Help Big problems with syncing music/ playlists

[BugPowderDust]

I recently bought a Galaxy S2. Love the phone, but having real problems with music/ playlist syncing, to the point where I am seriously considering going back to iPhone because iTunes just 'worked'.

First of all, I used the 'meh' Samsung Kies- this is kind of OK if you don't want to sync music, as it doesn't even sync playlists. Then, I used Winamp to synch MP3s for the first time to the phone, and it synched my music and the 3 playlists I made. Brilliant, happy bunny, all is well. Got about 30GB of tunes on the SD card.

Now, I simply wanted to add some more music and update playlists. Connected phone, fired up WinAmp. And here was the first problem- it took ages (literally 10 minutes or so), to mount the SD card. I figured this was down to the # of tracks. Once it mounted it, as soon as you tried to click it, it just hangs. So Winamp is no good for me now. Not only did it hang, it heats the phone up no end, so obviously eating CPU somehow.

I tried it in Songbird- it mounts the card after a long wait, and you can read it- great! But if you make a playlist and sync to phone, it tries to add the music as well- it's not clever enough to understand that the music is on the phone already. I appreciate that the music was synced with Winamp initially, so this is probably the issue.

OK, i thought, I can add the music manually by dragging tunes to a folder (incidentally, Winamp, when synching, creates this massive structure of artist/ album/ song, and renames the MP3 file to be just song name), and that's cool. I can't amend the playlist file that Winamp created on the device for me (seems to be a common problem apparently, if you have playlists in the native player), so i wanted to create my own and dump it on the phone. I exported the Winamp playlist and dumped it onto phone. Interestingly, only the files I'd added manually (and thus had the original filename) were recognised on the phone.

So, i appear to have 3 choices:

1. wipe SD card, copy music over into one folder, and then playlists will work. This will mean I can just update playlist file if i add a new song and it's done. (issue with this, is that am concerned about so much in one folder- in terms of performance- could split over a couple of folders)

2. wipe SD card, try synching with Songbird and manage it all through there (and hope I don't get the same problem repeated)

3. stay with the music I have on the phone, and just laboriously create a playlist on the phone and add songs individually to it (and drag/drop music when needed)

Am I being an idiot and missing something? Anyone else has similar problems? I thought I may have had a dodgy SD card as I'd had one in the past, but run hardware tests etc and it checks out. iTunes was so easy, copy music to library, r/click add to playlist, sync and job done. I can't believe this hasn't been replicated elsewhere so perhaps I'm doing something wrong.

Sorry for the long and winding explanation :-\

 

[heshanj]

im in a bit of a hurry, so i cant read ur entire post. but the best option is to use this app called iSyncr. its a paid app but u can use it to sync ur itunes musc/playlist to ur android, and use any music app to play it with. itunes agent is a free app, but it just dumps all ur itunes library into ur phone, u wont get any playlists. so if playlists is ur thing, get iSyncr.

doubletwist is a free app that u can use, it has a desktop client that grabs ur itunes library/playlists, u could give it a shot. it also includes a good music app but again, u can use any music player to play it with. hope this helps

EDIT: try to avoid kies for any use. ive not opened it since two days after i bought my phone

 

[Irate]

isyncr from the market syncs your music to itunes playlist works very well

for Pc
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jrtstudio.iSyncr&hl=en

for Mac
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jrtstudio.iSyncr4Mac&hl=en

 

[BugPowderDust]

Thanks both- so isyncr will in essence, behave like iTunes? eg. if I add a song to the library, and add it to a playlist, the app will only try to sync the one song and not all the songs in the playlist? I mean, it will be aware the other tracks in the playlist are already on the phone?

 

[heshanj]

i havent tried it, but im pretty sure it does. even itunes agent does almost that.. i.e. when i add a new song to itunes, i sync it, and it just adds the new song. the only thing itunes agent doesnt do is sync playlists.. but iSyncr should.

 

[martytarty]

I have isyncr and the wifi add on for my gs2, works very well, syncs itunes playlists no problems, a little slow if your syncing large volumes but thats to be expected, I use poweramp which picks up the playlists along with stock player again with no problems

 

[MJC UK]

You need Double Twist - I've just used it and transferred my entire iTunes library to my SGS2. Great music player for the handset, and a very iTunes-esque app for the mac (or PC). There a couple of issue with DRM which meant I couldn't transfer a few of my songs, but see how it goes.

 

[martytarty]

Im pretty sure double twist doesn't sync playlists it will just sync the songs from a playlist but not as a playlist

 

[heshanj]

i dont remember, i used doubletwist a while ago, but unlike itunes agent (which imports a playlist containing all ur music), doubletwist syncs from itunes directly, so i think it does sync playlists.. but someone could confirm this please

 

[lotus49]

I have tried DoubleTwist and iSyncr but although DoubleTwist looks better and is easier to use, it didn't work as well and frequently didn't copy album art over properly.

A combination of iSyncr and MediaFix (to fix tags that Android doesn't cope with well) works. It is certainly not as elegant a solution as iTunes (not by a very long chalk) but if you set up a playlist on your computer for the music you want to be copied to your SGS2, it is fairly simple to use and does the job.

You will find that, excellent as the phone is, the desktop integration sucks beyond belief. There is no easy way to copy music, backup the phone, sync calendars etc. All of this is possible but it's damned painful compared to the simple approach of iTunes and this one shortcoming has really soured my experience of the SGS2.

If someone brought out an app that could do what iTunes used to be able to do with my iPhone 3G, I'd pay plenty for it.

 

[Telengo]

I have tried DoubleTwist and iSyncr but although DoubleTwist looks better and is easier to use, it didn't work as well and frequently didn't copy album art over properly.

A combination of iSyncr and MediaFix (to fix tags that Android doesn't cope with well) works. It is certainly not as elegant a solution as iTunes (not by a very long chalk) but if you set up a playlist on your computer for the music you want to be copied to your SGS2, it is fairly simple to use and does the job.

You will find that, excellent as the phone is, the desktop integration sucks beyond belief. There is no easy way to copy music, backup the phone, sync calendars etc. All of this is possible but it's damned painful compared to the simple approach of iTunes and this one shortcoming has really soured my experience of the SGS2.

If someone brought out an app that could do what iTunes used to be able to do with my iPhone 3G, I'd pay plenty for it.

I could not agree more with you. I have just purchased a SGS2 and I am in the same situation as the OP and yourself. I need to sync some music off my iMac and everything just feels complicated. I tried Double Twist last night and while it copied music it completely ignored the playlists that I ticked.

Excellent information on the bits of software required, I will try them this evening and hopefully I will get a better solution.

I love the phone and really find it excellent, but I guess that is the difference between a single manufacturer and an open sourced product. the Apple to Apple product just worked and this is a bit more complicated.

 

[vgnair2004]

Thanks heshanj, I bought the isyncr app and the playlist now syncs from itunes to my samsung galaxy s2 device. I wonder why Samsung overlooked such a basic requirement pertaining to syncing of playlists from Samsung kies to the android device. I am a satisfied iphone user and I find the switch to Galaxy S2(GS2) rather painful. the only reason I bought the android phone was that i wanted Apple to have competition, after all, healthy competition is good for end users. Unfortunaley, I am not satisfied with GS2 performance, and again, all hardcore android fans out there, its my personal opinion.... As I have used both the devices, I have a couple of things to highlight
1) Apps on Android breaks down more often. On the iphone, I remember 2-3 apps have broken down in the last 8-9 months. And, their fixes arrived within a week of reporting.
2) the music application is no where near to ipod...
3) the podcast apps available is not as good as itunes...
4) The battery life is pathetic especially when the 3G network is switched on. I think iphone manages the device much better with the 3G network on.
5) on the GS2
- When i am listening to music and I get a phone call, the music still runs in the background when I accept the incoming call.
- When I am listening to podcasts i go to music app and play it, the podcasts still plays along with the music.
6) the keypad autocorrection is much better on the iphone.
Again, these are my observations, there could be ways to tackle these problems which I am not aware of. but should I be worrying at all about these problems at all? are'nt the device manufacturers suppose to understand the users and provide the best device and timely updates to fix those problems? Well, I may be asking for too much because iPhone has already set the bar so high for the other device manufacturers.....

 

[wbeckle]

Well said.

 

[BeerBoxBandit]

Workaround process to add Music, Photos and Video to Samsung Ace II x (GT-S7560M)


Music - Physical Files and Playlists from iTunes
(note: the only downside I can see with this solution is that multiple physical files exist if the same song is in multiple playlists)

1. Connect phone to PC (connect as MTP)
2. Launch iTunes and click on the Playlist you want
3. Create a folder Samsung Music on C: or on an external Hard Drive.
4. Create a folder called yourplaylistnamefromiTunes within Samsung Music folder
5. In iTunes, select all the songs in the respective playlist and COPY
6. Go to Samsung Music/yourplaylistnamefromiTunes and PASTE
7. COPY yourplaylistnamefromiTunes
8. Go to My Computer/GT-S7560M/Card/Media and PASTE
9. Go to Samsung phone and touch Music Player
10. On the Menu Bar scroll to FOLDERS
11. Locate the yourplaylistnamefromiTunes folder.
12. Touch and hold yourplaylistnamefromiTunes
13. Touch Add to playlist and then +Create playlist. Rename the Samsung default My playlist 001 to yourplaylistnamefromiTunes and touch OK

You are done. You now have a folder and a playlist called yourplaylistnamefromiTunes on your Samsung phone.
All of the physical files (including duplicates, triplicates ...) can be seen in Kies, but not the playlists or albums. Do not sync Multimedia in Kies or you will end up with duplicates. The only thing Kies seems useful for is to sync Outlook and even then you need to be careful to select only the current folders (the Kies default is to include Archive folders).


Photos - Physical Files and Albums
(note: the only downside I can see with this solution is that multiple physical files exist if the same photo is in multiple albums)


1. Connect phone to PC (connect as MTP)
2. Locate the respective photo folder on C: or your external Hard Drive and COPY
3. Go to My Computer/GT-S7560M/Card/DCIM and PASTE

Videos - Physical Files and Albums
(note: the only downside I can see with this solution is that multiple physical files exist if the same photo is in multiple albums)


1. Connect phone to PC (connect as MTP)
2. Go to My Computer/GT-S7560M/Card/DCIM and create a folder called Video
3. Locate the respective video folder on C: or your external Hard Drive and COPY
4. Go to My Computer/GT-S7560M/Card/DCIM/Video and PASTE