Best way to manage music collection -- drag and drop?

[Jay3]

We've got multiple Nexus 7's in our household (kids), and I'm having a hard time figuring out the best way to manage the different music collections of the different people. Many of the songs will be from CD's, from Amazon, from iTunes (DRM free) and new purchases on the Nexus 7.

It is a nightmare trying to manage it with different Chrome accounts on the same home computer -- because Music Manager is not suited for this. It won't let you identify certain folders for certain people. It treats the whole computer as the same for everbody.

I'm thinking of going to a "drag and drop" method for everybody. I'll just create folders for different people, then if I want a song on a device, hook the Nexus 7 via USB to the computer and drag and drop the song onto the device.

But will Google Music work like this? Am I going to have to switch the music app from Google Music (on a Google device, no less), just to avoid hassle in a multi-user, family environment?

 

[tcat007]

Sounds like a good plan. Google Music will upload whatever folders you specify. You would need to do it manually for each device from your PC (with music manager). I assume each device has its own account. Once set up, when a device syncs, it will only see the music in the folder you uploaded.

You could put Airdroid on each device and use it to drag and drop.

 

[Jay3]

The problem is that Google Music uploader does not handle switching users well. When I did a test, it re-scans and re-uploads everytime I switch it back.

So, if I sign in as Kid 1, and upload their "folder," then sign back in as myself, it re-uploaded from all the folders it had identified for me.

 

[Jay3]

Looking again (after the weekend), it looks like Uploader didn't actually upload all the songs again -- it gave a status update while scanning that it was, but it apparently has the ability to overlook songs that were already there.

I wish it would give a more "comforting" notification to that effect. I don't want to create a bunch of ghosts and gremlins.

I think I'll set Google Music Uploader NOT to run automatically on start up. And so it will only run when I decide it's time for a session.

(This is made more complicated by the fact that I usually buy my music on Amazon).

 

[borospark]

Why have mulitiple users, just have one user per Nexus for each child with your account on Google play, protected with a pin.
That way you can download whatever apps/music etc you want to each device.
Google play also recognises each device when you log in to the website

Not sure on the pre-bought music yet, as I havent used Amazon, I think drag and drop will be the best way forward for that

The problem is that Google Music uploader does not handle switching users well. When I did a test, it re-scans and re-uploads everytime I switch it back.

So, if I sign in as Kid 1, and upload their "folder," then sign back in as myself, it re-uploaded from all the folders it had identified for me.

 

[Jay3]

Why have mulitiple users, just have one user per Nexus for each child with your account on Google play, protected with a pin.
That way you can download whatever apps/music etc you want to each device.
Google play also recognises each device when you log in to the website

This is basically the question I'm asking -- how best to do it.

It is one user per Nexus -- no problem there. But we share one computer at home. So the music collection is actually hosted on one hard drive, and we all have different music collections (or will). So the trouble is getting Google Music to easily manage which songs are in which connection -- I don't want it to try and sync each user with every song on that hard drive.

It's kind of a nuisance, frankly.