Cross Platform Music App (Windows 10 and Android)

[Dragon Wood]

After 8 years of complaining and griping. I was finally able to get rid of my iPhone and get an Android phone again.

However, now I have a small dilemma. I have a 26k mp3 music collection that I have amassed over the years. ALL of it burned from the original CDs that I bought. NONE of it downloaded from other sources. I don't listen to the radio, or stream music from anywhere either.

I drive about 50k miles a year and listen to my music while doing so.

The ONLY thing I ever liked about Apple was iTunes (until they recently screwed that up too).

What I need is a music app/player that I can install on my computer and on my new Galaxy Note 8 that works similar to the way iTunes used to.

Specifically, I need an app that I can organize the music on my phone or my computer and sync it to the other without a lot of hassle.

I have read through several other forum posts about this and have noticed that a lot of people don't like Google Play Music. Several have suggested Samsung Music and PowerAmp but I don't want to have to pay for the app and it needs to work on my computer too, not just my phone.

Are there any other suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Rukbat]

I have a 26k mp3 music collection that I have amassed over the years. ALL of it burned from the original CDs that I bought. NONE of it downloaded from other sources.

1, That still doesn't make it legal. What you buy, when you pay for a CD, isn't the ownership of the music, but the right to play the CD and listen to the music that comes off it.

2. If the music on the CD is DRM-protected, just ripping it doesn't remove the protection.

What I need is a music app/player that I can install on my computer and on my new Galaxy Note 8 that works similar to the way iTunes used to.

Several have suggested Samsung Music and PowerAmp but I don't want to have to pay for the app and it needs to work on my computer too, not just my phone.

Are there any other suggestions?

Not really - there are no free apps that meet your requirements, you won't pay and you won't change your requirements. An immovable object has met an irresistible force. Change one of your requirements.

 

[anon(39328)]

My 9000 song music library is quite a bit smaller than yours, but I've been using Google Play Music since moving from iOS. It doesn't exactly do the same things that iTunes does, but it serves my needs. Plus, Google Play Music doesn't require me to install crappy software on my windows PC (iTunes), and it is free.

As a backup, I've also been using Onedrive to store my music library. This is not exactly a free option, but not a big deal for me since I get a terabyte of storage from my 365 subscription. If you go this route, you should be able to access your music library on pc or phone with the MS Groove app. Alternatively, you may be able to use other apps to access your onedrive music library. I know there are a few windows 10 apps that can do this, and there may be some for android too.

Of course, the most bare bones option of all would be to use windows explorer along with whatever free music apps you choose to use. While many liked the idea of using iTunes to manage and sync their music library, there are many others out there who just prefer to drag and drop via windows explorer and USB.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

Sammy's Music player - in Galaxy Apps Store - will search for music files on phone or SD drive. Can even use Samsung USB-C that comes in 64 or 128GB.

Amazon use to store music files butjust got email saying that will end of I don't reauthorize.

 

[comptechltd]

Try media monkey. It is cross platform and I like the way it works.

 

[anon(39328)]

Try media monkey. It is cross platform and I like the way it works.

Agreed. I forgot about that app. It's great.

 

[anon(1733)]

That's actually wrong. At least in the US. If you own the CD it is legal to rip the CD for your own personally use. Now if your downloading the CD for someone else to use or borrowing a CD to download for yourself that is illegal. But if you own the CD and burn it for yourself so you have a digital copy that's perfectly fine.

http://carterlawaz.com/2013/12/burning-cds-and-copyright-law/

https://www.lifewire.com/is-cd-ripping-legal-2438422

 

[Deke218]

1, That still doesn't make it legal. What you buy, when you pay for a CD, isn't the ownership of the music, but the right to play the CD and listen to the music that comes off it.

2. If the music on the CD is DRM-protected, just ripping it doesn't remove the protection.

Not really - there are no free apps that meet your requirements, you won't pay and you won't change your requirements. An immovable object has met an irresistible force. Change one of your requirements.

1. What? You buy a CD, it's yours to do with what you will. Burn it. Rip it.

Copy your cds to Windows Media player. Arrange them however you want. Hook up your Note to your computer. Drag and drop the music files on your SD card.

I use Power Amp but your can also upload your music to the free Google Play Music App and have play them on any platform.

 

[Trees]

iSyncr may be an option if you stay with iTunes on the PC.

 

[Super Dave426]

I use Google Play for my 20,000 songs, it's easy enough, install the uploader on the PC and it does the rest after you point it to the music folder. If you are headed to a no signal area you can pin the songs to the phone and it downloads them for you.

 

[jsigmo]

As diggity said, the most bare bones, and my personal favorite method is simply to organize my tunes, also legally ripped, for my personal use, from MY bought and paid for CDs, using windows explorer.

I then simply drag and drop the directories onto my phone via USB, and there I have things, neatly organized any way I want.

I'm using an app called "Folder Player" to play the music on my phone, and it works well for music organized this way.

I use the venerable CDEX to do the ripping, on a Windows PC, using the excellent LAME encoder, usually set to "alt preset extreme" to create the MP3s. I then run the MP3s through Replay Gain to set them so they don't clip internally, and they're good to go.

You would be surprised at how many (even commercially produced) MP3s have their replay gain metadata set wrong, such that they "clip" (experience hard limiting) in the digital workings during playback. Getting their replay gain setting right makes otherwise nasty, harsh-sounding clipped tracks sound good. Well, as good as an MP3 can sound, anyhow.

Not many people buy CDs anymore, but MP3s really are a compromise. I liken their popularity to the popularity that pre-recorded cassettes enjoyed years ago. Yes, they generally sounded poor, but most people didn't care, and preferred their convenience versus the relative hassle of playing LPs.

But when I buy a CD, I still like to be able to listen to it on the go, and WAV files or even FLACs can be quite large, so that's where the MP3s are nice.

I have never bought an MP3 version of anything. If I like it enough to buy it, I get the CD. I guess I'm a die hard dinosaur!

A coworker has an iPhone 10, and as I understand it there is seemingly no way for him to put HIS music on HIS phone. He has no choice but to re-purchase potentially low-quality MP3 versions, at least without jumping through some rather baroque hoops! iTunes is forced onto you as your only option on the iPhones. That seems criminal to me, but people make that choice, I guess.

At least with Android, it is possible to use your phone or tablet to listen to what you've bought and paid for already. I will say that I do have a lot of CDs of music I also own on LP, though. So I've re-bought my share of music over the years, too!

 

[Soreloser]

As a long time Android user, I used iSyncR along with iTunes to get my music on my Android phone.

Now, to correct some misinformation, you can add any of your personal music (at least you can if it is in MP3 format) to iTunes. Then you can create any play lists you want to, and then use iSyncR to put it on your Android phone.

Currently using an iPhone7+ so I KNOW you can do this.

 

[Dooki]

yes. isyncr with rocket player.

 

[jsigmo]

As a long time Android user, I used iSyncR along with iTunes to get my music on my Android phone.

Now, to correct some misinformation, you can add any of your personal music (at least you can if it is in MP3 format) to iTunes. Then you can create any play lists you want to, and then use iSyncR to put it on your Android phone.

Currently using an iPhone7+ so I KNOW you can do this.

We tried for several hours one evening to figure out how to do this, and all we could find were sketchy third-party apps that claimed to somehow cheat the iPhone X into accepting an MP3. They all seemed like they could be scams or spyware, so we didn't download any of them onto the PC we were on.

I'll have to look into this. Meanwhile, we've just decided that he simply needs to buy a small, cheap MP3 player so he can just connect it to a PC and copy the files over the way one would expect to be able to do it. The idea of being forced to use iTunes as the only way to play music, and then needing to use some additional apps, and jump through extra hoops seems clunky at best.

But we will look that up and see what you folks are talking about. But I'm glad I don't have to bother with any of that on android.

 

[Dooki]

it's not clunky. I use it specifically and have for years. any mods to your iTunes playlist are updated on your phone and vise versa, include meta data. works wirelessly and over USB.

As clunky as iTunes on Windows is I have found it to be the simplest and just efficient way to make and modify playlists. Nothing Android or Windows has is as good. I also am using an old version of iTunes, the newest sucks, it's like they try to make it worse every update.

 

[jsigmo]

it's not clunky. I use it specifically and have for years. any mods to your iTunes playlist are updated on your phone and vise versa, include meta data. works wirelessly and over USB.

As clunky as iTunes on Windows is I have found it to be the simplest and just efficient way to make and modify playlists. Nothing Android or Windows has is as good. I also am using an old version of iTunes, the newest sucks, it's like they try to make it worse every update.

I'll have to ask my friend with the Iphone X. He's used nothing but iTunes for a long time. So he's familiar with it. He can show me what it does. It probably is easy to use and does what most people want, or Apple would have changed it. Apple is good at making the user interface easy.

But like you say, as with any program, as people try to "improve" them, they often wreck some things as they set about to make "improvements". New programmers take over the project, and they don't have the same ideas about how they want things to work as the folks who worked on it before them, and the changes they make can be frustrating for anyone who was already used to, and comfortable with the old versions.

Still, when we talked about this today, he was eager to just buy an MP3 player for MP3s of his CDs. So even a die-hard Apple guy felt that the way I do things on my Android phone was more convenient when I showed him how fast and simple it was. He's got music from before MP3s existed that he'd like to be able to play without re-purchasing them as iTunes MP3s. I don't think he buys any new CDs, he just uses iTunes now.

But as he gets more into higher quality sound, he may find that he treasures the CDs he has, and may begin buying them again - if they haven't been completely discontinued by then!

We'll have to look into the suggestions you folks have made, too. Maybe there is an easy way for him to get his music onto his phone.

 

[Dooki]

I have thousands of CDs ripped through iTunes or Windows Media player that work or just fine, I just wished I had them backed up as FLAC before they all got stolen. back in the day when it was necessary to care about how much storage we were using.

I would love to but CDs now but holy crap are they expensive.

BTW, pay for the app, otherwise we don't get good apps. You are willing to spend thousands on the music but not five bucks on devs who spend a lot of time to write apps to make it easy to use?