Moving Google Play Music from internal storage to SD card

DennisOS2

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The 64gb card arrived Tuesday. Popped it in the SD slot, hand-set immediately saw it as an unsupported drive (needing formatting). I Formatted with the phone (took seconds) and had ~59gigs of space. Made a ton of directories with the file manager for future file storage. Plugged the hand-set into my PC. Used Explorer to copy entire folders (~25gb) from the PC to the appropriate sub-folder on the SD card. Once done disconnected the phone from the PC. Started the Play Music app and it immediately found the files in the SD card. And these are all AAC (m4p) format. Haven't played all of the albums yet but sampled 2 or3 and they played just fine.

Also copied an eBook in MP3 format (~220mb). That also played flawlessly from the SD card using Play Music.
 

surebuttercringe

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Playing music from an SD card is not the issue. It's when music is purchased on the Google Play store via the phone or internet it goes into the phone's storage and not the SD card.
 

DennisOS2

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Playing music from an SD card is not the issue. It's when music is purchased on the Google Play store via the phone or internet it goes into the phone's storage and not the SD card.
Once purchased and dL'ed you can't move it to the SD card? Or purchase on your DT/LT/NB/T then move to the SD card? Man, doesn't that impossible.


Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Android Central Forums
 

surebuttercringe

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Once purchased, you can download it from Google Play internet and put it on a computer. Then you can can transfer it to the SD card. It's not that it's all that hard to do, it's just a pain in the butt and sucks because it can't be done from the phone itself.
 

JOEY NEAT

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I figured out a sort of simple way, like surebuttercringe said download it to your computer from Google Play. I then uploaded to Dropbox, then exported to my external SD card music folder. A little cumbersome but simple enough!
 

kmbear

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/storage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.google.android.music/files/music

Reallly wish I could create a link to a folder on my external sdcard so that Play Music would still see the music files.
 

DennisOS2

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/storage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.google.android.music/files/music

Reallly wish I could create a link to a folder on my external sdcard so that Play Music would still see the music files.

Its interesting. The first time I loaded the SD card with music and books (on tape) I swear Play Music automatically read all related files on the card the first time I opened Play Music. Played all kinds of music and one book for weeks. Then after a series of events Play Music wouldn't read off the card. Hasn't since.

Sent from my HP Touchpad w/CM9 Tenderloin
 

ier80899

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So I'm taking people's advice in NOT downloading Google Play Music anymore... I cannot find my other downloaded music from the app... and then when using other apps (i.e. TuneWiki or Winamp), I cannot get to the music I just paid Google for.

BUTTTTTT... here's a work-around.
1. Via a computer attached to the phone, find the files at \Android\data\com.google.android.music.files.music. I found all of my songs with the file names of ###..mp3
2. Copy the files over to a directory used by the other app... I moved it over to the Music folder.
3. Rename the files - as well as right-clicking the file name, click Properties, Summary and changing the song's properties.
4. Open a file manager app, find the file, open using your mp3 player app (i.e. not Google Player).
5. I added each song to the Playlist I created for "Google Download" - but STILL couldn't see the songs in the new playlist. But when I went to the playlist called "recently added songs", I could THEN see the songs. So I played the songs from the "recently added songs" playlist, and then added the songs to the "google download" playlist, and it worked.

I'm sure this ALL depends on your phone, O/S, configuration, etc. I am on a Droid 4, ICS, and used the TuneWiki app.

Bottom line, I've only resorted to this step for the songs I had recently purchased from Google Play... moving forward, I won't need to use this work-around as I'll try Amazon music.
 

Karl Morteo

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I can't get this to work on my Note. So frustrating...... Ahhhhh

#GooglePlayMusic is a BIG #fail for me until they enable caching to the external SD card on their Android App. #GooglePlayMusicNeedsCache2externalSDcard
 

kprezz527

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Hey everyone, I finally FIGURED IT OUT! It took me at least an hour to figure out how to get your stupid Google Play music onto your SD card. Here's how:

All phones are different, so you may have to follow these instructions a little differently. My instructions are based off my phone, which is a Motorola Atrix 2.


~ First off, you'll need to go to your Menu and find your files. On most Androids, it's listed as 'My Files'.
~ Next, you'll need to access your SD Card from your file manager.
~ Google Play saves the songs to your 'Android' folder. Find that and click on it
~ From the Android folder, find your 'Data' folder
~ Now here's the tricky part. You'll need to scroll through your data until you find something like 'com.google.android.apps.music' When you find it, click on it.
~ It should give you two options here. Cache and files. Google Play saves all of your music as MP3s under the files folder. Click on that and then find the music folder.
~ There's all of your music you purchased from Google. My advice is to select all of them and then long press to copy them.
~ Next, back up until you get back to your SD card folders (from step 2). Either create a new folder titled 'Music' or put the music into another existing folder. It'll be much easier to find this way and you can set it as your ringtone if you paste the music into your ringtone folder.


It's a pain, but at least I figured out how to do this through your phone instead of going through the computer. :D
 

SLeepdepD

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Oct 31, 2011
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When you download new tracks won't it just put them in internal storage again?

I've started side-loading tracks on my SD card. As long as the track is in Google Music too, it'll see it on the card and let you play it

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 

jimbl

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It's sad that all this is necessary. Google Play Music should have an option in the settings to store cached music on the SD card.

The 16gb Galaxy S4 ships with about 9gb of usable space. How can that kind of device be sold in the millions but Google not allow us to easily store offline music somewhere other than the internal storage?
 

Roy Pemberton

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Amazon cloud download is no better - I'm having exactly the same problem with downloading from it for offline playing. You can't change the destination - it only saves on internal storage. Those who suggest copying or moving within My Files - it doesn't work. I've already done exactly that. At best it copies the music but when you try to play the resultant files it says this type of file cannot be played, but worse still, after doing that with one album, when you do a second album, all the files simply disappear - into that black hole others have referred to. What on earth is going on?
I'm sure you can do it via computer, as others suggest (not tried it yet?) but as others have said, how riduculously cumbersome - you have them on the phone, yet can't move them to a card with adequate space to have a reasonable library? Ludicrous! Defeats the whole object of the cloud.
 
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Darius Wagner

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Aug 17, 2013
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The only way I been able to move mp3 to my sd is to save all my things to the back up assistant then sync it all back to the phone and it will store to your sd
 

Chris M10

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Its going to be in Android, data, com.Google.android.music, files, music.
Look around a bit, it might be in a slightly different place based on your phone/tablet.
 

deetown89

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Mar 9, 2015
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Hey everyone, I finally FIGURED IT OUT! It took me at least an hour to figure out how to get your stupid Google Play music onto your SD card. Here's how:

All phones are different, so you may have to follow these instructions a little differently. My instructions are based off my phone, which is a Motorola Atrix 2.


~ First off, you'll need to go to your Menu and find your files. On most Androids, it's listed as 'My Files'.
~ Next, you'll need to access your SD Card from your file manager.
~ Google Play saves the songs to your 'Android' folder. Find that and click on it
~ From the Android folder, find your 'Data' folder
~ Now here's the tricky part. You'll need to scroll through your data until you find something like 'com.google.android.apps.music' When you find it, click on it.
~ It should give you two options here. Cache and files. Google Play saves all of your music as MP3s under the files folder. Click on that and then find the music folder.
~ There's all of your music you purchased from Google. My advice is to select all of them and then long press to copy them.
~ Next, back up until you get back to your SD card folders (from step 2). Either create a new folder titled 'Music' or put the music into another existing folder. It'll be much easier to find this way and you can set it as your ringtone if you paste the music into your ringtone folder.


It's a pain, but at least I figured out how to do this through your phone instead of going through the computer. :D
 

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