Help phone plays mp3 only from internal storage but not from SD

Did you get any if your music from Apple?

One thing to keep in mind is apps like ES File Explorer and File Manager+ are file manage apps, giving the ability to navigate and access folders and files stored within your phone. They are not necessarily media players themselves, they just internally link to your phone's abilities to play media files when you tap on a media file.
That said, you might be better off focusing your efforts on getting actual media player apps to do what you want. The issue being a particular mp3 that won't play when residing on your microSD card but will play once transferred over to your internal storage media sounds more like an issue related to that initial misconception a file manager is also a media player. Just using VLC as an example, this being an actual media player app, how did you determine it's not working when playing content stored on your microSD card? If you start up the VLC app and go into the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the upper left, there's a 'Directories' option that you can use to navigate to your card and then open up your mp3's from there (opening them directly by VLC as opposed to indirectly though a file manager that may or may not even be set to use VLC as its default media player). There's also the 'Settings' menu where there's a 'Media library folders' where you can select which folders in both the internal storage and the card so they get automatically scanned by VLC for media content, so just show up when you start up VLC (bypassing the need to always manually find your favored media folders).

Try pulsar+

@szisziszilvi do you rip your music or download?

dontpanicbobby said:

@szisziszilvi do you rip your music or download?

Click to expand...

Very curious how that is a factor with the actual OP's problem. Even if an audio file is restricted by DRM, having it stored on a phone's internal storage memory will not strip away the DRM copy protection, nor will copying it a microSD card enable it.

When you rip physical media you own it's not protected unless 'you' protect it. I've ripped VHS tapes with an expensive dongle and Music CDs only using software on my PC and have shared them with my friends with no compatibility problems. Copying a Stream reminds me if making a mixtape (cassette) from broadcast radio.

Perhaps you should re-read the OP's original query. It's about media files being playable when stored on the phone's internal storage but those same files not being playable while stored on the microSD card.
Whether any file has DRM protection on it or not, it cannot magically be enabled or disabled by copying it from one storage media to another.

That's what I thought but the OP says different.
Maybe the card is encrypted somehow?

Regarding microSD cards in general, their primary features are being small in size and (depending on how they're formatted) universally compatible. But as far as storage media, their reliability is relatively marginal (relative when compared to a hard drive or NAND chip). If you use your card as a transfer media between different devices, there's also just the physical act of repeatedly mounting and un-mounting -- a microSD card is also more prone to basic, mechanical wear-and-tear. You don't have to baby it but just be aware there's just a thin, flexible, plastic sleeve surrounding some very thin circuitry so just handle them accordingly.
As for working in one device and not another, that could just a one-off, glitchy thing. But also keep in mind when a card is mounted in a computer it's going to be relying on a different hardware (the slot) and different software (the driver), along with the fact that different operating systems manage external media in very different ways.

szisziszilvi said:

hi all, well, I feel really dumb.... the thing is that after many many rounds, checking also things you suggested here I managed to get another micrco SD just to test. And now it works, so I am suspicious that my old SD was simply deferred. I've run a test with hm, honestly I don't remember now with which software, and it said after a quite long write-read test that 99% is bad. Can it be true if I managed to read and write the card otherwise with my computer, things only went wrong in the second I put it into my phone? I mean why would it work for one device and not for the other?

Click to expand...

Glad you got that working @szisziszilvi!