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Help Google music storage and naming

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Venaman

Newbie
I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but I definitely wanted to document this to see if anyone else has experienced the same issue.

The issue: I uploaded a sample of music to google music (about 40 songs), then 'pinned' them to the phone for offline listening. I went to look for the mp3 files using ES File Explorer and the music wasn't in /sdcard/music, instead it was in sdcard/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/. To make matters worse, the songs were named numerically in the order that they were uploaded (ie. the first song I uploaded is called 1.mp3), and now I have no clue which files correspond to which songs.

Any insight into this problem is appreciated.
 
Venaman said:
I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but I definitely wanted to document this to see if anyone else has experienced the same issue.

The issue: I uploaded a sample of music to google music (about 40 songs), then 'pinned' them to the phone for offline listening. I went to look for the mp3 files using ES File Explorer and the music wasn't in /sdcard/music, instead it was in sdcard/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/. To make matters worse, the songs were named numerically in the order that they were uploaded (ie. the first song I uploaded is called 1.mp3), and now I have no clue which files correspond to which songs.

Any insight into this problem is appreciated.
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Are they named the same when using the music app? Remember this music has been uploaded to the cloud, the files are NOT on your phone.
 
Venaman said:
Well you can 'pin' them to your phone, and this basically downloads the music to your phone so that you can listen to them offline. I have done this, and as proof I've listened to music on the subway ;)
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Yes I know you can do that BUT you would need to remember to do it before going offline. If you're going to do that then you might as well just load the music onto the phone and skip the middle man.
 
Dubbin1 said:
Yes I know you can do that BUT you would need to remember to do it before going offline. If you're going to do that then you might as well just load the music onto the phone and skip the middle man.
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OK but the fact is that I did do it this way (and prefer it for a few reasons that I won't get into because I want to stay on topic :) ). What I find curious is that the music is not being stored in the music folder (/sdcard/music) but actually in sdcard/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/ and it's being renamed as mentioned in the original post. I appreciate the quick responses!
 
I've also noticed that the OS reports the music files as 'apps' in the memory details of the settings menu. I would think it should be reported as music. I think I am going to 'unpin', or delete and load my music into the music folder via usb. Hopefully google music can match the tracks and not show duplicates between local and cloud songs in the music player
 
oh, and to answer you question, I'm sure the tags are still intact. Thats how the phone knows who is who in the music player. I'm sure if you viewed those numerical tracks via a tag reader you could see who it was.
 
Venaman said:
Oh and I didn't answer this question. They are named appropriately in the app.
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OK I guess I don't understand what the problem is???

Oh I see it now, these are the songs you pinned to the phone that has the name change.

You should be able to listen to the pinned music through the music app and not have to go to the folder they are in.
 
streetfish said:
oh, and to answer you question, I'm sure the tags are still intact. Thats how the phone knows who is who in the music player. I'm sure if you viewed those numerical tracks via a tag reader you could see who it was.
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It's just inconvenient if I want to, perhaps, transfer one of the music files to use as a ringtone. A small thing, but I just wanted to get some opinions on it.

I may do the same as you though and load music via other means and see how it reacts.
 
Dubbin1 said:
OK I guess I don't understand what the problem is???
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In my ideal world, all music I send to my phone, regardless of the means, would be stored identically (in the music folder). This is not the case when I download the music to the phone via google music - instead of storing it in the music folder, I can only find it in the app cache and they are renamed such that I can no longer easily identify which files belong to which songs.

I guess it all comes down to what happens when I store music in the that music folder, can I listen to it with google music app? Will it duplicate songs in google music?
 
Dubbin1 said:
You should be able to listen to the pinned music through the music app and not have to go to the folder they are in.
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Didn't see the edit: I have no problem listening to the music, but from a file management perspective, it's inconvenient that those files aren't located where they should be, and that they have effectively been de-identified.
 
Venaman said:
Didn't see the edit: I have no problem listening to the music, but from a file management perspective, it's inconvenient that those files aren't located where they should be, and that they have effectively been de-identified.
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I understand 100% where you're coming from.
 
I understand your frustrations, same here. I enjoy the ease of having all my music in one folder too so that if I need to keep them updated on my desktop, it will make it easier. I fly a lot and most frequently listen to my music offline rather than through the cloud. I don't really care for the cloud, somehow I think my music will eventually get lost up there.
 
It will duplicate files if you side-load them onto your phone and also have them on Google Music. I tried this.

I understand your frustration with the file management. Unfortunately, the only way to handle it is to actually just let Google Music deal with everything. No side-loading. Just pin what you want, and unpin when you want it gone.

That's what I do, and it works quite well. I usually have about 10-12 gigs of music pinned at any given time. It works great for what I want - I want most of the stuff I listen to available offline, but it's really nice to have everything else available wherever I have a data connection.
 
binary visions said:
It will duplicate files if you side-load them onto your phone and also have them on Google Music. I tried this.

I understand your frustration with the file management. Unfortunately, the only way to handle it is to actually just let Google Music deal with everything. No side-loading. Just pin what you want, and unpin when you want it gone.

That's what I do, and it works quite well. I usually have about 10-12 gigs of music pinned at any given time.
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I totally love the pin, unpin functionality because basically it allows all of my music to be available, and if I feel like I want to listen to a specific album for a period a month, and maybe I'm growing sick of a currently pinned album, I can make those changes right from my phone.

Only thing that is dumb, is that it doesn't store this music in a comprehensible manner, so if I want to, I dono, set a song as a ringtone, I basically can't. Also I'm curious as to whether or not I can send music to another phone via wifi sync.
 
Dubbin1 said:
I didn't have that problem on my OG Droid, haven't tried it yet on the GN.
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Same here on my Evo 3D. The pinning feature is what makes this service so great. Like dude said above, it's nice to have prettymuch all of my music available at any given time.


I was looking for a thread about Google Music in general and this seems to be the only one that people post in. Does anyone else have issues with Google Music not going to the next song when listening to streamed music, well it's set to cache music under settings, but I'm not listening to the pinned ones, I'm listening to the cloud stuff while driving. Thanks!
 
Is there a way to "mass pin" everything?? Also, the music app is pulling sound files from some of my games, arghh
 
Pinning does not download the song onto your phone the way you think it does. It caches the songs in an unreadable format when you use file apps. They could have done it either way, but my guess is for them to get deals with the music companies, they had to make that concession or charge for the service.

Bottom line... You can pin songs to listen to them offline through the Music app, but you cannot parse out the files to use else where. It is kinda hard to complain about a free service that does this much already.
 
Roroco said:
Pinning does not download the song onto your phone the way you think it does. It caches the songs in an unreadable format when you use file apps. They could have done it either way, but my guess is for them to get deals with the music companies, they had to make that concession or charge for the service.

Bottom line... You can pin songs to listen to them offline through the Music app, but you cannot parse out the files to use else where. It is kinda hard to complain about a free service that does this much already.
Click to expand...

That is not correct, you can parse out anthing you pin and move it anywhere you want.
 
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