Apps to sync iTunes to Droid

[MicroNix]

I have a Mac as well. I used the free version of Salling Sync Salling Software - Salling Media Sync for Mac

It worked well, no complaints.

Thanks for the tip! I've tried MediaMonkey and doubleTwist, but found myself always wanting to use my iTunes playlists anyway so why re-invent the wheel? All I wanted was something simple to sync these playlists, not a player and all the other fancy stuff. Call me crazy but I'd still rather build lists and play tracks on the PC through iTunes...

 

[craighwk]

Seriously, ditch iTunes and go with MediaMonkey

 

[scubadroid]

Seriously, ditch iTunes and go with MediaMonkey

I tried MediaMonkey - and got nothing but a mess! PLUS, I can't use any of my music purchased through iTunes, it doesn't convert it. What a waste of quite a few hours...

 

[MicroNix]

I tried MediaMonkey - and got nothing but a mess! PLUS, I can't use any of my music purchased through iTunes, it doesn't convert it. What a waste of quite a few hours...

I have to tend to agree here. MediaMonkey's interface is quite a mess. I also don't like how everytime I load it, it rescans everything and builds a new list before I can do anything. I appreciate the rescan for new tracks, but show me what it had known before FIRST. Horrible, horrible.

Now I did speak too soon about Salling Media Sync. First it did not sync my entire playlists. Didn't seem to be any errors or anything but some tracks didn't get there. But, the most annoying and deal breaking part, was that the playlist themselves did not cross over, just the music. So now I have 2 or more playlists worth of music and no playlist to select from. Argh! I was really hoping this app was it

UPDATE: My bad, Salling Media Sync *was* erroring out when syncing. I've tried numerous times to resync, but it errors out in different spots. Most of the time after it errors and times out, I cannot "unmount" the USB connection and rebooting the device will hang because the USB portion must be locked up. Battery needs to come out and try again. Even formatting the SD card doesn't help (did this after reconnecting and windows telling me the drive pointing to the device was corrupt). Went back to doubleTwist and it sync'd everything just fine.

 

[craighwk]

Yah, the Media Monkey interface is quite a mess by default, but thankfully you can customize it pretty much to your liking and can hide most of the useless parts.

You can also turn off the scanning of directories at launch, although with my 40 gig collection, it takes about 3 seconds to scan.

Whatever works best for you though.

 

[tahoeboarder]

I am on Win XP and tried using Moto Media Link (MML), DoubleTwist (DT), Salling, MediaMonkey to sync my iTunes Playlist with my Droid. And I have to say I was disappointed with all of them for number of reasons.

All I want to do is sync selected playlists (not my entire iTunes Music library) with my Droid and I couldn't figure out a way to do that with MML and MediaMonkey. DoubleTwist let me sync selected playlists, however, it has its own issues refreshing playlists from iTunes. DT never seemed to be able to refresh the changes made to the iTunes playlist - I'd have to go through the process of deleting the data and relaunching DT if I wanted the new songs to show up in my playlists.

Salling comes quite close to what I want to do. My only issue with Salling is that its free version always re-copies all songs upon each sync (guess that's why they want you to buy the software). Also noticed the same issue with DT where it would go through a complete re-copy on every sync.

Wonder why Apple/iTunes does not let us sync with non-iPod devices. Even with all the performance/footprint issues iTunes has, I feel that it's the best suited music manager app for me.

I am open to more recommendations and suggestions if anyone has them..

 

[MicroNix]

All I want to do is sync selected playlists (not my entire iTunes Music library) with my Droid and I couldn't figure out a way to do that with MML and MediaMonkey. DoubleTwist let me sync selected playlists, however, it has its own issues refreshing playlists from iTunes. DT never seemed to be able to refresh the changes made to the iTunes playlist

Wonder why Apple/iTunes does not let us sync with non-iPod devices. Even with all the performance/footprint issues iTunes has, I feel that it's the best suited music manager app for me.

I am open to more recommendations and suggestions if anyone has them..

MML *does* allow you to choose iTunes playlists to sync. It allows you to do so *after* clicking the sync button (I know, half a** backwards if you ask me). MML has been the most reliable out of all of these solutions for me and seems the quickest. Though it was once at the bottom of my preferred list, its reliability to sync without the freeze ups of the other solutions made it bubble to the top.

I believe the latest update to DT allows it to re-sync with updated iTunes playlists as well as adding in the Amazon MP3 store. Just came out a couple days ago for the PC.

Why won't Apple let iTunes sync with other devices? Quite simply because they are so stuck on themselves and their hardware that they don't realize the missed opportunity to make sales to these other devices. It's Jobs' way or the highway.

 

[daisy]

Dazzboard is a great alternative to doubletwist.

 

[barry99705]

Dazzboard is a great alternative to doubletwist.

Windows only at the moment though right?

 

[barry99705]

MML *does* allow you to choose iTunes playlists to sync. It allows you to do so *after* clicking the sync button (I know, half a** backwards if you ask me). MML has been the most reliable out of all of these solutions for me and seems the quickest. Though it was once at the bottom of my preferred list, its reliability to sync without the freeze ups of the other solutions made it bubble to the top.

I believe the latest update to DT allows it to re-sync with updated iTunes playlists as well as adding in the Amazon MP3 store. Just came out a couple days ago for the PC.

Why won't Apple let iTunes sync with other devices? Quite simply because they are so stuck on themselves and their hardware that they don't realize the missed opportunity to make sales to these other devices. It's Jobs' way or the highway.

Mainly because they don't want to have to support some third party piece of shit someone bought for $19.95 at Wal-Mart.

 

[daisy]

Windows only at the moment though right?

Unfortunately, yes. But they are in the process of making it OS X compatible - it's just a matter of waiting. Hopefully they can roll that out soon.

 

[skywriter]

I'm new to the verizon motorola droid. Been using it about 2 weeks - loving it. I have lots of questions, few answers, but I've found this forum to be very helpful. I'm also a Mac user so I glad to hear about Salling Sync. I've added lots of my music to my device but wanted to do a quick transfer of some of my play list so I'm going to give this software a try. Will get back with how successful I am. Thanks Larry McJ for the question. Thanks to everyone in the forum for your answers.

 

[MicroNix]

Dazzboard is a great alternative to doubletwist.

How is playlist support in Dazzboard? On their online demo they keep talking about selecting tracks and drag them to the device. I want playlist support (preferably imported from iTunes) not what I can already do with Windows Explorer. Unless I'm just reading the demo wrong...

 

[Kirch21]

if you dont buy the full version of salling does it completly erase and resync everytime!?

 

[barry99705]

if you dont buy the full version of salling does it completly erase and resync everytime!?

Yep, very annoying. I think it rate limits the transfer speed as well.

 

[skywriter]

I downloaded and used salling media sync for mac which I found recommended in this thread yesterday. It works great. Transferred my selected playlist to my Moto Droid, no problem. Give it a try.

 

[daisy]

How is playlist support in Dazzboard? On their online demo they keep talking about selecting tracks and drag them to the device. I want playlist support (preferably imported from iTunes) not what I can already do with Windows Explorer. Unless I'm just reading the demo wrong...

Sorry for the late reply. It's been a busy week. Dazzboard does have playlist support since their upgrade to 2.0. The demo might have glossed over this fact, but it's def. there.

 

[MicroNix]

Testing out a new app on the market (or one I haven't seen before) called iSyncr. All the reviews were raving and the idea is simplistic enough. Sync specific playlists from iTunes. It's $2.99 but if it does a good job of syncing then it's $2.99 well spent for me. Very simplistic in that you load the app on your Droid, run the app which simply puts an exe on your SD card, connect the Droid to your PC, mount it, run the EXE, select the playlists you want to sync and away it goes complete with m3u playlist files. Will update on its reliability after a few syncs. So far so good though.

 

[Chuck1906]

I have a Mac with over 1400 songs in my iTunes library. I just drag my songs from iTunes to my music folder on the Droid! There is no syncing needed unless of course you want them to show up like they do on an iPod in your playlists and what not. I do not have all 1400 of my songs on my Droid, I do have about 100 though.

 

[droidx]

i drug all 1400 of my songs to my droid, and it took about 40min, at first it said 9 hrs, and i said WTF, unplugged and replugged to a diff port, and it sped up, i love having all my music on here, just like my ipod, is the 32gb card ready, i cant wait, i love listening to music on the go, and at home, on my phone, its just awesome, the more i can do with one device i.e. email, text,facebook, mp3, shopping, the happier of a camper i am

 

[MicroNix]

I have a Mac with over 1400 songs in my iTunes library. I just drag my songs from iTunes to my music folder on the Droid! There is no syncing needed unless of course you want them to show up like they do on an iPod in your playlists and what not. I do not have all 1400 of my songs on my Droid, I do have about 100 though.

For those that don't use playlists and those that can fit all of their music onto the Droid's SD card, drag and drop is great! For those that make extensive use of playlists to divide music into "moods", genre, eras, etc., drag and drop sucks! Even worse yet is if you music collection doesn't fit in the 16GB SB card that ships with the Droid and you want to selectively sync based on playlists. I don't want to be rockin out to Airbourne and then have some total mellow tune ruin the vibe!! Playlists are where its at.

BTW, the iSyncr application is only compatible with Windows systems right now anyway so it wouldn't work for you. For PC though it sync'd just as advertised!

 

[droidx]

i do love my playlists, and dearly miss them:

well with that i have a couple of questions, with isyncr and windows, when i create the playlist in itunes, and then sync with the droid, will the playlists show up in just the stock player, or will they show in mixzing lite, and if i do sync them, do you think it will work off a virtual machine, i have windows xp with my library on a vm, but i dont know if it will work with it, if so, then im sold

 

[MicroNix]

i do love my playlists, and dearly miss them:

well with that i have a couple of questions, with isyncr and windows, when i create the playlist in itunes, and then sync with the droid, will the playlists show up in just the stock player, or will they show in mixzing lite, and if i do sync them, do you think it will work off a virtual machine, i have windows xp with my library on a vm, but i dont know if it will work with it, if so, then im sold

I don't know. Can you drag and drop from your VM now to the device? If so then this will probably work too. Remember, you can purchase an app and if you don't like it, uninstall within 24 hrs of purchase and you aren't charged.

 

[Kirch21]

Check out the app in the market iSyncr it works great after the new update for mac. i think there is a PC version too.

 

[MicroNix]

Dev released an update to iSyncr that allows automounting your device now instead of having to go into the notification bar and mount the Droid before syncing to it.