Best Way to Access Music stored on my Phone's SD Card with Android Auto?

[DLCPhototography]

I have a 2016 Hyundai Sonata, and Android Auto is working great overall with my Verizon Galaxy Note 3 (Stock).

Most of the music on my phone originates in purchased CD's, which I have ripped myself, and stored on the External SD card of the Note 3. I can hit Voice Command, tell it to play any given song, and it finds it and plays it fine, using the Google Music App within Android Auto.

But if I just open the Google Music App, there seems to be no way to simply browse through the various albums and songs, in order to choose one to play.

What is the easiest way to gain this functionality? I simply want to browse the music stored on my phone's SD card, and choose what to play. And I also don't want to just stream the music, and use up my Data Plan, and since I already have my music locally, this shouldn't be necessary.

If I were to upload all of my music to Google Music, in order for the Google Music App to "see" my music, I would then have to download it back again from Google, to avoid data streaming. This seems pretty cumbersome and inefficient, and I'mm not even sure it would work.

Any suggestions on the easiest way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

Thanks in advance.

Don

 

[kalnel#WN]

I finally gave up trying to figure that out and uploaded music to the Sonata's hard drive. That makes it accessible when I'm running AA or if I'm just using the onboard nagivation (or nothing).

I think there's a way to get Google Play to play only music on the device, but I haven't figured it out yet.

 

[DLCPhototography]

I finally gave up trying to figure that out and uploaded music to the Sonata's hard drive. That makes it accessible when I'm running AA or if I'm just using the onboard nagivation (or nothing).

I think there's a way to get Google Play to play only music on the device, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Thanks for the quick reply - that is an intriguing option. I vaguely recall the Sonata having some storage capacity, but it really didn't get my attention.

I can look it up, but if you don't mind - how is the done, and how good is the User Interface to browse the music?

Thanks!

Don

 

[ireknole]

Unfortunately, I went with your second option of uploading to Google play and downloading to my phone. It took all weekend on wifi to download my 5000+ songs to my phone.

Keep in mind that Google does a "music match" to all of your songs, so when you upload them it will use the song on their servers instead of what you uploaded. I'm not sure if there is a way to turn that off, but you can check "incorrect match" on songs while in the desktop app and it will use what you uploaded instead. That usually won't matter to most people, but I had a song in my library ("Arabian Nights" from Aladdin) that had a lyrical change and Google used their new version instead of my original version which bothered me.

You can check "stream only on wifi" or "download only" for it to just play music downloaded from google music on your SD card. You do seem to lose the cool "radio" feature when doing that though, where it will keep playing songs within that musical genre after you request a certain song to play. With download mode on, it just plays the one song and stops.

I haven't yet figured out if you download the music to your SD card and then play the songs without the options above checked, if it uses the download file or streams it.

There is a local music player called "MD player" that is android auto compatible, but it's not very intuitive and I didn't find it to be very good for anything other than shuffling all music.

 

[ireknole]

I finally gave up trying to figure that out and uploaded music to the Sonata's hard drive. That makes it accessible when I'm running AA or if I'm just using the onboard nagivation (or nothing).

I think there's a way to get Google Play to play only music on the device, but I haven't figured it out yet.

How do you upload music to the hard drive? Also, isn't the storage space pretty small? Can you expand it?

 

[DLCPhototography]

Unfortunately, I went with your second option of uploading to Google play and downloading to my phone. It took all weekend on wifi to download my 5000+ songs to my phone.

Keep in mind that Google does a "music match" to all of your songs, so when you upload them it will use the song on their servers instead of what you uploaded. I'm not sure if there is a way to turn that off, but you can check "incorrect match" on songs while in the desktop app and it will use what you uploaded instead. That usually won't matter to most people, but I had a song in my library ("Arabian Nights" from Aladdin) that had a lyrical change and Google used their new version instead of my original version which bothered me.

You can check "stream only on wifi" or "download only" for it to just play music downloaded from google music on your SD card. You do seem to loose the cool "radio" feature when doing that though, where it will keep playing songs within that musical genre after you request a certain song to play. With download mode on, it just plays the one song and stops.

I haven't yet figured out if you download the music to your SD card and then play the songs without the options above checked, if it uses the download file or streams it.

There is a local music player called "MD player" that is android auto compatible, but it's not very intuitive and I didn't find it to be very good for anything other than shuffling all music.

Now that you have done that, when you go to access your downloaded files via the Google Music App on AA, how good is the user interface? Can you browse through your music, or only play pre-existing 'playlists'?

 

[ireknole]

Now that you have done that, when you go to access your downloaded files via the Google Music App on AA, how good is the user interface? Can you browse through your music, or only play pre-existing 'playlists'?

There is no general "my library" button to access your songs.

The "music for driving" is empty unless you have all access. It shows Google's own mood playlists.

The "recent activity" shows whatever your last played was, like a song radio or playlist, and goes down till 6 taps on the scroll bar.

The "playlists" shows the most recently played playlists first and then goes into your own custom playlists. You also only have 6 taps on the scroll bar for that.

"Play Queue" is just your current play queue.

You can say "play music" and it will start playing songs from your library. I'm not sure if it shuffles all of them or just a certain number of songs.

It seems that Google really designed this as a set it and leave it alone interface. So you can't browse your whole library or browse by artist or album. You can voice search artist, album or playlist, but the results are questionable especially if there is more than one choice, like a self titled album. It doesn't seem to understand the keywords "playlist", "artist" or "album" either so you just have to keep saying it and hope that it comes back with what you want.

 

[DLCPhototography]

There is no general "my library" button to access your songs. //images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/11/02/cbf28767a32486c54b459ad6c247ba0a.jpg

The "music for driving" is empty unless you have all access.

The "recent activity" shows whatever your last played was, like a song radio or playlist, and goes down till 6 taps on the scroll bar.

The "playlists" shows the most recently played playlists first and then goes into your own custom playlists. You also only have 6 taps on the scroll bar for that.

"Play Queue" is just your current play queue.

You can say "play music" and it will start playing songs from your library. I'm not sure if it shuffles all of them or just a certain number of songs.

It seems that Google really designed this as a set it and leave it alone interface. So you can't browse your whole library or browse by artist or album. You can voice search artist, album or playlist, but the results are questionable especially if there is more than one choice, like a self titled album. It doesn't seem to understand the keywords "playlist", "artist" or "album" either so you just have to keep saying it and hope that it comes back with what you want.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Basically, it seems I would gain nothing by uploading my music to Google, since I already have them downloaded on my phone's SD card, and I still couldn't browse what's there. That saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

I can't find the specs on how much storage is on the Sonata's hard drive, but I'm copying my music to a USB stick, and will see what options I'm given by the system. Will post back after.

 

[ireknole]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Basically, it seems I would gain nothing by uploading my music to Google, since I already have them downloaded on my phone's SD card, and I still couldn't browse what's there. That saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

I can't find the specs on how much storage is on the Sonata's hard drive, but I'm copying my music to a USB stick, and will see what options I'm given by the system. Will post back after.

This is what my car says:

It looks like 5gb, but I still don't know to get it on there.

Putting music on a usb would be a good solution, but then you can't use android auto at the same time.

Another (not feasible unless your contract is up and want to jump ship) solution is to get a ::cringe:: iPhone since carplay does let you browse all your music.

 

[DLCPhototography]

This is what my car says:

//images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/11/02/5e0652ddcb0717ea3fd688d9c4c2081a.jpg

It looks like 5gb, but I still don't know to get it on there.

Putting music on a usb would be a good solution, but then you can't use android auto at the same time.

Another (not feasible unless your contract is up and want to jump ship) solution is to get a ::cringe:: iPhone since carplay does let you browse all your music.

That would work for me. I don't have a huge store of music, and the USB stick I just copied to shows around 3gb. Will head out there shortly to see what I can do.

iPhone???

 

[ireknole]

That would work for me. I don't have a huge store of music, and the USB stick I just copied to shows around 3gb. Will head out there shortly to see what I can do.

iPhone???

Ha ha I know, I know, bad idea. Let us know how that works out!

 

[DLCPhototography]

Ha ha I know, I know, bad idea. Let us know how that works out!

Well, the Sonata recognized my USB Stick, and I was able to browse folders, albums, etc., and play anything readily.

The bad news is that the 'copy to my music' option only comes up when you're playing an individual song. In other words, thus far I've not seen any way to copy an individual album, let alone an entire card's worth of albums. So that's pretty much useless.

I even tried a portable USB Hub that I have, thinking I could leave the USB Stick in there, and still be able to connect my phone for AA. No luck - the hub showed it was active, receiving power from the connection, but it wouldn't recognize the USB stick plugged into it. This is a fairly new USB 3.0 hub that I've used with a Microsoft Surface. Maybe I'll try an older USB 2.0 one and see if there's any joy.

Disappointing that there's at least 3gb of storage available, but no efficient way yet that I've found to utilize it. Will keep digging...I love a challenge...I think...

 

[ireknole]

Well, the Sonata recognized my USB Stick, and I was able to browse folders, albums, etc., and play anything readily.

The bad news is that the 'copy to my music' option only comes up when you're playing an individual song. In other words, thus far I've not seen any way to copy an individual album, let alone an entire card's worth of albums. So that's pretty much useless.

I even tried a portable USB Hub that I have, thinking I could leave the USB Stick in there, and still be able to connect my phone for AA. No luck - the hub showed it was active, receiving power from the connection, but it wouldn't recognize the USB stick plugged into it. This is a fairly new USB 3.0 hub that I've used with a Microsoft Surface. Maybe I'll try an older USB 2.0 one and see if there's any joy.

Disappointing that there's at least 3gb of storage available, but no efficient way yet that I've found to utilize it. Will keep digging...I love a challenge...I think...

Hmm... Interesting. I'm not sure if the usb port would output enough power to power two devices. Right now it seems to have trouble just powering the phone on its own. I use a usb y cable for android auto with my note 4. Otherwise, I lose charge.

 

[DLCPhototography]

Hmm... Interesting. I'm not sure if the usb port would output enough power to power two devices. Right now it seems to have trouble just powering the phone on its own. I use a usb y cable for android auto with my note 4. Otherwise, I lose charge.

Probably so. But regardless, even with an older USB 2.0 hub, it wouldn't recognize the USB stick on its own, as a media device, so this option is going nowhere.

Now to look for any other way to get files en bulk to the internal storage...

 

[DLCPhototography]

Well, there seems to be no way to transfer files to the internal storage, other than 1 song at a time. Not practical.

I tried a couple of other things:

MD Player - this worked reasonably well, but the main problem is, I think, an Android Auto limitation. When I open the App in Android Auto, it will show the various folders containing my music. But it only shows the first 12 or so, with no apparent way to access the others. The top folder includes all music, but it's completely disorganized within it, so no way to find and play a specific folder.

Beyond Pod - I use this very successfully for listening to podcasts, and it's app works quite well within Android. I found a way to treat the music folder on my SD card as a "Virtual" podcast feed, and within the Beyond Pod app on my phone, all subfolders show up, and this works quite well. But the implementation within Android Auto is lacking for this, as the sub-folders don't show up, and once again, Android Auto will only allow a limited list of items that can be scrolled. I will contact the authors of Beyond Pod, as I had high hopes for this solution, to see if there's anything they can do to improve the situation, but I'm afraid they'll say their hands are tied by Android Auto limitations (and they'll probably be right).

So for now, I'll either have to just use the USB Stick when I don't need my phone plugged in, or access the Music by Voice Command when I do.

If anybody has any more elegant solution options, I'm all ears!

 

[ireknole]

Well, there seems to be no way to transfer files to the internal storage, other than 1 song at a time. Not practical.

I tried a couple of other things:

MD Player - this worked reasonably well, but the main problem is, I think, an Android Auto limitation. When I open the App in Android Auto, it will show the various folders containing my music. But it only shows the first 12 or so, with no apparent way to access the others. The top folder includes all music, but it's completely disorganized within it, so no way to find and play a specific folder.

Beyond Pod - I use this very successfully for listening to podcasts, and it's app works quite well within Android. I found a way to treat the music folder on my SD card as a "Virtual" podcast feed, and within the Beyond Pod app on my phone, all subfolders show up, and this works quite well. But the implementation within Android Auto is lacking for this, as the sub-folders don't show up, and once again, Android Auto will only allow a limited list of items that can be scrolled. I will contact the authors of Beyond Pod, as I had high hopes for this solution, to see if there's anything they can do to improve the situation, but I'm afraid they'll say their hands are tied by Android Auto limitations (and they'll probably be right).

So for now, I'll either have to just use the USB Stick when I don't need my phone plugged in, or access the Music by Voice Command when I do.

If anybody has any more elegant solution options, I'm all ears!

I think a usb is the only way to access your entire music library via touchscreen. Google put the 6 step limit in there to avoid distracted driving, but I feel like sometimes incorrect voice actions cause just as much distraction.

Hopefully Google voice commands will work better as more people get android auto, but for now it feels like a beta test that only a few people have. Google doesn't seem to be listening to feedback or at least not acting on it since I've put in multiple feedback requests and there haven't been any app updates.

 

[Victor Howard]

I think the way forward is to send your feedback to google about improving the interface.
I tried messing around with playlists to fake-browse, but AA only queues up 20 songs at a time, so it's a non-solution.

 

[DLCPhototography]

I think the way forward is to send your feedback to google about improving the interface.
I tried messing around with playlists to fake-browse, but AA only queues up 20 songs at a time, so it's a non-solution.

I wish I had more confidence that Google pays attention to any user feedback. Case in point - many people, including myself, have been complaining to Google for years to have them provide a way to disable 'Conversation Mode' in the Android Gmail App. This has fallen on deaf ears. Giving the user a simple choice here seems like a no-brainer.

As it pertains to Android Auto, where there are potential safety and legal issues at stake, I think the chance that user input will lead to change or improvement is considerably less than with the gmail issue.

I wish I could be less cynical, but this seems more and more like a realistic assessment of how things work too much of the time. As much as I enjoy and utilize the whole Google 'ecosystem,' I've long felt that they were pretty monolithic, and unresponsive in terms of user input and response.

I thought about using the playlists as a work-around, so appreciate your saving me some time in discovering it wouldn't work.

But I do appreciate your input.