• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Playlists Keep Disappearing

C

Carbo2

Lurker
Running ICS 4.0.4 on Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, (T-Mobile).
Three times now, I have gone into Music Player only to discover that my playlists, (five of them), have all disappeared. The playlists are still there, but the files have all been deleted. It seems to happen when I power off the phone and then restart it later on, although not every time. :confused:
Is this a known bug or am I the lucky one?
Thank you for any input.
 
First off welcome to the forums Carbo2.

If you are using Google Music to keep your devices synced, especially on the cloud...and have not yet used the "Keep on Device" feature, theoretically every time you lose internet you could potentially lose these playlists.

To keep them on the device, launch Google Music on your device click the drop down arrow on the Playlist you want to keep and choose "Keep on Device"


Sorry if this isn't the issue, please get back to me about it with a little more information! :D
 
DC, I appreciate the quick reply. Thank you!
Now, bear with my ignorance of all things technological while I try to explain further.
I'm not using the Google Play Music app. I prefer Music Player and that's the app that I'm having issues with. From what I see there is no option for storing playlists on the device.
 
I'm having the same issue. I'm so annoyedwith thiss. I have created playlists over and over again and they keep getting deleted. And most of the time it's only some of the songs that disappear. I also you the standard music player. Did you ever find a solution for this problem? Does anyone know a solution?
 
There is a solution .. go to your carrier and demand an Iphone or new product.

I am livid .. my play lists keep "disappearing" using both Google and the regular music app. Name of playlists stays but content disappears. I assume that if Android Google could care less if this bug ever gets fixed, it is time to get rid of the android phone. My wife needs a new phone. Last night I told her to by an Iphone.
 
Maybe part of the solution is to tell the Apple folks at the Apple store in Chicago that the bug exists. If they tell enough individuals who come into the Apple store to compare phones, the word might get back to the individuals selling Androids that they are losing business because Android/Google could care less about the quality of the music apps. This bug has been on the web discussion boards for a long time. Obviously, no one listens, or if they listen, they could care less.
 
[Qdon't thi=FrankPatton;5576899]There is anew lution .. go to your carrier and demand an Iphone or new product.

I am livid .. my play lists keep "disappearing" using both Google and the regular music app. Name of playlists stays but content disappears. I assume that if Android Google could care less if this bug ever gets fixed, it is time to get rid of the android phone. My wife needs a new phone. Last night I told her to by an Iphone.[/QUOTE]

I dont think that would work. Demanding a new phone? I like this phone kinda better than iPhone. Iphone is so dull and uncustomizable. Would an HTC phone be better?
 
As far as i can tell this becomes an issue as you transfer music from internal memory to an external sd card. The sd card must be scannned everytime the phone is restarted. So the playlist disappears. You have two options, move the music to internal memory or go on your computer and add the files to its own album. So your not actually playing a playlist but its own "cd". You do this by moving all songs to a folder highlighting all of them adf editing options. You then enter a new album name. The only problem you may encounter now is multiples of song under artists.
 
This is what I discovered last night (no solution, mind you, just another piece to the puzzle, I think).

I am experiencing the same problem on my Toshiba Thrive running Android 4.0.1. I have created playlists using Android Music app, Rocket Player app, Media Player app, Mork and a few others, all of which get deleted...not the playlist (as another poster mentioned) but the songs IN the playlist are no longer there).

OK so, I also have a Craig Netbook running an older version of Android. (2.2 I think). I had the same problem with that OS too. Anyhow, the WiFi on my Craig Netbook broke back in November 2012 so I can't connect to the internet with it anymore. But all of it's playlists (which I created before November, 2012 just before the wifi went) are still intact. I didn't make the connection until last night...that the songs in the playlists could be getting wiped from something we are connecting to online since, as I said before, this device can no longer connect to the internet and all of it's playlists and songs remain intact.
And, what further pisses me off (as one poster also mentioned) is not only the time it takes to create these playlists but that we can't locate the playlist file as a tangible file that we can save and restore when this occurs. This question has also been asked on the forums with no answer as yet.
 
I have rolled back Google Play Music updates and then disabled it. My play lists came back.

Hope this is helpful. Seems like google wants you to use there service even if your not in the US and is punishing everyone by only allowing online play lists and deleting content on your device
 
you actually have to re enable google play to get your phone to scan for media changes after you have put every thing onto it .. so you are stuck with it.

I am having a problem with it reading a m3u playlist now. windows media play syncing and pla play lists seem to work fine..
 
I FOUND A SOLUTION
i have the exact same problem with my samsung galaxy 3s. the playlists content disapears all the time.
what helped on my phone was to make a backup on your pc, from the phones and SD-cards memory, then format your phone (both phone card) PROBLEM FIXED. I know it takes some time to restore everything, i recommend that you install "backup and restore" and "playlist backup" on your phone and make a backup on your apps and playlist. good luck

PS. install only the apps that you need (it could be an app that did made the bug)
PPS. if you can use another music player than the default one, that could also prevent the bug, i am using "Now Playing"
 
I've had this problem every since upgrading to a Samsung Galaxy S3 back in June. Never had the problem on my old HTC Desire S. I think it's a problem with the version of Android as I have tried a number of different music apps off the Play store as well as the stock samsung player and get the same problem in all of them. Fed up of it now and don't bother with playlists.
 
Have the same issue with ICS. One solution is to use Poweramp music player which does not rely on the Android music library. When I use other players, this is an annoying and recurring problem.
 
This is how I got it to work. I left all my music on my SD card still. I made the play list and when I was finished I press the little thumb tact to "download" the playlist. I have rebooted my phone several times and this appears to have worked for me. I hope this works for someone else as well.
 
I've noticed my playlists keep disappearing as well... when i power down my phone ( come to think of it i gotta build my playlists again) and i think it has something to do with my music being save to an sd card not my phone since the card is not phone storage it must read it separate and thus takes longer so when it boots up the app (being on phone storage) can't read the music files, making it think that there are none
 
For the situation in which...

a. your Android phone deletes/removes playlists after restarting/rebooting AND
b. your music files are located on your external sdcard.

A solution that worked for me (AT&T LG Optimus G running Jelly Bean 4.1.2)...

1. download and install an app called Playlist Backup.
2. in the settings under "File Extension," change "txt" to "m3u" (the default, "txt," isn't recognized by Android as a playlist).
3. in the settings under "Backup Directory", create and specify a new folder on your external sdcard (I had problems when putting the playlists in the same directory as my music).
4. create playlists in your music app as usual
5. in Playlist Backup, tap "System Playlists"
6. select the playlists you would like to backup and tap "Backup Selected"

Now when you reboot your phone, your playlists should be there.
 
Ok came across this forum when this problem hit me yesterday using iptv on my phone, and found a solution, just change, .m3u to, .m3U8.Also keep a backup, .txt of your playlist just in case and you can make m3u8 from that.let me know if this work,thanks.
 
Carbo2 said:
Running ICS 4.0.4 on Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, (T-Mobile).
Three times now, I have gone into Music Player only to discover that my playlists, (five of them), have all disappeared. The playlists are still there, but the files have all been deleted. It seems to happen when I power off the phone and then restart it later on, although not every time. :confused:
Is this a known bug or am I the lucky one?
Thank you for any input.
Click to expand...
I have come across just the same problem on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 a month ago (after a year of use). The reason is that mounting/unmounting the SD card started to mess up the stock player playlists, although it had been all right before. Anyway, switching to Poweramp helped. To test the premise, I created a playlist there and another one in the stock player. Then I restarted the phone. Both playlists were ok. Then I unmounted/remounted the SD card. The songs from the stock player playlist disappeared, but the songs from the Poweramp player remained intact. Thus I consider the issue solved, since I'm not too interested in serious programming, neither do I want to spend another 15 bucks on a new SD card with all the synchonization.
 
Dimitry, be aware that your playlists are held within the Poweramp database. They are still vulnerable and you could lose them. Once you unmount your sdcard, the android media scanner will rescan and will of course not find yhe music on your sdcard. It updates its database accordingly, hence you lose your playlists. Poweramp may act the same and rescan. The only way of securing them, independent from any music player, is to export as .m3u. Use app such as recommended in this thread or New Playlist Manager which has a lot more functionality.
 
Thanks, I'm aware of that. Backing it up on my desktop as .m3u was the first thing I did. However, the conditions that caused the regular player playlists to disappear don't have any effect on Poweramp playlists (I have been using it for some time now), so I don't see a real cause for concern.
 
It's not the SD card. Is it something about updates?

My wife and I both lost playlists in the last two days. Her tablet doesn't have an SD, so that isn't it. We both took updates around that time, so I suspect it is something about updates.

Neither of us have cloud accounts.

I am on Android 5.1, she is on 2.2, so this is really widespread.
 
waynefi said:
It's not the SD card. Is it something about updates?

My wife and I both lost playlists in the last two days. Her tablet doesn't have an SD, so that isn't it. We both took updates around that time, so I suspect it is something about updates.

Neither of us have cloud accounts.

I am on Android 5.1, she is on 2.2, so this is really widespread.
Click to expand...
It's my understanding that ppl are supposed to clear caches & "factory reset" after an update
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom