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Sort Order -- Why Do All (seemingly) Music Player Apps Show Tracks in Wrong Order (alphabetical)

S

SoonerLater

Member
I have tried the default music player that is installed with the Droid-X. I've also bought the bTunes player and installed the MixZing player (free version). what is wrong that, by default, all list the tracks of an album in alphabetical order?!?! At least bTunes will let you optionally sort by original track order (although the way given by bTunes is counter-intuitive and you have to start playing a track before you can sort).

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT?

By default, all albums should display in original track order. I suppose that for those who have difficulty reading, perhaps an option to list tracks in alphabetical order might be in order... for ADA compliance or something. Otherwise, when I browse one of my albums, I want to see it in the order that the original artist intended.
 
yes i have noticed this too..i have used the default player on hTC desire..and i have also tried double twist media player...they dont show in order or track number and don't even give the option.
 
With all media players, including bTunes, when I browse to an album, the tracks are listed in alphabetical order.

With bTunes, I can play a track, then put it in to shuffle mode, which does the opposite of what you expect: it puts the tracks into original track order. Then with the album in correct order, I can select the first track to play the whole album.

I think bTunes is broken. Shuffle mode ON means don't shuffle and shuffle mode OFF means shuffle. Go figure. But at least bTunes gives me a way to get the the album in correct order. bTunes has an option to "Sort by Track - when viewing an album sort by track number instead of title" but the listings are the same regardless of how I have this option set. (Using bTunes 1.5.1.a)
 
If your audio tracks are named as xx - yyyyy.mp3 where xx is the track number and yyyyy is the track name, they will display and play in the correct order on most mp3 players including the built in player on droid.

A utility called tag&rename is a great one for this, album art and other tagging cleanup issues.

Many hardware based mp3 players have the same problem and do not sort based on tag information but on file names. The one in my car stereo does the same.
 
jcthorne said:
If your audio tracks are named as xx - yyyyy.mp3 where xx is the track number and yyyyy is the track name, they will display and play in the correct order on most mp3 players including the built in player on droid.

A utility called tag&rename is a great one for this, album art and other tagging cleanup issues.

Many hardware based mp3 players have the same problem and do not sort based on tag information but on file names. The one in my car stereo does the same.
Click to expand...

That's not a solution. That's a hugeass bandaid. I've owned Tag&Rename for many years. I've used it religiously to keep all my tags correct and consistent. I'd rather pissona sparkplug than go rename all my mp3 files just to trick an inadequate or buggy music player to limp along. It's not like MP3 tags are some super new rocket science that's just starting to be adopted. There is just no excuse for *all* of the music players for Android running blind to standards that have existed for years.
 
SoonerLater said:
That's not a solution. That's a hugeass bandaid. I've owned Tag&Rename for many years. I've used it religiously to keep all my tags correct and consistent. I'd rather pissona sparkplug than go rename all my mp3 files just to trick an inadequate or buggy music player to limp along. It's not like MP3 tags are some super new rocket science that's just starting to be adopted. There is just no excuse for *all* of the music players for Android running blind to standards that have existed for years.
Click to expand...

I've had a Droid since November, but only recently realized that I was having a sort order problem, too, because it wasn't happening to all of my music. I use Android's standard music player.

When I began looking at the difference between which files played correctly and which didn't I saw that the ones that weren't in the xx - xxx.file type format were the ones that weren't playing correctly so I renamed all the oddballs which were generally in this format: 01 Name of track.file type. So I added the dash. Just spent half of last evening doing that. Anyway, after resyncing, a few more of the albums started playing correctly by track number, but there were still others that wouldn't. Soooo, I relooked at the files that weren't playing correctly.

Epiphany, they were all files that I had copied from CDs using Windows Media Player. They all had wma file extensions. All the mp3s played correctly, wmas do not. So now I'm going to rerip my CDs with a converter that will turn them into mp3s. Luckily, there are only about 10 or so.

And, FWIW, I use Motorola's Media Link software to sync. When it first came out, it was a very confusing piece of software, but several updates later it works beautifully. If all your mp3s are in the xx - xxxx.mp3 format, this will correctly order them in the standard Android player. But, like I said, they all need to be mp3s first.

Here's a link to the software. It's made just for Motos Droids. They really should advertise this more. Nobody knows about it.

Motorola Media Link - Motorola USA
 
SharonW said:
...the difference between which files played correctly and which didn't I saw that the ones that weren't in the xx - xxx.file type format... so I renamed all the oddballs which were generally in this format: 01 Name of track.file type. So I added the dash. Just spent half of last evening doing that.
Click to expand...

Thank you for taking time to respond, but it's not about the FILE NAMES. Or at least it shouldn't be about the file names. It's about the TAGS. If a file is properly tagged, you could name the file anything and an industry-standard player would still use the tags to determine Artist, Album Artist, Album, Track Title, Track Number and dozes of other standards.

ID3 tags have been around since 1996. Fourteen years later, they are still the defacto standard for tagging music. Every music player for PC, Mac and Linux supports ID3 tags. The iPod/iPhone world relies on ID3 tags. The Microsoft Zune uses ID3 tags. But on the Droid-X all of the players I've found so far either do not correctly read the tags, or don't read them at all. This includes the new RealPlayer Beta that I found in the Android Market for the first time today.

I'm sorry that you spent half the night renaming some of your files, but using Tag & Rename I could literally rename my 5000 MP3s in the manner that you suggest in about 10 minutes. T&R is that fast; that powerful. But I refuse. I'm not going to rename my files (and cause all of my family's ipods and iphones to have to re-sync all music) just to trick my Droid-X into doing what it should be able to do already.
 
SoonerLater said:
Thank you for taking time to respond, but it's not about the FILE NAMES. Or at least it shouldn't be about the file names. It's about the TAGS. If a file is properly tagged, you could name the file anything and an industry-standard player would still use the tags to determine Artist, Album Artist, Album, Track Title, Track Number and dozes of other standards.

ID3 tags have been around since 1996. Fourteen years later, they are still the defacto standard for tagging music. Every music player for PC, Mac and Linux supports ID3 tags. The iPod/iPhone world relies on ID3 tags. The Microsoft Zune uses ID3 tags. But on the Droid-X all of the players I've found so far either do not correctly read the tags, or don't read them at all. This includes the new RealPlayer Beta that I found in the Android Market for the first time today.

I'm sorry that you spent half the night renaming some of your files, but using Tag & Rename I could literally rename my 5000 MP3s in the manner that you suggest in about 10 minutes. T&R is that fast; that powerful. But I refuse. I'm not going to rename my files (and cause all of my family's ipods and iphones to have to re-sync all music) just to trick my Droid-X into doing what it should be able to do already.
Click to expand...

Okay, here's an update. I was literally flying by the seat of my pants trying to determine what was different that caused the problem (like a child's game, look at these seemingly similar two pictures, determine what's different). You're right, it's not the file names (what a waste of time that was last night). It's the file extension. The wmas just won't play in order. Right now I'm reripping my CDs having changed the file type in Windows Media Player to mp3 from wma. Doing that and using the Moto Media Link software works perfect.

Have you tried the Motorola Media Link software yet? Did you check to see if any of your files were wma?
 
This has been a HUGE frustration for me. I've noticed that when I browse by albums and actually go IN to the album they are listed in the proper order on my Eris, and if I "click" the first song it will play in order, but if I just choose the album itself without going in to list the songs it plays them in alphabetical order. Strangely, I just noticed that if I go the the Artist and then play the album they're in the right order, but not if I go to the album list. Silly.

Why would anyone EVER play their songs in alphabetical order? It should either be random or in the order they are supposed to be in the album.

Another "issue" I've had with this and my wife's ipod touch...why is there no "add to now playing" option? I don't want to have to create a playlist for everyting, some times I just want to queue up some music that I want to listen to at that moment...
 
Mr.Pibb said:
This has been a HUGE frustration for me. I've noticed that when I browse by albums and actually go IN to the album they are listed in the proper order on my Eris, and if I "click" the first song it will play in order, but if I just choose the album itself without going in to list the songs it plays them in alphabetical order. Strangely, I just noticed that if I go the the Artist and then play the album they're in the right order, but not if I go to the album list. Silly.

Why would anyone EVER play their songs in alphabetical order? It should either be random or in the order they are supposed to be in the album.

Another "issue" I've had with this and my wife's ipod touch...why is there no "add to now playing" option? I don't want to have to create a playlist for everyting, some times I just want to queue up some music that I want to listen to at that moment...
Click to expand...


+1 there. The option to simply add music to a queue would be very useful.

The included music player on the EVO plays all my mp3s, in albums sorted in the correct album track order. Both the file name and the track number tag are set correctly on all my mp3s so I really don't know which it is reading. But they work fine on the EVO, in the car, on our Tivo and my wife's samsung mp3 player.
 
So then riddle me this...I took the same exact music files that I used on my DROID (which the stock music player respected the track order) and copied them onto the SD of my X, and the stock X player alphabetizes instead of respecting the track order. So if the files are properly "tagged" for the DROID and any other MP3 type player I've got, why the f is the X alphabetizing. Leads me to believe it has zilch to do with "tagging". Thoughts?
 
validoption said:
So then riddle me this...I took the same exact music files that I used on my DROID (which the stock music player respected the track order) and copied them onto the SD of my X, and the stock X player alphabetizes instead of respecting the track order. So if the files are properly "tagged" for the DROID and any other MP3 type player I've got, why the f is the X alphabetizing. Leads me to believe it has zilch to do with "tagging". Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if this will help you or not, but one time I tried the old drag and drop from computer to phone and my music ended up totally weird. It somehow got sorted by odd and even track numbers. Are you sure you put it in the right folder? I know I didn't. I had listened to someone on a forum and created my own Music file and put it there. Who knows though, maybe that wasn't the problem.

All I can offer you is the following suggestion, delete all your music on your phone and re-add it with the Motorola's software for syncing. This worked perfect for me.

Motorola Media Link - Motorola, Inc. USA
 
OK, I have to give an update on my experience. I have an HTC Droid Eris, and all the previous issues I've been seeing involve the included HTC music player. I just rooted my phone today and I was just fooling with the "stock" android music player. It is playing all the songs in the correct order no matter how I start them (from album, artist, etc).

ALSO, I can add albums to the current "now playing" list by just holding on the album, choose "add to playlist" and then there's a "add to current playlist" option or something like that. I'm certainly sticking with the ROM I'm using (cyanogen tazz) or one like it!
 
When browsing Artists, if you tap+hold until the menu pops and then select PLAY, it will add it to the queue in the correct order.

For me, I usually either 1) play a full album in order or 2) make a playlist from only the select few across multiple albums. So, correct order for me only applies when I'm playing the whole album.
 
SoonerLater said:
I have tried the default music player that is installed with the Droid-X. I've also bought the bTunes player and installed the MixZing player (free version). what is wrong that, by default, all list the tracks of an album in alphabetical order?!?!
Click to expand...
I have the paid version of Mixzing, and it puts the songs in order of track number, not track name as you suggest.
EDIT: actually, after looking a little closer, it looks like Mixzing ****s up the order too. There is no reasoning behind it though. It is not order by track or name. It looks random ... ???
 
doubleTwist will list the tracks in default track # order from the tag info. Opening up the music in the 'Albums' section, and opening the album will display the track. there's both a free & pro version.
 
Hope you all have learned about long press feature of the stock music player. When selecting an album to play, instead of merely pressing the album name press it long. Answer "Play" in the pop-up and the songs will be in track order. You may find this easier and more pleasing than changing your music track names.
 
Well I have the answer apparently : your wma files will play alphabetically whereas proper mp3 files will appear unchanged on your droid device, there have been incompability issues between windows and android. I got the answer from PlayerPro 's dev. I had to convert all my wma tracks into mp3 and everything 's sorted now.
 
Sorry, but that's NOT correct that LONG PRESS (and then PLAY select) will play in Track Order. I have HTC Desire and it does NOT work: if I long press, it just plays in alpha order of 'Title'. Yes, I have ALL my Music files tagged correctly - WHY, WHY, WHY can't I play in Track order or FileName order?????
 
A late post, but I found this thread very useful.
As regards the Long Press, on my HTC Desire using the standard player, I find that if I create and then select a Playlist of the MP3 tracks I have saved in the Music folder, then the Long Play/Play sequence does not play in track order.
However, if I select the Album (ie the file of MP3 tracks I have saved in the Music folder) with Long Press followed by Play, it will play in track order.
 
I found that saving the files in mp3 format versus wma solved my problem. I first saved them as wma and they listed alphabetically when displaying under the 'artist' section but by track when displaying under the 'album' section. I removed the album and then resaved with mp3 and both options (artist/album) are displaying in track order. I'm using the stock player on My Touch android.
 
Thank you SharonW (#6)!
After adding the dash, the songs were played by track number!
I'm using Audify Music Player, the paid version, and not even the developers have been able to fix it!
 
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