Amazon Music doesn't see my files

[metall0099]

Hello All,
I am a person who switch to galaxy a while a go and had a lot of stuff on iTunes. I transferred my songs to a SD card that is in my phone. I can see my song files in my file finder, but my Amazon Music app does't seem to see them all. It sees some of the files. I can see these in the Amazon Music app, but they are greyed out. I find this strange.I used to be able to open them through the file finder and was given the option to open with Amazon Music. Now, it does not give me that choice. I am trying to find a smooth way to store these files in a cloud incase I loose my phone. Also, I would like to play these songs without streaming. If anyone has any tips it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[B. Diddy]

What music format are they in? If it's AAC (the proprietary iTunes format), the phone probably doesn't support them. You'd have to convert them to a compatible format, like mp3.

 

[metall0099]

B. Diddy,

Almost all of the are in the format .m4a

 

[B. Diddy]

m4a can be AAC. In general, those aren't compatible with Android devices. A fairly easy way to get them onto your phone is to use Google's Music Manager to upload your entire iTunes library to your Google Music library in the cloud: https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/1075570?hl=en. This is able to upload m4a/aac files to the cloud, which you can then stream on any device through Google Music. If you download the music files again to your computer, they download as mp3.

See here about m4a/AAC: Difference Between AAC and M4A | Difference Between

 

[metall0099]

B. Diddy,

Do you know which format is the best to use on an android device? And a good software to convert it? I may just do it by connecting the SD card in my galaxy to my Mac and do it that way.

Thanks,
Metall0099

 

[B. Diddy]

Unless you're a total audiophile, mp3 is fine, and is the most widely used. There are music aficionados who swear by FLAC (which is a lossless format), but if you have iTunes AAC files, they're not lossless, so it wouldn't make any sense to convert to that format.

I'm not familiar with mp3 conversion software these days. I think I dabbled with it about 6-7 years ago, but these days it's all online. If you don't have any philosophical objections to it, I'd still recommend uploading your iTunes library to Google Play Music, since (a) it keeps your music safe in the cloud, (b) you can access it from any device, (c) you can still download it to your device for local offline playback, and (d) this process essentially converts your music to mp3. The one caveat is that if you use the Google Play Music app to download a music track to the phone, the track can only be played by the Play Music app -- you can't manipulate that file on the phone. In order to get an mp3 file that you can move between devices, you'd have to download it using your desktop browser (from your Play Music library website).

 

[metall0099]

B. Diddy,

I was about to load all my songs to my Mac and try the conversion to MP3. But I played around before I did and made a breakthrough. What I did was I deleted the Amazon music app and manually deleted the storage file on my SD card (path: SD/Android/data/com.Amazon.mp3). I have my audio file in another location on that SD card. I restarted the phone and reinstalled Amazon music. It asked me for permission to the drive again and when I browsed the offline music I could see and play every song that I have on my SD card. They are still in the .m4a format. I think something got messed up with the permissions. I am still and amateur at this, but I really appreciate your help!

 

[B. Diddy]

Great! That's interesting, I've never had luck playing iTunes music tracks on Android devices, but it's been a long time since I tried. Sorry for the inaccurate info!

 

[metall0099]

Don't worry about it. I appreciate the assistance in the first place. I don't think that I would have put that much effort in without help.