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[TOP SHOTTA]

Hi Gang,

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and two days ago I bit the bullet and got a 128GB card. I see it as a true convergence device now.

But I have a problem.

Up to this point, I already had a freaking mess on my hands with the music I had put on the 16GB card, in the form of album art showing up in my (images) Gallery, confused and disordered ID3 tags, really had a lot of difficulty finding what I wanted to listen to on the phone. Making a playlist is easy enough. But scrolling through 10,000 songs is not going to be my cup of tea.

People and ID3 tags... mother fuck... it's like the monkeys on typewriters idiom. Once in awhile you get coherent set of tags for an album and you don't need to touch it. Most of the time it's:

Artist: "DATPIFF PRESENTS MUTHAFUCKIN LLYOD BANKS SHEEAH"
Song: "www.datpiff.com - 2012 - Speakers on Blast Remix Ft. Skyzoo and Maino"

Seriously. A lot of my recent collection is entire albums. Until about 2010, I had collected music the old fashioned way (ripping CD's, etc), which I went to great lengths to groom and order for my iPod classic. Anything newer than that is, for the most part, a god damn mess.

Now I have a two-fold problem on my hands. Renaming the ID3 tags and coming up with a good system for cleaning up stuff I get in the future.

Also, I depend on iTunes for my podcasts. Don't know why, but I prefer to get them on iTunes and then sync them to the iPod and - if I remember - drag/drop them onto the phone via USB. If anyone knows a good way to sync iTunes with their Android.I have used Podcatcher for my podcasts but I just don't find it particularly reliable.

So, in closing, does anyone have a big card and a method for dealing with storing their entire music collection on a modern Android phone, and managing Podcasts? If so, could you share your wisdom? As much as I wish it is easy to just drop the files on the card - that makes such a mess, that it almost isn't worth it. Like going into a fight without a plan, I am about to get my ass kicked unless I am careful.

Thank you,
TOP SHOTTA

 

[ComputerMKII]

https://www.doubletwist.com

 

[androvsky]

I don't have nearly the collection you do, but I've had decent luck with media monkey for mass tagging, and I use Google music for storage and movement. Pretty sure it supports sd cards now.

And I recommend podcatcher for podcasts, I use the free version but it's been adequate (and way more reliable than Google Listen).

Edit:
Now that i think about it, i use media monkey to to rip my cds and they're generally auto-tagged fine. Often there's several to choose from, but i haven't run into outright stupid ones. Maybe it's the stuff I'm listening to?

 

[gcubed]

I spent a ton of time fixing all the tags on my music. Start working!

 

[Deleted member 10571]

I've got an 8GB Nexus 4

But I've got a Google Play Music sub

Spoiler

Yeah I think I rather would have to deal with ordering titles than with close to no memory :/

 

[negreenfield]

I spent a LOT of time on Media Monkey fixing mine but everything is tagged the way I want it now with nice album art, I'm a fan of "Artist (Year) Album" for folders, with "Track# - Song Name.mp3" as my naming convention. These options are relatively easy to set up in Media Monkey. All my stuff is on Google Music now though, I use their versions for stuff I already had and supplement with my music that they don't have.

As for you specific needs you'll have to see if you can do something similar if the volume is getting too large, as for podcasts I would assume there's some good methods for that with Media Monkey too.

 

[BMO = GOAT]

Once i get a new song(s) I organize the files in date added. I use poweramp, thats the app i use for music. In that i edit the tags and everything. Pretty organized if you ask me. You should immediately organized your music OP! the minute you get it .

 

[Fireblend]

I remember how painful tagging music was.

Then I subscribed to Spotify.

 

[kudoboi]

spotify offline mode is a godsend. it is so easy. literally just the push of a button.

 

[neptunes]

https://www.doubletwist.com

why is this app so chuggy on my S4? could it be my SD card is or is the s4 that old already?

 

[Neodiablo22]

I don't have as much music as you do, but I uploaded my music to Google Play and then managed my music via my desktop. For podcasts you should buy pocketcasts. It's the best podcast management software that I have used.

 

[Camp Lo]

MP3Tag helped me sort through my 95GB of music but my G2 can only hold up to 20 or so GB.

It took me a while - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=722887

I spent a good weekend adding album covers to various mixtapes and getting rid of stupid ass tags like datpiff puts on everything.

All in all, it was pretty easy and time consuming but if you're as anal about perfectly manicured music files as I am, you'll have fun with it

MP3Tag is god-tier: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

I once spent a good week or two retagging/reripping my music, now I just maintain it when I put in new music. Looks so good with album art, which by the way you can embed with MP3tag. I go to albumartexchange to obtain high res album covers as well.

 

[Thursday War]

I hate the fact that fucking Google disabled the ability of putting music onto your SD card in 4.4.2. What the fuck is the point of getting an SD card if I can't put shit on it?? And now if I download a song I can't simply refresh the media store in the music player so the song automatically pops up in my library. I either have to wait 5-10 minutes or restart my phone. Everything was fine and dandy until I updated to 4.4.2.

Oh and the only way to fix this problem is to jailbreak my S4....

 

[entremet]

I remember how painful tagging music was.

Then I subscribed to Spotify.

Yep. Done with owning music. I just rent it.

 

[The Faceless Master]

i properly tagged all my music a decade ago. took me a few weekends of just sitting there and tagging stuff. i used the mp3 info shell extension. nothing fancy or automatic, just good 'ol manual tagging. since then it's been easy to just check and maintain the tags on anything new. i use mp3tag now as well.

 

[rpmurphy]

Another recommendation for MP3Tag, especially if you want control over file naming as well.

 

[Camp Lo]

i properly tagged all my music a decade ago. took me a few weekends of just sitting there and tagging stuff. i used the mp3 info shell extension. nothing fancy or automatic, just good 'ol manual tagging. since then it's been easy to just check and maintain the tags on anything new. i use mp3tag now as well.

Fuck dat shit.

I hope you didn't have that big of a collection at the time 'cause hot damn.

Edit: also, I haven't found a better way of dealing with podcasts than iTunes. It's just really painless considering I only frequent 3 shows.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

spotify.com

 

[RoadHazard]

Perhaps you should buy your music rather than illegally download it? I apologize if I'm falsely accusing you here, but messy ID3 tags are very often a sign of the latter.

As for managing my music, I just use Google Play Music. I buy CDs, rip them to my PC (which, except on rare occasions, takes care of properly tagging the music), they get uploaded to Play Music, and I can access them on my phone. Then I "pin" the most important stuff so I can listen to it offline, and if I want to listen to something else I stream it. I very rarely feel like shuffling my entire collection of songs, so I don't need it all available offline at all times.

 

[Camp Lo]

Perhaps you should buy your music rather than illegally download it? I apologize if I'm falsely accusing you here, but messy ID3 tags are very often a sign of the latter.

As for managing my music, I just use Google Play Music. I buy CDs, rip them to my PC (which, except on rare occasions, takes care of properly tagging the music), they get uploaded to Play Music, and I can access them on my phone. Then I "pin" the most important stuff so I can listen to it offline, and if I want to listen to something else I stream it. I very rarely want to shuffle my entire collection of songs.

Mixtapes are the exception to the rule as the OP detailed. Illegally downloaded albums are usually heavily manicured files.

 

[Syriel]

As for managing my music, I just use Google Play Music. I buy CDs, rip them to my PC (which, except on rare occasions, takes care of properly tagging the music), they get uploaded to Play Music, and I can access them on my phone. Then I "pin" the most important stuff so I can listen to it offline, and if I want to listen to something else I stream it. I very rarely want to shuffle my entire collection of songs.

This. Just upload your stuff to Google Music and let it do the tagging.

 

[RoadHazard]

Mixtapes are the exception to the rule as the OP detailed. Illegally downloaded albums are usually heavily manicured files.

He didn't mention anything about mixtapes. But ok, that URL does go to such a site. And those are ok, I suppose? Do they just contain freely available music? Surely sharing copyrighted music isn't fine just because it's part of a "mixtape"?

 

[Vyer]

I'd imagine the play music route kinda negates the supposed 'drag and drop' advantage of Android phones, which sounds like what was appealing to the OP in the first place since he's depending on SD cards.

Also, I depend on iTunes for my podcasts. Don't know why, but I prefer to get them on iTunes and then sync them to the iPod and - if I remember - drag/drop them onto the phone via USB. If anyone knows a good way to sync iTunes with their Android.I have used Podcatcher for my podcasts but I just don't find it particularly reliable.

Might want to just try a few different podcast apps, as when you find one you like that will remove that syncing step.

 

[Nif]

I also just switched to spotify rather than organizing mp3s, but I never had nearly as many as 10,000 songs.

 

[Camp Lo]

He didn't mention anything about mixtapes. But ok, that URL does go to such a site. And those are ok, I suppose? Do they just contain freely available music? Surely sharing copyrighted music isn't fine just because it's part of a "mixtape"?

You seem to have a misconception of what mixtapes are, especially ones on that site.

[QUOTE='Mixtape' wiki]In the hip hop scene, mix tape is often displayed as a single term mixtape. It is now a word to generally describe full length albums released for free, sometimes all original music, other times composing of freestyles and remixes of popular tracks.[/QUOTE]

 

[TOP SHOTTA]

Perhaps you should buy your music rather than illegally download it? I apologize if I'm falsely accusing you here, but messy ID3 tags are very often a sign of the latter.

You do owe me an apology, actually. I come by my music honorably, and you sounded like a total snit there. Thanks all the same.

Thank you for everyone's recommendations so far. I guess the key to having a good collection on the phone is to manicure ALL my music first. Then drop them on the card. Perhaps since you're all focusing on the state of my ID3 tags, that is the key to my mess. I appreciate the help.

 

[RoadHazard]

I'd imagine the play music route kinda negates the supposed 'drag and drop' advantage of Android phones, which sounds like what was appealing to the OP in the first place since he's depending on SD cards.

With Play Music you don't even have to connect your phone to your PC, which I see as a positive, not a negative. You just "pin" whatever you want available offline, and the phone takes care of it while you do something else. Sure, it will probably take longer to download the music than it would if you were to manually copy the songs over, but that's no biggie if you're just at home and connected to Wi-Fi anyway. And you can choose to use the SD card to store the downloaded music, so he can still take advantage of that space.

You seem to have a misconception of what mixtapes are, especially ones on that site.

Yeah, I don't know anything about them, so that's why I asked.

You do owe me an apology, actually. I come by my music honorably, and you sounded like a total snit there. Thanks all the same.

Then I apologize. Messy ID3 tags just tend to set off that alarm in my mind. But good that this wasn't the case!

 

[TOP SHOTTA]

I hate the fact that fucking Google disabled the ability of putting music onto your SD card in 4.4.2. What the fuck is the point of getting an SD card if I can't put shit on it?? And now if I download a song I can't simply refresh the media store in the music player so the song automatically pops up in my library. I either have to wait 5-10 minutes or restart my phone. Everything was fine and dandy until I updated to 4.4.2.

Oh and the only way to fix this problem is to jailbreak my S4....

Wait... what????? I put a few albums on there already and can see and play them no problem. I drop them right on there via USB, plop them right in a directory on the card I call "Music". I also have a "Podcasts" directory, and can play those too. On the "Play Music" app.

 

[kudoboi]

I hate the fact that fucking Google disabled the ability of putting music onto your SD card in 4.4.2. What the fuck is the point of getting an SD card if I can't put shit on it?? And now if I download a song I can't simply refresh the media store in the music player so the song automatically pops up in my library. I either have to wait 5-10 minutes or restart my phone. Everything was fine and dandy until I updated to 4.4.2.

Oh and the only way to fix this problem is to jailbreak my S4....

works perfectly fine for me with spotify. Spotify have no issues downloading and playing songs on my SD card

 

[Xanonano]

I'd imagine the play music route kinda negates the supposed 'drag and drop' advantage of Android phones, which sounds like what was appealing to the OP in the first place since he's depending on SD cards.

Why would you imagine that? Play Music can also handle music you've stored on the SD card.

 

[TOP SHOTTA]

Somebody's got some seriously bad info here. I am pretty sure you can - drag and drop umpteen gigs of songs into your upteen gig sd card and play them in "Play Music". God. Even my iPod classic with iTunes trying to force all sorts of syncing and drm weirdness allows that.

 

[Vyer]

With Play Music you don't even have to connect your phone to your PC, which I see as a positive, not a negative.

Oh, I know and agree. I've been using some combination of iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud Player for a while now. I also don't like/need to have all my music stored on the phone or plugging into a computer to move it. But, as people often point to the drag and drop music capabilities of an Android phone, it seems it's a preference for some people and kinda sounded like that's the case. If not though, I definitely find it a better option too.

Why would you imagine that? Play Music can also handle music you've stored on the SD card.

right. what we're talking about is using one of the services to 'store' and manage/tag your music instead of moving and managing it to the device yourself.

 

[Thursday War]

works perfectly fine for me with spotify. Spotify have no issues downloading and playing songs on my SD card

Wait... what????? I put a few albums on there already and can see and play them no problem. I drop them right on there via USB, plop them right in a directory on the card I call "Music". I also have a "Podcasts" directory, and can play those too. On the "Play Music" app.

http://m.androidcentral.com/kitkat-sdcard-changes

Yes of course you can put music on your SD card via computer, but when you try to move mp3s from the download folder on your phones internal storage to external storage like an SD card through your phone by using an app like File Manager or AndroZip, it won't let you. Read the article above too.

 

[ILoveBish]

I manually tagged every single song. Then made playlists for them by hand in notepad on the PC that work on android and PC together. My life was basically work, gym, mp3 tagging. I can relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor now tho.

 

[RoadHazard]

You seem to have a misconception of what mixtapes are, especially ones on that site.

http://m.androidcentral.com/kitkat-sdcard-changes

Yes of course you can put music on your SD card via computer, but when you try to move mp3s from the download folder on your phones internal storage to external storage like an SD card through your phone by using an app like File Manager or AndroZip, it won't let you. Read the article above too.

Seems like the only scenario where that would even be an issue is if you're downloading music using your phone. And why would you do that (except with something like Play Music, but that, again, lets you choose between internal storage and SD card for storing downloaded songs)?

 

[lmpaler]

Media Monkey for the desktop. Poweramp for Android. Zero problems keeping everything tagged and organized

 

[Thursday War]

Seems like the only scenario where that would even be an issue is if you're downloading music using your phone. And why would you do that (except with something like Play Music, but that, again, lets you choose between internal storage and SD card for storing downloaded songs)?

The thing is, is that I don't want music on my phones storage. That's reserved for apps. That's the reason I got an SD card in the first place. I want all my music on my card.

 

[androvsky]

If your collection is under 20,000 songs, you should be able to just use Google Music for free to manage moving them back and forth. Just point the desktop app at your music folder and enjoy pinning everything to your phone.

Now that I understand the mixtape problem a bit more, there's probably not going to be an automated fix for those tags. Best I can imagine is going into media monkey and fixing an album at a time manually.

The thing is, is that I don't want music on my phones storage. That's reserved for apps. That's the reason I got an SD card in the first place. I want all my music on my card.

But he said you can put music on the SD card through Play Music

 

[kehs]

SD cards and local storage , what is this 2010?

 

[TOP SHOTTA]

SD cards and local storage , what is this 2010?

I have a lot of huge files, loads of audiobooks, loads of live music stage shows and DJ battles that I enopy,and which constituts most of my listening. And I have ADD. Do the maff. So when I want what I want I want it fast and I want it now. Which is why I keep things local, you yokel.

No, really, also I've been caught in cases where I needed something and couldn't get on Google Docs and thank god, I go almost everywhere with a little 1TB passport drive and I swear by it. It has saved my butt countless times. Cloud storage for my weird taste in music is just not there yet.

Folks with smaller collections of more standard 3-4 min, 5-10mb songs... fine, consider yourselves lucky. It just doesn't work for me, and until wifi is as permanent as the air we breathe, I need big drives, big local storage, and even MORE than 128gb on my convergence device. Really.

 

[rocketskates]

MP3Tag helped me sort through my 95GB of music but my G2 can only hold up to 20 or so GB.

It took me a while - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=722887

I spent a good weekend adding album covers to various mixtapes and getting rid of stupid ass tags like datpiff puts on everything.

All in all, it was pretty easy and time consuming but if you're as anal about perfectly manicured music files as I am, you'll have fun with it

Yeah, as you and a couple of others have said, MP3Tag is a godsend. Makes tagging so much easier.

I hate the fact that fucking Google disabled the ability of putting music onto your SD card in 4.4.2. What the fuck is the point of getting an SD card if I can't put shit on it?? And now if I download a song I can't simply refresh the media store in the music player so the song automatically pops up in my library. I either have to wait 5-10 minutes or restart my phone. Everything was fine and dandy until I updated to 4.4.2.

Oh and the only way to fix this problem is to jailbreak my S4....

I was gonna say "well then time to root!" but then I remembered how much of a nightmare rooting the S4 is.....ugh.

Perhaps you should buy your music rather than illegally download it? I apologize if I'm falsely accusing you here, but messy ID3 tags are very often a sign of the latter.

9 times out of 10 illegal files are going to be tagged immaculately. Groups have rules when uploading stuff and proper tags are a "must-do correctly" requirement.

 

[TOP SHOTTA]

I checked and I have 103GB of unclean files that need to be scrubbed with the tools you guys talk about, and 91GB that I already cleaned.

Let me tell you about how I manage this.

I learned the hard way on my iPod(s, I am on my SIXTH iPod classic) that you need to have the following tags clean as fuck: Artist, Genre, Song. The way I use my music - the way I listen- that is paramount. Albums are tricky. I am a DJ. I have hundreds of 45's - presses from Jamaica. One 45 yeilds 2 songs usually. A song, and then the beat/instrumental on the B side. I spent a month 'ripping' those via TotalRecorder and a turntable. It was a nightmare. And I did it at 128kbps, because at the time..... the general consensus was that the typical human ear can't tell beyond 128. I now know that has been refuted, but this was 2004 when I did it.

My newer stuff is a witches brew of live shows, messy mixtapes, and a whole heap of singles that come to me HONORABLY because of my affiliation with recording studios in Jamaica. Albums, for me, are sometimes either left blank on purpose or named what the Genre is. It just sorts better in my iPod that way.

Since I am going to be essentially mothballing the iPod, do any of you have any suggestions for how I can improve upon this method of tagging? Is there a 'field' that I should pay special attention to, that wouldn't be as needed on an Apple device?

Also, THANK YOU to everyone who has responded. I appreciate it, guys and gals.

 

[sirap]

I've always been pants at this, Spotify has been a godsend.

 

[Battersea Power Station]

Tagging music? Am I in 2002?

I am a DJ.

OK, fine. That's an exception.

 

[capslock]

With Play Music you don't even have to connect your phone to your PC, which I see as a positive, not a negative. You just "pin" whatever you want available offline, and the phone takes care of it while you do something else. Sure, it will probably take longer to download the music than it would if you were to manually copy the songs over, but that's no biggie if you're just at home and connected to Wi-Fi anyway. And you can choose to use the SD card to store the downloaded music, so he can still take advantage of that space.



Yeah, I don't know anything about them, so that's why I asked.



Then I apologize. Messy ID3 tags just tend to set off that alarm in my mind. But good that this wasn't the case!

DItto, Play Music is awesome.

 

[Tribes of Trusty]

I want to add, on Samsung's default music player for the GN3, some songs just don't appear. No matter what I do or what folder I put them in. It's infuriating.

 

[DKHustlin]

I have the same issue but if you use winamp on yourdesktop you can mass edit tags. that makes the album and artists easy to fix, especially from shit like datpiff. it comes down to if you care though, my music collection is 40000 songs and I have 5000 on my Samsung galaxy that I listen to regularly. I care about the tags so I edited them but winamp helped a lot.

 

[CoolOff]

I remember how painful tagging music was.

Then I subscribed to Spotify.

I've always been pants at this, Spotify has been a godsend.

This.

 

[collige]

Tag everything properly in iTunes then upload your library to Google Music. There's no proper way to handle ID3 tags directly on the phone and you can download everything you've uploaded directly off Google Music.

 

[RoadHazard]

The thing is, is that I don't want music on my phones storage. That's reserved for apps. That's the reason I got an SD card in the first place. I want all my music on my card.

Yes... but why would the music be on the internal storage in the first place? What app puts it there?