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Music streaming and syncing apps?

Z

zeppelin101

Newbie
So far I've been using quite a primitive approach to playing back music on my phone. I've simply been uploading music folders (albums mostly) to the filesystem of my Galaxy Nexus (/sdcard/music). This is not that bad of an approach, but it has a few drawbacks.

For one, I cannot easily use playlists (made on PC). Secondly, I cannot really sync my music. Currently, I use this application called Andless (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.avs234) and it works quite well. It allows me to navigate the filesystem of my phone and select the directories manually. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's what I'm used to, since I use the Foobar2000 application on my Windows desktop.

I'm really not a huge fan of iTunes. But if iTunes played nice with Android, maybe I would even consider it.. In any case, would someone please advise on how to go about uploading music to my phone in such a way that I could create playlists on my desktop and have them end up on my phone as well? Vice versa would be very nice, too, but I'm not about to become greedy here.

Lastly, please don't mention Google Music. I know of it, full well, but it's not for me. It's lacking in at least a few ways.

I await your input, minions! :D
 
I've also been using WinAmp to sync music between the PC & Android phone via WiFi (or USB). The WinAmp Music Player program for the PC/Mac is nice (and free) and the WinAmp app for Android is my favorite music player app (and free). The WinAmp app has a great user interface and lots of cool features, like Internet radio (which I've been using more and more-- especially for comedy channels) LastFM scrobbling, playlist widgets, integration with Pandora, Google Play, YouTube, Google Search, lyrics plug-ins, etc.

However, I'm becoming a big fan of Google's free cloud-based music solution.
Here's how it works:
1) Download "Google Play Music". (It's free Android app).

2) Download "Google Play Music Manager". (It's a free PC/Mac program.)

3) Point Google Play Music Manager at the folder(s) on your PC/Mac that contain(s) your music files and it will copy those files to Google's cloud. You can upload 22,000 songs for free. (It might take a few days. Seriously. But it runs in the background so you can get other stuff done. No problem.) All 22,000 songs will be available to your phone via data streaming (or you can download copies for use offline).

4) From any web browser, go to Music.Google.com, (login using your Gmail account) and set up playlists (or just listen to your music through the web browser). Any playlists that you create/edit on the website will be instantly synced to your phone, and any playlists that you create/edit on your phone will be instantly synced to the web.

The music and playlists sync, stream, and/or download through any data connection, 3G, 4G, or WiFi.

If you want to download a particular playlist, album, artist, or song, for use offline (perhaps in an airplane or in the wilderness) you can just long-press it on the Play Music app, and select "make available offline".

You can probably have your entire music collection (~80GB) available, for free, from Google's cloud. Creating playlists on the web interface isn't as good as creating playlists on a PC program like WinAmp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player, but it's not bad.

I was going to buy a 32GB SD card so that I could have my entire music collection available on my phone. Now I don't need to. It's all on the cloud. (And Sprint has unlimited data.)
 
Thats a great way of going about it,but hears my problem i love my music and listen every chance i can my way of choice is thru bluetooth headphones(jaybirds). Between data 3g constantly in use and bluetooth my battery would be toast in no time.Why not use Mediamonkey to organize your collection then use one of these great players im currently using the N7 player,but have used or still have the following Playerpro,Poweramp,winamp,3^(cubed),MixZing.i just found the N7 player recently and truly love the sound i get from it,to me its superior in sound but lacks in the ui compared to the others.Any way everything i mentioned is free or has a free trial version including the Monkey all players can be found in the play store and here is a link for Monkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/
 
Music synced to your phone using WinAMP is playable using ANY music player for Android. Or you could just copy paste your music collection into your phone.
 
RazzMaTazz said:
[...]Google Music[...]
Click to expand...

RazzMaTazz, I'm very familiar with Google Music, but it has a few drawbacks.
1) No support for .cue files. This is important for me for dance music mixes. Many of them are (thankfully) broken down into individual track markings with a cuesheet.
2) No support for FLAC.. I'm pretty sure

justtom said:
Thats a great way of going about it,but hears my problem i love my music and listen every chance i can my way of choice is thru bluetooth headphones(jaybirds). Between data 3g constantly in use and bluetooth my battery would be toast in no time.Why not use Mediamonkey to organize your collection then use one of these great players im currently using the N7 player,but have used or still have the following Playerpro,Poweramp,winamp,3^(cubed),MixZing.i just found the N7 player recently and truly love the sound i get from it,to me its superior in sound but lacks in the ui compared to the others.Any way everything i mentioned is free or has a free trial version including the Monkey all players can be found in the play store and here is a link for Monkey MediaMonkey Information Free
Click to expand...

MediaMonkey - that's a great idea! I haven't used that app in a while, but it's the only one I liked (that wasn't Foobar2000). I'll get it going again. I suppose Winamp warrants a chance, too, but it does not have my beloved 'folder structure' view, which both Fb2k & MediaMonkey have. I hope there is a plugin to address this. Please let me know if it's possible to do this in Winamp.

If it's not clear what I'm referring to about, it's basically being able to view your music collection based on its root directory. You can then expand any directories as necessary. This approach is most important if you have some incomplete tags or a lot of individual artists (e.g. singles).
 
zeppelin101 said:
So far I've been using quite a primitive approach to playing back music on my phone. I've simply been uploading music folders (albums mostly) to the filesystem of my Galaxy Nexus (/sdcard/music). This is not that bad of an approach, but it has a few drawbacks.

For one, I cannot easily use playlists (made on PC). Secondly, I cannot really sync my music. Currently, I use this application called Andless (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.avs234) and it works quite well. It allows me to navigate the filesystem of my phone and select the directories manually. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's what I'm used to, since I use the Foobar2000 application on my Windows desktop.

I'm really not a huge fan of iTunes. But if iTunes played nice with Android, maybe I would even consider it.. In any case, would someone please advise on how to go about uploading music to my phone in such a way that I could create playlists on my desktop and have them end up on my phone as well? Vice versa would be very nice, too, but I'm not about to become greedy here.

Lastly, please don't mention Google Music. I know of it, full well, but it's not for me. It's lacking in at least a few ways.

I await your input, minions! :D
Click to expand...

I'm migrating from an iTouch for my entertainment needs, and I really like iSyncr and Rocket Player (same author, who's VERY responsive to feedback from users). Both work quite well for my needs.
 
Thread topic states 'Music streaming and syncing apps'....but it seems you have already decided against using ANY music streaming apps since they do use a bit more battery (3G/WiFi to access music). I personally use Audiogalaxy to stream my music from my PC over the internet to my phone. I don't notice any terribly hard drain on my battery using it. Audiogalaxy supports FLAC and all major audio formats, M3U playlists created on phone or computer, and allows you to stream your entire music collection regardless of size. Only downside is it is streaming directly from your computer at home so that computer must be on and internet connected while streaming.
 
Stupifier said:
Thread topic states 'Music streaming and syncing apps'....but it seems you have already decided against using ANY music streaming apps since they do use a bit more battery (3G/WiFi to access music). I personally use Audiogalaxy to stream my music from my PC over the internet to my phone. I don't notice any terribly hard drain on my battery using it. Audiogalaxy supports FLAC and all major audio formats, M3U playlists created on phone or computer, and allows you to stream your entire music collection regardless of size. Only downside is it is streaming directly from your computer at home so that computer must be on and internet connected while streaming.
Click to expand...

Hey, I entirely forgot to talk about the streaming of music bit. But what I did mean by that was streaming from PC to phone, without involving something like the Google Cloud. Therefore, that Audio Galaxy seems like a very neat app. I wish it worked over the LAN, instead of the internet, though. Oh well.
 
Yes, Audiogalaxy does not support streaming directly over LAN. If you're worried about your phone data usage....just connect your phone to your WiFi though. Your computer will still be outputing the music over the internet....but you won't be hogging up data on your phone's data plan by receiving the music.

Also, there is a 'High Quality' preference in Audiogalaxy to make sure the audio is not downsampled too far when streaming (for all the picky audiophiles).
 
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