Sync'ing music to my SD Card

[plnelson]

I just got an S7 and I'm adding a SanDisk 2ooG micro SD card to put my music collection on - about 140G.

I'm looking for an app to sync the iTunes library on my PC with music on my phone (on the SD card). All of my music is MP3's - none of it is DRM'ed. I'm assuming it will be over USB, not WiFi, for greater bandwidth.

I was looking at JRT Studio's iSyncr but their tech supported recommended that I take the SD card out of the phone and put it into a reader to sync. I'd rather not because I want to leave the SD card in the phone permanently. Besides having to take off my phone's protective case to get at it, the other problem is that when you take the SD card out it also takes the SIM card out, and that sometimes requires rebooting the phone to reconnect to the phone company's network.

What is a good reliable app I can use to sync a 140G music collection with iTunes on a PC to an S7?

Thanks in advance.

PS - Before you suggest DoubleTwist - DoubleTwist can't sync to music on the SD card post-Marshmallow. They started an alpha program with a fix but based on the comments on Google Play it was very buggy so now they're suggesting people sign up for their beta program. But AFAIK they don't have a released product that works on the S7 (because all S7's are Marshmallow or later) I have a question in to them requesting an update on this; I'll post what I find out here.
Followup: DoubleTwist says, "We hope to have the final version released to all users some time later this year."

 

[plnelson]

Is there a better forum for a question like this? Two weeks and 248 views and zero responses suggests I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

 

[chanchan05]

Try Android Central. Honestly I have no answer for you. I don't use iTunes.

 

[lvt]

Is there a better forum for a question like this? Two weeks and 248 views and zero responses suggests I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

Please don't be upset, I didn't see any physical person who has 140GB of music files in his computer [emoji6]

 

[mikedt]

Quite frankly reading through your OP, I think you've explored and know all available options, so nobody can give a response that you'd want to hear.

Apple isn't going to make it easy or obvious, they give away iTunes for free, but then want you to be using an iPhone of course, and could be considered as vendor lock-in. I know a lot of people with Android phones, but non of them are using iTunes. I use iTunes on a Macbook to rip textbook audio CDs occasionally, but I'm not managing any music libraries with it.

 

[plnelson]

Quite frankly reading through your OP, I think you've explored and know all available options, so nobody can give a response that you'd want to hear.

Apple isn't going to make it easy or obvious, they give away iTunes for free, but then want you to be using an iPhone of course, and could be considered as vendor lock-in. I know a lot of people with Android phones, but non of them are using iTunes. I use iTunes on a Macbook to rip textbook audio CDs occasionally, but I'm not managing any music libraries with it.

What do you use on your PC to manage music libraries with?

I don't have to use iTunes - I could use something else on my PC as long as whatever I use on the PC can be sync'ed with whatever I use on my (Android) phone.

I take my music seriously so I want to tag it in a consistent way. That's one reason why I want to have the physical files instead of using a streaming service. So I have a huge (140G) music library on a neworked-attached-storage (NAS) server which I want to play it on all my devices - Sonos, PC, iPod, Android phone - and keep it in sync so when I add a new song, or create a new tag on one device it's easy to migrate that addition to all my other devices.

Would this question be easier to answer if I made a new question without any reference to iTunes? Is that the thing that people are getting hung up on?

 

[chanchan05]

What do you use on your PC to manage music libraries with?

I don't have to use iTunes - I could use something else on my PC as long as whatever I use on the PC can be sync'ed with whatever I use on my (Android) phone.

I take my music seriously so I want to tag it in a consistent way. That's one reason why I want to have the physical files instead of using a streaming service. So I have a huge (140G) music library on a neworked-attached-storage (NAS) server which I want to play it on all my devices - Sonos, PC, iPod, Android phone - and keep it in sync so when I add a new song, or create a new tag on one device it's easy to migrate that addition to all my other devices.

Would this question be easier to answer if I made a new question without any reference to iTunes? Is that the thing that people are getting hung up on?

Well yes. Mainly because the makers of iTunes purposely make it difficult. I have no idea on the status of Apple DRM and related stuff to know if it is possible to use another music manager for the music files you get from iTunes.

If you can use something else than I tunes, pretty much any music player I've encountered on a PC can sync to the SD card. Last I used was MusicBee, and I can set on preferences to what folder in the SD card I want to send the files.

 

[mikedt]

What do you use on your PC to manage music libraries with?

I only have one music library, and that's basically kept on a 128GB SD in my Oppo R9 Plus phone(and Samsung Note7 briefly), which I periodically backup to a USB hard-drive via the Macbook. And I have couple Bluetooth speakers around the home, and a pair of headphones, and that is basically how I do music. I'm an expat living in a foreign country, and often travelling around, so prefer to keep things light.

I don't have to use iTunes - I could use something else on my PC as long as whatever I use on the PC can be sync'ed with whatever I use on my (Android) phone.

I take my music seriously so I want to tag it in a consistent way. That's one reason why I want to have the physical files instead of using a streaming service. So I have a huge (140G) music library on a neworked-attached-storage (NAS) server which I want to play it on all my devices - Sonos, PC, iPod, Android phone - and keep it in sync so when I add a new song, or create a new tag on one device it's easy to migrate that addition to all my other devices.

Would this question be easier to answer if I made a new question without any reference to iTunes? Is that the thing that people are getting hung up on?

Possibly... Because this a forum all about Android, and not much Apple at all, and the most frequent posts seems to be about moving from iOS to Android. As for doing what you need, It's never something I've done.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Although my music library is far smaller than the OP (approx. 2000 tracks) I have recently used iSyncr to successfully sync my iTunes library from my Mac to the micro SD card in my S7 edge. This was achieved without the need to remove the micro SD from the phone.

iSyncr allows you to select internal storage or SD card and will sync via wifi or by connecting the phone via a lead (wifi is recommended).

The only downside from my point of view is that it took quite a while.

 

[Money_Mark]

Like you, I have a ton of music on iTunes. Eventually Google Play Music started transferring my music to the cloud. Although the interface isnt as nice as iTunes, I liked that it was always available in the cloud. Eventually I downloaded all the music from Google Music to my PC. It took forever, but I did it. It was the only way I could get a clean break from iTunes and have easy access to my music. Now I just upload music from my PC to my phone, but it still isnt perfect.

I must say, I love my S7 Edge. But iTunes and Apple seem to have android beat in this department, hands down. If their is a more seamless way, please show me!

Mark

 

[chanchan05]

Like you, I have a ton of music on iTunes. Eventually Google Play Music started transferring my music to the cloud. Although the interface isnt as nice as iTunes, I liked that it was always available in the cloud. Eventually I downloaded all the music from Google Music to my PC. It took forever, but I did it. It was the only way I could get a clean break from iTunes and have easy access to my music. Now I just upload music from my PC to my phone, but it still isnt perfect.

I must say, I love my S7 Edge. But iTunes and Apple seem to have android beat in this department, hands down. If their is a more seamless way, please show me!

Mark

Use a different music player on a PC. Pretty much any music player not named iTunes can sync and manage playlists for an Android phone. Winamp, Musicbee, Windows Media Player, etc...

 

[Tyrconn]

I used iSyncr (paid version) to load iTunes from a PC to my S7 with no difficulty. The player I use is the same company's Rocket Player. Again with no problems. You can choose which playlists to load as well as the music library. It also works well with my car's Bluetooth music system.

 

[bolski]

Best way that I know of is to download all your music via iTunes to your PC and then copy them to your phone. I would also then take all that music and sync them up to the Google cloud. Then, if you want, you can sync that way between Google and your phone if you wish.

I hate iTunes and will never purchase music from them again. All my music I did purchase has been uploaded to my Google cloud since Google allows you to store up to 50,000 songs for free.

Any new music I purchase is either via Google Play or Amazon.