Help with Music

[Jwilock]

As you will be able to see I'm a beginner at this. After reading literally a dozen or more posts about how to place music from my PC onto my Tab Pro I'm still confused. But it's the simple of things that no one seems to cover. I know how to install the micro SD card, and how to connect my tablet, or a SD card reader to my computer and I know how to copy files. But here are the things that I haven't been able to find answered anywhere:

- My micro SD card came formatted and has a file called Android on it and one called LOST.DIR. At least it appears those came on it since when I first connected the card to my computer I see those files. Oops, I should clarify I put it in my tablet and then connected that to my PC. So am I supposed to see those two files? What are they for? Am I supposed to use them in any way when moving over music (or pictures for that matter).
- What no one has said in the dozen or more posts I've read is where I am supposed to put my music files. Currently inside of my Music folder on my pc I have lots of album folders. Inside each of those are all the songs from those albums. So, do I copy each album to a separate folder on the micro SD card? Do I copy the entire Music folder over? If the latter I assume that if I do a copy past of Music it would create the Music folder because I don't know how to create files in Android. Or, do I copy all of this music to the file that's already there called ANDROID? Is that clear?
- Whether I copy over my whole Music folder to a folder on the micro SD named Music, or just copy individual albums over to individual folders, how do I let my Music Player know where the albums are stored, or will it find them "automatically" somehow?
- If I decide to install a music player other than the stock one that came on my Tab Pro (recommendations anyone) how will it know where the music is?

To summarize, I know how to install the micro SD card into my tablet, how to connect my tablet to my PC, how to copy files, or do a synch using Windows Media Player. What I don't understand is what kind of "folder structure" I'm supposed to use and how the players know how to find the music. Even the way I explained my problem might not be exactly clear, but I hope someone understands this and can help me. Thanks.

 

[brosko]

The lost folder is normal, it is something the os puts on the card for fragmentdd files or something like that. Android folder too. Do not copy anything to these folders just leave them alone.

just copy the entire music folder over intact the way it is on your pc. Just drag it over and drop it into the sd card while device is connected to the pc.

the device will do a media scan on the sd card automatically every boot up and automatically detect your music folders and sort it accordingly.

a third party music player (like power amp) also will find the music automatically when the media scan is automatically done upon boot up.

to summarize it, don't worry about structure or specific folders just drag and drop your one big music folder on your pc into the sd card and the device will detect and organize the music (theme/artist/album/track etc.) Automatically and it will be available for you to play on either the stock music player or any third party player you install from the playstore.

I understand you as I felt the same way when I got my first android device 3 years ago. Don't think to much about it, just drag and drop, device does the rest.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central!

My micro SD card came formatted and has a file called Android on it and one called LOST.DIR.

This is normal. Whenever you insert a microSD into an Android device and turn it on, these folders will automatically be generated. The Android folder is where various data files from certain apps will be stored, and I think the LOST.DIR directory contains fragments of files that might have gotten corrupted or lost during file transfer.

where I am supposed to put my music files.

You can put your music anywhere, really. Android's Media Scanner will automatically scan the whole SD card when you insert it, searching for media files like music or photos, and populate the appropriate system databases. I created a folder called "Music" on the root folder of the microSD card, then copied my music folders over, maintaining the standard folder hierarchy of Artist>Album>Song. You can see more details in my guide: http://forums.androidcentral.com/ge...ide-getting-started-android-2014-part-ii.html

how do I let my Music Player know where the albums are stored, or will it find them "automatically" somehow?

The Music Player should "see" the music after the Media Scanner has done its job.

If I decide to install a music player other than the stock one that came on my Tab Pro (recommendations anyone) how will it know where the music is?

Any 3rd party music player should be able to access your music library automatically.

 

[B. Diddy]

Aaaand I only just saw that I essentially duplicated brosko's post. We must have been typing at exactly the same time!

 

[brosko]

Aaaand I only just saw that I essentially duplicated brosko's post. We must have been typing at exactly the same time!

It was a race. Yeah essentially the same but you do a little better job with the quote button with regards to organizing the answer!

either way I think he got his answer.

 

[Jwilock]

Thanks so much guys. I'll give that a try and be back here if it doesn't work. I assume I do the same if I happened to want to move any pictures or videos from my pc to the micro SD?

 

[B. Diddy]

That's correct. Just make sure that whenever you remove your microSD card from the tablet, you unmount the card first in the Settings>Storage menu. Removing a card without unmounting is like removing a flash drive from a computer without ejecting it first--if it was in the middle of writing something, data might get corrupted. When you remove the microSD card from your computer, you should also make sure to Eject it before removing it. Right click on the drive in Windows Explorer to bring up the Eject option. If you don't see it, then it isn't necessary.