songs downloaded from personal library won't play

[musicmatters]

I had a LG V20 loaded with 350 songs from my CD library. some are individual, some include several from albums The same songs are also loaded on a thumb drive, played in my car. in both cases I have no issues. A large majority of the songs were stored on and moved from Windows Media Player to the thumb drive. Can't remember how I got them onto the LG V20. I burned the songs to Microsoft at the highest bit rate available/allowed. Transfer from the Thumb drive to the Pixel was via Bluetooth. all 350 songs were transferred over, are visible and show the length of the song etc. they show up individually and when in the album view are shown there as well. None of these are SACD or other high resolution files. Standard CD files.

using Google Play Music, then two other music Apps, all apps will only play about 1/5 of the songs. Because these songs came off of my personal CD collection, best guess is that there is an issue with songs played if they are part of an album. Or is there a format that Pixel won't play? Is there a program that i can run the songs through that will make them compatible with the Pixel?

Verizon technical support was stumped. i deleted the Google Music account 2X to "re-boot" the system. Nothing seems to work. Any suggestions?

 

[Dannydet]

Try a different music player app, I use Pulsar + which is in the play store, but there are many others that can play locally stored music files

 

[svim]

Did you save all those audio files as the same file type? (i.e. mp3, or WAV, or AAC) If they're in different file types, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Windows Media Player is the source of your problems. When things like Windows-specific, proprietary file types like WMA are involved, those default media player apps on your phone might have a lot of issues when playing them. As already mentioned, try using a good third-party media player app instead as others have suggested. I'd recommend MX Player Pro or VLC, both are very versatile and can support a much wider range of different file types than default media player apps. Or re-save and re-import audio library so they are using the same file type (that's compatible with the apps you're using of course.)
If all your files are the same file type however, I'd still suggest trying a different media player app, one that specifically describes itself as including support for a wide number file formats.

 

[musicmatters]

Did you save all those audio files as the same file type? (i.e. mp3, or WAV, or AAC) If they're in different file types, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Windows Media Player is the source of your problems. When things like Windows-specific, proprietary file types like WMA are involved, those default media player apps on your phone might have a lot of issues when playing them. As already mentioned, try using a good third-party media player app instead as others have suggested. I'd recommend MX Player Pro or VLC, both are very versatile and can support a much wider range of different file types than default media player apps. Or re-save and re-import audio library so they are using the same file type (that's compatible with the apps you're using of course.)
If all your files are the same file type however, I'd still suggest trying a different media player app, one that specifically describes itself as including support for a wide number file formats.

thanks for the thoughts. I tried 3 players, all with the same results. If others are not having issues then it has to be the way songs were ripped to windows media player. it just bugs me that they play on the LG and thumb drive i use in the car.

I am going to search for a third party software that might be able to reformat. As a FYI to get the thumb drive to be 100% stable I ran all the songs through a program called Picard. finds cover art, formats the songs. It was a great recommendation. If I find an answer to this I will post it.
thanks again for the thoughts.

 

[musicmatters]

thanks for the thoughts. I tried 3 players, all with the same results. If others are not having issues then it has to be the way songs were ripped to windows media player. it just bugs me that they play on the LG and thumb drive i use in the car.

I am going to search for a third party software that might be able to reformat. As a FYI to get the thumb drive to be 100% stable I ran all the songs through a program called Picard. finds cover art, formats the songs. It was a great recommendation. If I find an answer to this I will post it.
thanks again for the thoughts.

I forgot to add that the MX player Pro and another player Music Pro were great to use. whenever i get the songs to play I will probably use one of them. thanks for the recommendation

 

[codesplice]

Knowing the format/extension of the files would really help us help you.

 

[mikedt]

I had a LG V20 loaded with 350 songs from my CD library. some are individual, some include several from albums The same songs are also loaded on a thumb drive, played in my car. in both cases I have no issues. A large majority of the songs were stored on and moved from Windows Media Player to the thumb drive. Can't remember how I got them onto the LG V20. I burned the songs to Microsoft at the highest bit rate available/allowed. Transfer from the Thumb drive to the Pixel was via Bluetooth. all 350 songs were transferred over, are visible and show the length of the song etc. they show up individually and when in the album view are shown there as well. None of these are SACD or other high resolution files. Standard CD files.

using Google Play Music, then two other music Apps, all apps will only play about 1/5 of the songs. Because these songs came off of my personal CD collection, best guess is that there is an issue with songs played if they are part of an album. Or is there a format that Pixel won't play? Is there a program that i can run the songs through that will make them compatible with the Pixel?

Verizon technical support was stumped. i deleted the Google Music account 2X to "re-boot" the system. Nothing seems to work. Any suggestions?

I suspect Windows Media is the culprit. I don't think Pixel phones will play WMA by default, otherwise Google would have to pay lots of $$$$ to Micro$oft in codec patent licensing if they did. There are third-party music players that will play WMA no problems though, I use Foobar2000 and that can play WMA.

 

[musicmatters]

Knowing the format/extension of the files would really help us help you.

Track 04 (19).m4a

Knowing the format/extension of the files would really help us help you.

Here is an example of a file format that won't play, it looks identical to one that will play I hope this helps. MPEG-4 Audio (.m4a), Please remember they played on the LG V20

I suspect Windows Media is the culprit. I don't think Pixel phones will play WMA by default, otherwise Google would have to pay lots of $$$$ to Micro$oft in codec patent licensing if they did. There are third-party music players that will play WMA no problems though, I use Foobar2000 and that can play WMA.

I will try Foobar. thanks

 

[mikedt]

Track 04 (19).m4a


Here is an example of a file format that won't play, it looks identical to one that will play I hope this helps. MPEG-4 Audio (.m4a), Please remember they played on the LG V20


I will try Foobar. thanks

You can get it from here
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.foobar2000.foobar2000
or direct APK download from the official site.
http://www.foobar2000.org/download

I've been using Foobar2000 for a couple of years now as my music player of choice, and can play pretty much any music format. Also it's free open-source software(FOSS), so no nasty spyware or adware.

Should be no problems with M4A(AAC) audio on a Pixel though, as AAC is usually supported by Android natively.

And FWIW I always like to have meaningful names for my music files, e.g. "National Anthem of China.M4A" rather than just things like "TRACK 04.M4A".

 

[codesplice]

MPEG-4 is a container format so the audio data contained within could actually be encoded in different ways. The file extension doesn't necessarily matter - only .mp4 is actually defined by the standard. .m4a is typically used for DRM-free AAC-encoded audio streams but it could also be used for protected content. It all depends on how the files were actually created. Players look inside the file to see what encoding was used. There are apps which can report that sort of information but I'm afraid I don't know any off the top of my head.

I know a lot of iPhone users have had trouble playing certain tracks after copying their media directly from the iPhone to their new Pixel. It seemed that certain tracks had DRM protection which couldn't be read by the Pixel's audio player. The solution was to use iTunes to re-export the files and then transfer them from the computer to the Pixel phone. I wonder if a similar approach might work in your case?

 

[Xavier Black]

Have you tried in changing the extension(M4A) into one more standard or readable(MP3 or MP4)?

 

[musicmatters]

thanks to everyone that provided input. tried 6 different players, including Foobar2000. All really good. Every player immediately loaded the 350 songs, and all played or didn't play the same songs as Google Music. So I downloaded the songs directly to the Pixel. It was getting late and I was getting frustrated, what should have been 6 GB of memory ended up as about 35 GBs. ran out of memory, spent too much time trying to delete files,,,,,,,,, I am not helpless but not a techie either. in as much as the primary use for the phone is work, decided to just delete all unnecessary files from the LG, throw it in the brief case and use it for music. Great DAC and sound. I will let my brain rest a bit, think through the process - like setting up a specific folder for this music in downloads and if I don't F that up use one of the many great music players suggested. I love the Pixel for everything I use it for on a daily basis, music is truly a secondary use for when I am on flights. I'll check the posts, try some things and when, not if I get a workaround will let you know what happens.
Thanks again.,
Chris

 

[musicmatters]

as short of a follow-up as possible. I contacted Google Pixel support which included Google Music Play support (two different teams). Google doesn't like .M4a format. I was told to convert to MP3 format with a third party program. I chose MediaHuman. Other than 1 re-boot when it froze, it worked fantastic. After more than a couple of tries to get GPM and Chrome to recognize my Google email and free GPM account, I was able to transfer the songs to GPM for uploading. the last remaining hitch; an ULTRA slow upload - like 10 minutes or more per song, the songs that have loaded play without issues. as for the time per song, I'll contact MediaHuma and GPM to see if i can figure out why. if interested here is a link to MediaHuman, if you think there are better programs let me know. https://www.mediahuman.com/audio-converter
Chris

 

[mikedt]

as short of a follow-up as possible. I contacted Google Pixel support which included Google Music Play support (two different teams). Google doesn't like .M4a format. I was told to convert to MP3 format with a third party program. I chose MediaHuman. Other than 1 re-boot when it froze, it worked fantastic. After more than a couple of tries to get GPM and Chrome to recognize my Google email and free GPM account, I was able to transfer the songs to GPM for uploading. the last remaining hitch; an ULTRA slow upload - like 10 minutes or more per song, the songs that have loaded play without issues. as for the time per song, I'll contact MediaHuma and GPM to see if i can figure out why. if interested here is a link to MediaHuman,

Are you sure you were actually speaking to Google, and not to some scammer in India, or Pakistan, or China, or something?

Anyway that "Media Human" site is trying to download a DMG file. Well DMG files will only install and run on an Apple Mac AFAIK. Which is not something Google support would suggest is it?

 

[musicmatters]

I am sure it was Google as i accessed them through Google support off of my GPM app on the phone. As for MediaHuman, I took for granted that there support would mess with Google. Third party "best rated" conversion programs had them in the top three so I choose them. Maybe the reason for the slow download?

 

[musicmatters]

Slow downloading was fixed by re-booting GPM. Re-reading the thread lots of good advice on format, moving to MP3 was key. I found good music apps. I only lost 1 night of enjoying a bourbon -). The End
Chris