Hard link or other fix to force Play Music to find and play content outside the Music folder?

[Dark Penguin]

When I first starting using Android devices several years ago, the standard Google music app would find pretty much every mp3 file on the system, SD cards included, and make them available for queueing, playing, and setting up podcasts. At some point that changed, and now it seems that audio files need to be in the active Music folder in order for Play Music to access them. OTOH, while it's possible to use a file explorer app to find the file, and then select Play Music to open it, this approach will not allow you to add the track to an existing playlist, nor can you create a new one.

Neither can I change the destination folder for my podcast or audiobook downloads, but it is possible to copy or move those folders or files to the Music folder, and then they'll be easily available to Play Music. My podcatcher, for example, allows the use one very specific and lengthy filepath, but graciously allows me to choose either the internal or external SD card.

My question is: Can I set up a hard link in my Music folder which would point to where my podcasts are downloaded? The objective here would be to make it appear that the podcasts were subordinate to the Music folder, so that Play Music would find them. Is there a utility or app that can do this? My phone is rooted, but when I tried to use a terminal emulator to create the link it didn't work.

ETA: I'm told the URL formerly included here doesn't work. I did request that the mods close my other thread, but I think they might have deleted entirely as I can't find it now. My misunderstanding most likely--based on experiences elsewhere I assumed that "close" means to lock a thread but leave it visible, but perhaps it's different here. Anyhow, it's not that important for the purpose of reading or posting to this thread.

 

[B. Diddy]

I'm wondering about the basic issue you're noting, which is that Google Play Music doesn't recognize any locally saved music files anywhere besides the Music folder. I just checked on my Nexus 5, and downloaded an mp3 to the Download directory. When I turned on the Downloaded Only switch in Google Play Music, the only song it showed was that mp3 (I don't save any other music locally). When I deleted the file from the Download directory, it then disappeared from Google Play Music.

I'm sorry if you addressed this in your other thread, but are you certain there aren't any ".nomedia" files lurking in those directories that you're using? That URL for your other thread doesn't work, by the way.

 

[Dark Penguin]

I tried changing the "downloaded only" setting you mentioned, and it seemed to work. I downloaded one new podcast, and did find that it turned up in my music library. But for some reason that has only worked once.

 

[B. Diddy]

So further podcast downloads don't show up? Are they all saving to the same directory?

 

[Dark Penguin]

Oops, sorry--it was my error. The one podcast episode that had worked had already been copied into the Music folder. So it isn't working at all--but at least we can say that the behavior is consistent.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

[B. Diddy]

What folder are the podcasts downloading to?

 

[Dark Penguin]

As an example, episodes of This American Life go here:

/storage/extSdCard/Android/data/mobi.beyondpod/files/BeyondPod/Podcasts/This American Life

Other podcasts have their own subfolders, all under /Podcasts.
I
The only other choice is a similar path on the other card, something like:

/sdcard/Android/data/mobi.beyondpod/files/BeyondPod/Podcasts

AFAIK I can't just edit the path to my own preferences.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

[B. Diddy]

Did you check those directories to see if there's a ".nomedia" file present? You might have to make sure your file manager app is set to show hidden files and folders.

 

[Dark Penguin]

Did you check those directories to see if there's a ".nomedia" file present? You might have to make sure your file manager app is set to show hidden files and folders.

I just checked on this, and as a matter of fact there is a .nomedia file in the Podcasts folder, that is, the same folder that contains the individual podcast subfolders. Could it be that by merely deleting or renaming this file, my problem will be solved?

 

[B. Diddy]

Yes, that should work. ".nomedia" instructs the system's Media Scanner to ignore that directory and any subdirectories when looking for new media to add to the Music and Gallery databases. If you delete that .nomedia file, I think those files will appear in the Google Play Music library. There's no harm in deleting the file.

 

[Dark Penguin]

Yes, that should work. ".nomedia" instructs the system's Media Scanner to ignore that directory and any subdirectories when looking for new media to add to the Music and Gallery databases. If you delete that .nomedia file, I think those files will appear in the Google Play Music library. There's no harm in deleting the file.

I think it did work for about a second and a half, but then the system recreated the .nomedia file. I renamed, rather than deleted, the .nomedia file, so now there's both the one I renamed and the automatically generated new one.

It seems strange that the developers of Android and Play Music, or of the individual apps I mentioned upthread, apparently did not want to make it easy for us to use any single app to listen to all our audio. I can understand why one wouldn't want the Media Scanner to pick up ringtones and booting noises, but I think that's as far as it should have gone.

 

[B. Diddy]

Presumably, it's BeyondPod that's creating the .nomedia file. Perhaps they want to force you to use their app--this might be financial beneficial for them, especially if they have banner ads. If you use some other media player, then they won't get your eyeballs. Maybe you could email the BeyondPod developers, and ask them if it's possible in future versions to get rid of that .nomedia file. support@beyondpod.mobi

 

[Dark Penguin]

Presumably, it's BeyondPod that's creating the .nomedia file. Perhaps they want to force you to use their app--this might be financial beneficial for them, especially if they have banner ads. If you use some other media player, then they won't get your eyeballs. Maybe you could email the BeyondPod developers, and ask them if it's possible in future versions to get rid of that .nomedia file. support@beyondpod.mobi

BeyondPod is a paid app, and there are no banner ads AFAIK. Aside from that, though, banner ads don't make a whole lot of sense for an audio app. OverDrive is a free audiobook downloader but doesn't use banner ads as far as I can recall. I was directed to it by my local public library in using their audiobook service. Here, again, the .nomedia file gets autogenerated at the top of the app's content folders. And as with BeyondPod, I can manually move the content over to the Music folder. Each podcast program or single complete audiobook looks like another album in the music library, and the podcaster or author shows up as the artist, like the band name on an album cover.

Be that as it may, thanks to you I now know another search string in researching this issue--"Get rid of .nomedia files".

 

[B. Diddy]

SUCCESS.

This was bugging me, so I installed BeyondPod and played around with it. Here's what you do.

1. Open BeyondPod, swipe in from the left, and tap Settings.
2. Now tap the menu button at the upper right and tap Advanced Settings.
3. Scroll down a little bit, and turn "Episodes Visible in Music Player" on. This will get rid of the .nomedia file in the directory.
4. Now make sure your podcast is downloaded, and it will show up in Google Play Music.

Now excuse me while I do my victory dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtzQCSh6xk

P.S. No, that's not me ...

 

[Dark Penguin]

SUCCESS.

This was bugging me, so I installed BeyondPod and played around with it. Here's what you do.

1. Open BeyondPod, swipe in from the left, and tap Settings.
2. Now tap the menu button at the upper right and tap Advanced Settings.
3. Scroll down a little bit, and turn "Episodes Visible in Music Player" on. This will get rid of the .nomedia file in the directory.
4. Now make sure your podcast is downloaded, and it will show up in Google Play Music.

You are the epitome of awesome as usual. But I sure can't imagine why the developers decided to put Advanced Settings in an altogether different part of the UI.

OverDrive and LibriVox do not appear to share this setting, but with those apps it's very much less of an issue. Audiobooks, which I download in full before listening to them, appear in the file system as single folders, making it easier to move the content into the Music folder than it would be with podcasts.

Now excuse me while I do my victory dance.

...
P.S. No, that's not me ...

Well, duh, I guessed that wasn't you singing on the soundtrack....

 

[B. Diddy]

But I sure can't imagine why the developers decided to put Advanced Settings in an altogether different part of the UI

Either bad UI design, or they really didn't want people to fiddle around that much unless they were very motivated.

Well, duh, I guessed that wasn't you singing on the soundtrack....

LOL.