SD Card Music Playback issues

[Ryan Donovan]

I have just moved to a Galaxy s4 from an iPhone 4s.

I have a iTunes library consisting of over 50Gb of music. I have copied this all to my 64Gb Sandisk micro SD card.

Now out of all of this music (4500) songs, only about 200 of them actually play, the rest get a music playback error.
some of the working songs ARE iTunes purchases, and some aren't.

All of the songs that don't work seem to be group together in a folder on Google Music called "Unknown artist"
I don't under stand this as some of these are purchased musics with full information.
some of these are iTunes Purchased.

So Basically, What i need to know is. Why will my SD card let me play some iTunes purchased music and not others, and why are most of my songs that are NOT iTunes purchased not working either?

P.S. Music is important to me in a phone, If I cannot find a fix, I will move back to Apple :-$

 

[SpookDroid]

Are you sure those files are not DRM? If they are protected, they usually won't play just anywhere (I'm pretty sure iTunes-bought music won't play unless you sync with iTunes).

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

OK -- it's been years since I used iTunes, so anyone here please correct me if I'm wrong...

For the longest time, songs purchased through iTunes had the extension "m4p" ... and files with this extension would only play on iDevices synced with iTunes or on CD's burned via iTunes. They are DRM protected. I'm not sure if that is still the format iTunes uses for purchased songs or not...I had heard rumors that iTunes was going to move to an all MP3 format, but I don't know if that every happened or just nothing more than rumor.
EDIT: Based on what I'm reading online, only tracks purchased prior to 2009 should be DRM protected

Also, when you would import music from your CD library, the files would, by default, have an extension of "m4a". These files are not DRM-protected, but some devices wouldn't recognize them. You can have iTunes rip songs as "mp3", but you have change that in the settings first. Now, as far as I know, the S4 *will* play m4a tracks...but I don't have any to test myself.

Now, that is just some background info. The crappy part is that most songs purchased through iTunes will *NOT* play on any non-Apple device, though there are ways to get around this (the easiest, but most tedious way would be to burn to tracks to CDs, then re-rip them as MP3 files). What you need to do is look at the songs that aren't playing, especially those that were NOT purchased via iTunes, and find out what the extension is...report that info back to us, and we may be able to better figure out what's going on.

 

[Ryan Donovan]

Yes, I purchased them less than a week ago.

 

[TeamPowerstroke]

I only have about 4-5 itunes purchased songs but all of them play off my sd card

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[Ryan Donovan]

Some purchased work, some don't.

some m4a files work some don't.

some mp3s (not itunes purchased) work and again the majority don't.

I try and load them to my SD card all at once. Sitting there and doing albums is to long as its a 5 hour process.

 

[Ryan Donovan]

ALL OF THESE PLAY AND ARE STORED INTERNALLY

 

[laestrella]

Is it the same issue regardless of the music app?

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[Ryan Donovan]

Yes. I have tried Poweramp and another I cannot remember.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I'm beginning to think that the files may be corrupt? *IF* that's the case, it could the result of a few things:

1. The card is bad or has gone bad since the files were loaded. It's no secret that these large-capacity flash devices tend to get corrupted easily.
2. Something went wrong in the transfer. You mentioned it is a LOT of songs...perhaps data-flow was being interrupted during transfer, causing the copied files to become corrupted.

When you transfer the files, how do you mount the SD card to the computer? Do you plug the phone in to the USB on the computer and transfer that way, or do you use an SD card reader to mount the card directly to the computer's file system. (If you're doing the former, I'd try the latter).

A test to see if the files are corrupt would be to mount the SD card to your computer (either via Phone's MTP USB connection or directly using an SD card reader), and try to open some of the non-working songs from the SD card on the computer. If they still won't open, then you know the files themselves are bad or corrupted. If they do open on the computer, then you know it's an issue with the S4.

 

[Ryan Donovan]

Right so I have formatted the Card for good measure.

I am now transferring the albums one by one and it seems to be working okay.
When i did the bulk transfer a lot of the album arts were missing and they are not now.

Its is pretty sucky but I think the only way around this may be by doing the albums one at a time!

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Right so I have formatted the Card for good measure.

I am now transferring the albums one by one and it seems to be working okay.
When i did the bulk transfer a lot of the album arts were missing and they are not now.

Its is pretty sucky but I think the only way around this may be by doing the albums one at a time!

yeah, my guess is that your computer (or maybe the card?) couldn't handle the large transfer and data was missing...

 

[Ryan Donovan]

I'd say the sd card. I'd like to think my ?1800 Macbook pro could handle it....

 

[Ryan Donovan]

Started to get errors again. Its not as bad as it used to be but they are becoming more frequent.

It seems it gets to a certain capacity then things start to balls up.
It is on a purchased album, half of the songs can be played, but the other half not.

Makes no sense to me. Could it all be down to my cheap *** SD card from Sandisk?

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Started to get errors again. Its not as bad as it used to be but they are becoming more frequent.

It seems it gets to a certain capacity then things start to balls up.
It is on a purchased album, half of the songs can be played, but the other half not.

Makes no sense to me. Could it all be down to my cheap *** SD card from Sandisk?

yes... It could

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[GS4Bob]

I just received my replacement 64gb Sandisk micro sd card after the initial card stopped working properly. As long as yours is receiving deleting ok then keep trying.
Go to Sandisk support to get a replacement (need docs).

32GB GS4 via Android Central App