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Help Music Playback Issues

zandroid

Android Enthusiast
Oct 2, 2009
323
3
Los Angeles
Hi there, so I've got an annoying issue when listening to music on my Droid. During any song, any album, at any time, the music will skip. Like the old CD players did when they were jiggled around, etc.

I've tried it in every situation possible. It skips in every music app, any headphone or AUX cable, wether its being charged OR not. I thought it may be happening due to network things like receiving a text, or when Google syncs, but I don't think that's it. One of the reasons I got the Droid was for it to replace my iPod, but I can't even listen to music! This happened before 2.1, after, and even when I was ROM'd and rooted.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.
 
Also having issues with my music player (stock one, running Jrummy's CM). The music will just stop sometimes and I have to press play again. Pandora works fine, just that sometimes it doesnt load and I have to FC it and reload, but it doesn't stop music like the stock music player which means its prob not the headphone jack,
 
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Also having issues with my music player (stock one, running Jrummy's CM). The music will just stop sometimes and I have to press play again. Pandora works fine, just that sometimes it doesnt load and I have to FC it and reload, but it doesn't stop music like the stock music player which means its prob not the headphone jack,

I get that too with the stock music player and also with Slacker and it IS related to the headphone jack. Something happens when the jack wiggles enough and the connections break (i.e.: giving static), that in severe cases, the music will just stop until I unlock the screen and hit the play button.

There are a couple of other threads floating around these forums about how the phone will sometimes auto-play music when you plug in the headphones and it'll stop when the headphones are removed. These aren't 100% consistent behaviors, but it's a pretty significant trend, and I'm confident that they're all related.

There's not much we can do about the headphone jack. It's more or less a known design flaw. Personally, I'm planning on getting a bluetooth transmitter to take the jack out of the equation. (I use my phone A LOT for music.) Do a google search for "Jabra Clipper" - That's my solution when it comes out next month.

As for the OP, just for random skipping, I'm with DougWilson2000 on this - I'd guess that you may just have too much stuff running in the background. What happens if you reboot the phone? Does the skipping problem clear up for a little while?
 
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@ OP: does the skipping only happen when you have headphones plugged in? what happens when you try to listen to music through the speaker? does it still skip then? if its the headphone jack issue, there is a simple DIY fix for that.

as for the music just stopping outta nowhere for no reason and then you have to press play again, that is most likely caused by loose headphone jack issue.

once i did the DIY fix, all headphone jack issues went away.
 
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@ OP: does the skipping only happen when you have headphones plugged in? what happens when you try to listen to music through the speaker? does it still skip then? if its the headphone jack issue, there is a simple DIY fix for that.

as for the music just stopping outta nowhere for no reason and then you have to press play again, that is most likely caused by loose headphone jack issue.

once i did the DIY fix, all headphone jack issues went away.

What's this DIY fix for the headphone jack that you're talking about? This is my biggest (and really my only) problem with this phone and I've never seen anything about a fix...?
 
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@ OP: does the skipping only happen when you have headphones plugged in? what happens when you try to listen to music through the speaker? does it still skip then? if its the headphone jack issue, there is a simple DIY fix for that.

Currently playing through speakerphone, and sound is skipping. Haven't restarted the phone in awhile, so I'm going to do that now and replay the same song and see what happens. BTW, the problem occurs with headphones, and with an AUX cable leading to car speakers, computer speakers, etc.

edit: song has not skipped once after restart, so for now I'm going to assume I usually have too much background action when playing the music.
 
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It doesn't appear to be THAT loose, I guess there is a bit of give - what are my options if it is the "loose headphone jack" issue? However, the music does skip as well and is so very annoying.

Unplug your headphones completely and try playing the music through the droid's speaker. If it is still skipping I would assume the problem is not the headphone jack.

EDIT: Nevermind, I did not read through all the posts before I said this. sorry.
 
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Mine is doing the same thing since the 2.1 update. It will even do it immediately after rebooting. It sounds like exactly the same issue because it does it with the stock music player as well as with Pandora.


Currently playing through speakerphone, and sound is skipping. Haven't restarted the phone in awhile, so I'm going to do that now and replay the same song and see what happens. BTW, the problem occurs with headphones, and with an AUX cable leading to car speakers, computer speakers, etc.

edit: song has not skipped once after restart, so for now I'm going to assume I usually have too much background action when playing the music.
 
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Bumping this thread in case anyone has the same problem and can't solve it.

I had very serious skipping issues with my Droid. 5 songs worked out of my entire 300-some library. Only the ones I ripped myself worked. I never solved this with the default music player, but I did get it to work when I downloaded an app called "Doubletwist". It's free, it's better organized and prettier than the default music player, and best of all, no more skipping.

Highly recommended.
 
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I use my phone for music all the time, and have been going through some real difficulty lately.

Of course, the headphone jack is going. Which means, every so often, there is the horrible static noise blasted through my speakers; and like someone else mentioned, everytime the connection gets "loose" and comes back, it starts playing a different song altogether... seemingly at random.

I say seemingly, because no matter what album I'm playing, once the headphone jack is plugged back "in," the shuffle option selects itself.

And last night, on the road, my music player started skipping "normal" tracks. I use the stock player that comes with UD8, and I think this issue is directly related to hardware, but I figured I would share my story as well.
 
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I'm having the identical problem on a brand new Evo 4G. Music skips on the stock player, Mixzing, Doubletwist, you name it. I've used Advanced Task Killer to try and free up memory and removed a bunch of widgets that I feared may be adding to the problem. No luck.

However, I've never had any problems with skipping audio on the Audible player for audio books, and I always download the high quality files which are the same bitrate as MP3's. I have no idea why audiobooks aren't affected but all music players are. I replaced a 1st gen iPod Touch with this thing and I may have to go back to it now.

UPDATE: I tried a trick found on another forum - powering off my phone and removing/re-inserting the SD card. That worked for me! Another trick I've heard is uninstalling any app managers you may have running. I'm using Advanced Task Killer, and my playback issues were not coinciding with when I installed that, so I've left it running. No issues so far, next time I'll just try a full power off to see if that works. I really hope there isn't a next time though.

Oh, I replaced the stock SD card in my EVO with a Kingston 16GB Class 4 micro SD. I doubt that is the cause, but just in case others with the problem have also replaced their stock SD cards I thought I would share.
 
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My music has been skipping again today. I am quite un-impressed with the performance of my Evo. On the plus side, I did a full power off and re-start, and the skipping is gone so, for me at least, I don't need to pull the battery and SD card every week. Still, I don't see myself sticking with Android for very long if there isn't an update soon that fixes this. I really like the phone, except for how often (weekly) it seems to get bogged down to the point that only a reboot will fix it.
 
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I think I found the solution to this for the Evo, unfortunately it requires you to root your phone if you haven't already. Alternatively (I think), you could put all of your music on the Evo's internal memory. The problem appears to be that HTC has put a software-imposed cap on the maximum read/write speed for the SD card, and it's a really low cap. Get the full details on how to raise the read/write speed limit at
How to increase SD card read speed on rooted HTC EVO 4G

I don't know if this will help those of you on other phones or not, but I hope so.
 
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