(full disclosure, i'm one of the developers working on Songbird)

We didn't manage to get playlist support for certain Android devices integrated into the latest public release, we do have it in the nightly trunk builds for the Droid, Hero (and as of today, the Nexus One). If you're brave and want to try a nightly build, and grab the nightly MSC add-on to go with it, you should have magical playlist syncing support.

Thanks, stevel!! This is awesome. Just downloaded the latest 1.6.x (Madonna) build. Just synced a couple of playlists. Looks like everything went smoothly. That includes encoding my flac files to a file format that works with Android.

 

[ghindman]

You might also check out TuneSync from highwinds software - it'll automatically sync selected itunes playlists with your droid over wifi, and you don't have to do any of the silly manual mounting/unmounting of the SDFlash business (I just can't type that without it sounding dirty)that syncing over USB entails.

I've been pretty happy with it, so far.

 

[johnlgalt]

(full disclosure, i'm one of the developers working on Songbird)

We didn't manage to get playlist support for certain Android devices integrated into the latest public release, we do have it in the nightly trunk builds for the Droid, Hero (and as of today, the Nexus One). If you're brave and want to try a nightly build, and grab the nightly MSC add-on to go with it, you should have magical playlist syncing support.

As MicroNix pointed out though, this is only for the initial import and changes... deleting the playlist won't remove it from your Android device since the playlist is imported into the Android's SQLite media library database.

If other folks have Android devices they wanted supported, let us know the usb pid/vid and we can try it out.

Glad to see a SB dev in here telling us about this. I tend to keep nightly builds of all the Moz apps I use hanging around, but I never thought to check out if the nightly SB would sync to the DROID.

You, sirrah, and the rest of the team, are lifesavers!!!!

 

[mcinvaille]

Just installed SB and have all of my music from iTunes imported. However, when I plugin and mount my Droid it does not show up in the list. I unmounted, remounted, closed and reopened SB but it still doesn't show. Any ideas?

 

[johnlgalt]

Which version do you have installed?

 

[mcinvaille]

1.4.3 build 1438

 

[crlchshr94]

I am having problems with Songbird as well... it seems like it isn't even recognizing my Droid. I plug my droid in and mount it so it should work but nothing happens. any reasons?

 

[JCamirand]

Sorry if this question is amateur, I tried very hard to solve it myself.

My issue is when I plug my droid into my computer with songbird open, songbird recognizes the droid fine but says I need to enable usb mass storage which is easily done on the droid but then songbird won't try to resync so nothing happens. if I unplug it and try again the exact thing happens, I need to tell the droid to get it done before that songbird warning.

Your help is greatly appreciated, it's been difficult and frustrating trying to get away from apply products.

 

[LeahThunder]

I need help. If anyone is willing to give me step-by-step setup, I need it. I have all my music in songbird, and that's about as far as I can go. I don't think my phone isn't connected to songbird at the moment. I have it plugged in to the computer but I don't see anything that ackowledges it's existence. I'm on windows 7.

 

[PeterLairo]

In January 2010, SteveL said:

We didn't manage to get playlist support for certain Android devices integrated into the latest public release, we do have it in the nightly trunk builds for the Droid, Hero (and as of today, the Nexus One). If you're brave and want to try a nightly build, and grab the nightly MSC add-on to go with it, you should have magical playlist syncing support.

It's now two and half years later, and Songbird 1.10.0b2 still doesn't export/sync Playlists with my Android phone (Samsung Nexus S, Android 2.3.4). In fact, after recognizing my phone and after pressing the "Sync" button, Songbird crashes! I filed bug 24268 on this issue.

It would be great if one of the developers could let us know what the current status for syncing playlists with Android phones is...

If other folks have Android devices they wanted supported, let us know the usb pid/vid and we can try it out.

Please support the Samsung Nexus S (Android version 2.3.4)! (BTW: I don't know what the "usb pid/vid" is.

In fact, I don't understand why not all Android versions shouldn't be supported. It's all the same Operating System, and the different versions shouldn't require too much (if any) adjustments to get Songbird to sync its Playlists with them all.

BTW: I really like Songbird, but the inability to sync playlists to phones plus the inability to rip and burn to mp3 are very serious deficiencies.

 

[smannion596]

I got to the point of clicking on the "playlist export" add on but, the download button is grayed and I can't click on it. Help?

 

[PeterLairo]

I got to the point of clicking on the "playlist export" add on but, the download button is grayed and I can't click on it. Help?

What version of Songbird are you using? Try downloading the add-on (is that the right one? It's pretty old) using Firefox (not Songbird). Then unpack the pet.XPI file and edit the install.rdf file and change the "maxVersion" to your Songbird's version (e.g., 1.9.3.* or 1.10.* or 1.*). If you're lucky, it will work with the newer version of Songbird.

Note: I take no responsibility if your PC explodes.

 

[PeterLairo]

It would be great if one of the developers could let us know what the current status for syncing playlists with Android phones is...

Another month has gone by and still no response from the developers. Why?

 

[JmCourir]

Hi Guys,
I just discovered SongBird here. I'm a big fan of it, but .... BUT I found a huge bug on it .... Playlist doesn't sync with Android ..... Come on, this is very important.

I use Samsung Galaxy S2 with Android, 2.3.5

If it cost something to have this ability, just tell us ....

Without syncing playlists on Android this is for me a huge problem.

Please help!

JmCourir

 

[GrayBat]

@JimCourir

Have you installed the add-on MSC Device Support?

Having offered that sage piece of advice , I should add that, although I have occasionally got SB to sync to my Nexus One, the process is extraordinarily flaky at best. Most of the time now it just "completes with errors" with no indication anywhere that I can find as to what those errors are!

Have fun!

BTW, you are more likely to get help from the developers if you post your problems on the getsatisfaction.com/songbird forum. Sorry I can't include that as a link... I'm new here!

 

[PeterLairo]

@JimCourir
Have you installed the add-on MSC Device Support?

Here's the link: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1667

This add-on should be in the default Songbird. Anyone know a good reason it is currently not?

BTW: I have both the MSC and the MTP add-ons installed and still cannot sync playlists reliably.

BTW, you are more likely to get help from the developers if you post your problems on the getsatisfaction.com/songbird forum. Sorry I can't include that as a link... I'm new here!

Yes, I've already posted there already ... with similarly underwhelming success.

Here's the link to the (don't)GetSatisfaction bug report:

Songbird doesn't sync Playlists to Android phone