Google Play won't play music on my SD card

jddubose

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I just downloaded my entire library from my computer to my micro SD card. After I inserted my SD card back into my phone, nothing changed. I still have my entire library saved on my internal storage, but I was going to delete it to make room. I've already gone to settings to try to make my storage location the SD card, but this area just stays grayed out. How can I make Play Music play the music on my SD card?

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B. Diddy

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Which device do you have? You might try going to Settings>Apps>All, select Google Play Music, and Clear Cache/Clear Data, then Force Stop. Now open it again, wait for it to sign into your account, and see if it notices the music on the SD card.

I believe SD support for Google Play Music is almost experimental on some devices, so it might not work that well for music that isn't downloaded directly using the Google Play Music app.
 

B. Diddy

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Clearing the cache and data from the Google Play Music app would only delete music files you downloaded using the Play Music app itself. It sounds like you actually downloaded those files on your computer, then transferred them to the SD card, and then inserted the SD card into the phone--so those files wouldn't be deleted. If the music files on your Internal Storage were also transferred there from somewher else, and not directly downloaded using the Play Music app, then they also won't be deleted.

The reason I suggest clearing the cache and data is that if the app starts with a clean slate, that might prompt it to include the SD card files this time.
 

jddubose

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Yes that's exactly what I did. Basically, I took my entire iTunes library and downloaded it on to my phone about a year ago. Since then, I have downloaded a few songs from Google Play but a majority of my songs have been downloaded from iTunes. So what you're saying is the music from iTunes won't be cleared, but my music from Google Play will be, should I choose to clear the cache and data? If it does delete all my Google Play songs, would you say it's relatively easy to re-download them again?

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B. Diddy

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You are correct. Any songs you downloaded directly on the Google Play Music app are still available in the cloud to re-download. Downloading music using Google Play Music is essentially a temporary solution for offline listening.
 

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