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Why won't Android work with MP3 controls on headphones? And why does Android mess up album info?

2 Phonez

Member
Feb 5, 2013
94
10
UK
This is a little issue but it's always bugged me. I have a nice pair of headphones with MP3 controls on them but they do nothing on Android. If they're plugged into a phone they'll act as a control for the phone (and, very helpfully, hitting the play/pause button will randomly dial the last number called :rolleyes:) but they don't work as MP3 controls at all.

The second issue might even be a "feature", I don't know, but you have to be very careful how you organise your music or it screws up the album information. On every Android device I've ever owned (and I've used Android since the G1), if I just dump all my music into one folder, the album art is replaced with random stuff from my library and the album name is the name of the folder. The only way to get around this is manually making folders for every artist and taking the time to sort the music, which is just a PITA.

How come this hasn't been sorted yet? It really hinders the use of my Android devices as music players. I actually still have a separate iPod because when I get rid of my iPhone I don't want to have to rely on an Android phone as my sole music player.

I'm just venting here really but it irritates me. Android is an awesome OS in so many ways but they still can't get the basic little things right sometimes :mad:
 
I use rocketfish bluetooth headphones and have complete control of the stock Music Player. Volume tracks, next, last pause, no problems with music at all. The only time it redials is if I accidentally hit the talk button twice. I rip my own CDs using Windows Media Player so I already have artist and album folders on my PC to transfer over. I've heard that some of these online download and buy services like Google play don't even list artist or album on their tracks when you transfer them to your device. I think Android handles the whole music player/cellphone dichotomy over bluetooth wonderfully. But that's just my opinon.
 
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I use rocketfish bluetooth headphones and have complete control of the stock Music Player. Volume tracks, next, last pause, no problems with music at all. The only time it redials is if I accidentally hit the talk button twice. I rip my own CDs using Windows Media Player so I already have artist and album folders on my PC to transfer over. I've heard that some of these online download and buy services like Google play don't even list artist or album on their tracks when you transfer them to your device. I think Android handles the whole music player/cellphone dichotomy over bluetooth wonderfully. But that's just my opinon.

Is that on your S2? Maybe that's a tweak added by Samsung. I've certainly never had MP3 controls work on Android before. Not even on my Nexus 7 running Jelly Bean.
 
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This is a little issue but it's always bugged me. I have a nice pair of headphones with MP3 controls on them but they do nothing on Android. If they're plugged into a phone they'll act as a control for the phone (and, very helpfully, hitting the play/pause button will randomly dial the last number called :rolleyes:) but they don't work as MP3 controls at all.

I would have thought that controls like skip forward/back, pause, play, vol up/down on headphones would be specific and proprietary to a certain make of player or phone. Like if it was Sony phones, the controls would only work with Sony devices. I used to have a Panasonic portable CD player, that had controls on the headphone cable, but they would only work with a Panasonic player.

AFAIK there's NO single industry standard for headphone music controls.

The second issue might even be a "feature", I don't know, but you have to be very careful how you organise your music or it screws up the album information. On every Android device I've ever owned (and I've used Android since the G1), if I just dump all my music into one folder, the album art is replaced with random stuff from my library and the album name is the name of the folder. The only way to get around this is manually making folders for every artist and taking the time to sort the music, which is just a PITA.

How come this hasn't been sorted yet? It really hinders the use of my Android devices as music players. I actually still have a separate iPod because when I get rid of my iPhone I don't want to have to rely on an Android phone as my sole music player.

I'm just venting here really but it irritates me. Android is an awesome OS in so many ways but they still can't get the basic little things right sometimes :mad:

You use iTunes to manage your MP3 library? I think iTunes might do some Apple only things with the ID3 tags and album art. If you're just using iOS devices, you'll be OK. But if you go outside of the Apple way of doing things, like using an Android device, you may have problems.
 
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I would have thought that controls like skip forward/back, pause, play, vol up/down on headphones would be specific and proprietary to a certain make of player or phone. Like if it was Sony phones, the controls would only work with Sony devices. I used to have a Panasonic portable CD player, that had controls on the headphone cable, but they would only work with a Panasonic player.

AFAIK there's NO single industry standard for headphone music controls.

They're Bowers and Wilkins P3's. The controls work fine on my laptop, my iPod, and my iPhone. I used to have Beats (I know, I know) and the same was true. Neither of those worked on my Android devices for some reason though. I understand Beats being half-assed but are you saying Bowers and Wilkins are just not bothering to make their headphone controls work on Android?

You use iTunes to manage your MP3 library? I think iTunes might do some Apple only things with the ID3 tags and album art. If you're just using iOS devices, you'll be OK. But if you go outside of the Apple way of doing things, like using an Android device, you may have problems.

If the tracks actually have album art attached to them, it shows fine. All the other metadata works fine too. My issue is that if a track has no album art, Android will just put a random one in its place unless I'm careful organising my music.

Regarding the album cover art, I had a similar problem.

Download a free app called 'Album Art Grabber' and this will obtain all of the album artwork you need and put it in the right place.

I'll remember that for the future, thanks. Got it sorted for now because all the music is in different folders.
 
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They're Bowers and Wilkins P3's. The controls work fine on my laptop, my iPod, and my iPhone. I used to have Beats (I know, I know) and the same was true. Neither of those worked on my Android devices for some reason though. I understand Beats being half-assed but are you saying Bowers and Wilkins are just not bothering to make their headphone controls work on Android?

I'm now thinking there might be a set standard for multimedia headphone controls, if your B&W headphones' controls work with laptops. And iOS devices evidently adhere to it as well. Presumably something like controlling an Android phone, that might be down to the manufacturer of the phone, if they choose to implement it or not. Android itself is open, manufacturers can do what they like. Google has no control or say over something like this.

When I had my Panasonic CD player and bundled headphones with controls, this was 10 years ago. Those headphone controls definitely would not control anything that wasn't Panasonic, e.g. a Sony Walkman CD player.
 
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I'm now thinking there might be a set standard for multimedia headphone controls, if your B&W headphones' controls work with laptops. And iOS devices evidently adhere to it as well. Presumably something like controlling an Android phone, that might be down to the manufacturer of the phone, if they choose to implement it or not. Android itself is open, manufacturers can do what they like. Google has no control or say over something like this.

When I had my Panasonic CD player and bundled headphones with controls, this was 10 years ago. Those headphone controls definitely would not control anything that wasn't Panasonic, e.g. a Sony Walkman CD player.

Surely it's a software level thing though? Google should just implement it into AOSP instead of leaving it up to manufacturers to make it work.
 
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Surely it's a software level thing though? Google should just implement it into AOSP instead of leaving it up to manufacturers to make it work.
Google is not Microsoft or Apple. So far they haven't taken such draconian measures with the manufacturers and carriers. For instance Google put in the ability to take screenshots without being connected to a PC in 4.0.4 but either Samsung or t-mobile took it out of the version I have on my S2.
 
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Well it turns out Bower and Wilkins has run into this issue before, this is Using headphones with non-Apple devices from their support page. It looks to me like they're saying that if the in-line controls don't work with a non apple product you need to switch cables to a standard cable and do without controls. They never promised their product would work with all cellphones.
 
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Well it turns out Bower and Wilkins has run into this issue before, this is Using headphones with non-Apple devices from their support page. It looks to me like they're saying that if the in-line controls don't work with a non apple product you need to switch cables to a standard cable and do without controls. They never promised their product would work with all cellphones.

That's a shame, these are expensive headphones and they're just being lazy.
 
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