Not sure if anyone can help me.
I have just invested in a 32gb sd card for my S2 and transferred my music files over from my Cowon J3.
I sort my music by having firstly an artist folder (compilations go into a various artists folder) and within the folder I store the albums by that artist, so ArtistA:Album1,2&3 Artist B:Album1, etc.
My Cowon lets me browse these folders, so I can go down the list of artists and then pick an album by that band/singer etc (by searching folders:J3:[music]:artist folders).
Unfortunately on my S2, it sorts by artists (which is inconvient as it lists all the artists from compilations), albums (but it lists them alphabetically, rather than grouping and listing them by artist) or folders (but unfortunately it seems it ignores my first level of folder (i.e the artists name) and lists the folders alphabetically by the album names, which again means the albums aren't grouped together by artist).
I have downloaded winamp and although I can search for an artist, it still isn't what I really want, as I like to scroll down through my artists and then pick an album.
Does anyone know of a music player that would allow me to browse my files by folder, in the same manner as my Cowon?
Many thanks for your help.
Try looking in the settings options in the default sgs2 music app. You can select "folders".
I've tried that, but unfortunately it lists the album folders, rather than the level above (artist folders).
If there was a way of setting the Artist function as album artist rather than song/track artists, that would fix it.
Poweramp supports folder browsing, so does uberplayer. Personally I use poweramp, it's amazing.
Many thanks Robafet, PowerAmp is exactly what I was looking for and I love having the option to have the player on the lock screen!
Looks like this is going to become my first ever 'paid for' app, just need to make sure I don't lose it now, as I'm unsure how to back up my purchases, lol.
once you purchase something from marketplace, you can download it as many times as you like I think.
Related
I've got my music organised in /sdcard/MP3/<artist>/<album>/<tune>, but the music-player gets confused sometimes wrt the cover images it displays.
Example: In one directory there's an album with 14 songs. None of the 14 MP3-files have images embedded, and the cover is in a file called AlbumArt.jpg. There are no other files in the directory. The player however manages to pick an albumart.jpg from a completely different artist/album. This particular example is a "Greatest Hits" album, and there are albums with the same name under other artists if that could be confusing the player. This particular combination of album and artist tags is unique though.
Is this a known bug?
Yes, I also have bugs with cover arts, not showing the right one.
This bug was already there on the TouchFlow music player under Windows Mobile ...
Hey mates,
i'm wondering if its possible to make a playlist with the tracks in one folder and not sorted by album, artist, or so.
i have many albums which havent got id3-tags, so they're all in the category "unknown". but on my SD, theyre sorted in folders..
so is this possible?
hope you understand what i mean.
thanks in advance,
DN41
Move all the music to your pc, delete all the folders on the HD2 that have music in except the music file on the sd card, empty that file, copy all the music tracks into that file (not the folders) simplez
thanks for your reply.
but isnt there an easier way? just like sort it in the folders they are in the player?..
DN41
i found out, that a playlist created with WMP on my hd2 is also shown in sense player.
in wmp pocket its possible to create playlists by folders. so you can create in wmp the playlist with the songs in one folder and you'll have it in sense player
DN41
Still, one must admit iPod is much easier to use
I was an "apple hater" for many years, but after using my sisters Nano, Sense player just does not measure up for me
Maybe someone knows of an application that emulates iPod in WM6.5?
Mihkel.ee said:
Still, one must admit iPod is much easier to use
I was an "apple hater" for many years, but after using my sisters Nano, Sense player just does not measure up for me
Maybe someone knows of an application that emulates iPod in WM6.5?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And for those of us that used to have iPods and, therefore, have a large collection of music encoded in the smaller-per-bit rate AAC format used by default in iTunes, Sense can't even sort our music into track order. So annoying. HTC's music player in Android doesn't have this problem for some reason...
Anyhooooooo, I can't help you with better software for your HD2, but we can get iTunes to kinda work with the HD2 - try iTunes Agent. Works well with itunes. Oh, it's free too : ) http://ita.sourceforge.net/
Dependent upon how you set it up, your HD2 will appear as a single playlist on the left of the iTunes window. Anything you add or remove from the playlist will be changed on the HD2 next time you choose to synchronise. iTunes Agent will also add the files to your SD card in Artist/Album sub folders if you like. If you turn on the right browsing options in iTunes, you will see the three columns at the top of the music list, Genre, Artist, Album - this way it makes it really easy to browse what's 'on' your HD2 (much better than one long list).
iTunes Agent doesn't yet support exporting playlists to your device, so if you want to go a stage further and export other iTunes playlists to your phone....
1. just highlight the songs in the desired playlist in iTunes, say ' melt your face off rock anthems' and drag them to the HD2 playlist, then sync with iTunes Agent to get them onto you storage card.
2. Export the first playlist from iTunes (Melt your face off rock anthems) by right clicking on it, hitting export, then choosing .M3U as the file type.
3. Go to where you exported it and open it with notepad. Delete the first line "#EXTM3U", then use the Edit/Replace function in Notepad to correct the file path (e.g Find What: "C\:itunes music" Replace With: "Storage Card\MP3") to reflect where you store music on your phone. Save (as Unicode if I remember correctly).
4. Copy playlist to Application Data\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\Playlists on your phone then soft reset. Once the phone finishes scanning your card after rebooting, the playlist should appear in Sense Player.
There are two things to watch out for when creating playlists on your phone this way. First is the poopy way iTunes cuts off (appends - my old english teacher would be so proud, not) long track or album names e.g "01 My funky monkey groove mix shubbla ding fong.m4a" will be abbreviated to "01 My funly monkey groove mix shu~.m4a". These entries have to be edited manually in the playlist as far as I can see. (!!!!) Second, you can't edit these playlists on the phone. When you reset the phone the changes are gone. No idea why.
I know this doesn't quite answer your question, but give it a go if you have iTunes on your PC. It has made transferring music to my HD2 so much easier. The only bummer is having to connect the phone in disc mode, which is hardly major.
Double Post
Hello there my fellow XDA-ers,
So I bought a Flyer not too long ago, mainly for notes/browsing/video/music.
And all is working well, with the normal browser, opera browser and BSPlayer.
For music I use both the standard HTC Music Player (I'm on stock Gingerbread btw, but it's S-Off and rooted) and Spotify. Spotify is working well, but for local music I prefer to use the HTC Music Player, since I really like the look and layout in landscape. Spotify is just an oversized phone version (and only portrait, but I've heard of a fix for this) =\
But in the HTC Music Player, if I have... say.. compilation albums, it just shows 1 random album cover for every song in the compilation, even though all the songs (in the album/compilation) have a different album cover. I know that each song has a different cover art, since each song has its own correct art in iTunes, Spotify PC, Spotify Mobile and on my iPod Touch.
This is more of a general question about Android I think, since I have this problem on both my Sensation and Flyer.
I don't know much about how all this works, but all my files are 320kbps MP3's and have album art.
I google'd around a bit, but couldn't find anything that worked. So what could I do to make every song have its own cover art?
Also, YAY ICS is coming to the Flyer
If you have folder structure for your music and all songs from a compilation are in one folder and you have an album art file in that folder, then that's probably what player will show. I haven't used HTC's music player, but I know that this is what some players do.
Also you need to check info tags of the songs in compilation. If Album tag shows something like "Top Hits #1", then that's the album art that you're going to get. If tags are good and have correct Artist, Song, Album info, then album art is an easy fix. If tags are messed up, then you might have a problem.
I used to have a big collection of songs and many were made a decade ago, some from compilation CDs. Most of those files had tags messed in one way or another. When I decided to organize my music library I remember I used a tagging program first (maybe it was "tag&rename). In some files I had to fill in Artist and Song info from the filename. Files copied from iPods I had to rename, using Artist and Song info from the tag. I also erased "album" tags from messed up files (compilations), year and some other stuff. I replaced "album artist" field with "artist", so it doesn't show there something like "various artists". Then I used Winamp to pull up the tags automatically from the internet. It did pretty good job and fixed more than 90% of files. All above is done automatically and you don't have to do much there, other than telling program what to do next. After tagging is done, the best thing to do next(but not necessary) is to use another program (don't remember what I used) to pull the album art from the internet and store it in the music file itself. Last step is recommended, but not necessary, because most better android players (Like Player PRO) can get the art from the internet themselves.
Nowadays, music files usually tagged properly and if you ripped files from CD, many programs will tag songs properly when creating a file. You still might have messed up tags if it was a compilation CD.
You said that all your files have proper art (I assume in iTunes), so I assume that they are tagged properly and the only issue is the location of the song and art files.
I don't remember how iTunes organizes files. But I think it puts song files into album folder (which is in Artist folder) and puts album art file into album folder. When you copy songs into another compilation folder you loose the art. If files are tagged properly, then you can delete the album art file in the compilation folder and let good player (I recommend Player PRO) get all the art from the internet. HTC's Music player probably is not that smart. If you don't have art embedded into the file, then you need to make sure that folder structure is preserved. Songs and album art file from different albums need to be in different folders.
If you're on Linux, use "easytag". As previous post said, embedd the tags (even album art picture) inside the files, then it will use the album art from the file (not from the folder where the file is in). This way you can just copy files across platforms and not loose the album art.
Thanks for the responses guys, but concerning the tags and embedded art, everything is correct I think. I made the folders myself (artist > album > music files) and in the MP3 tags, the artist and album (compilation) are the same, so they appear to be from the same 'artist' and compilation/album. The album/cover art is also included/embedded in the MP3's themselves. Because I made the folders myself, there are no other .jpgs to overwrite the art from the MP3.
Sorry that I forgot to mention that.
But as far as I know, everything is clean and organized. It really seems like the music player is just randomly selecting one of the artworks, since if I remove the entire folder from my Flyer, then re-add the exact same folder from my PC, it will have another randomly selected artwork for every file.
One of the possible solutions I read about was to put every file in a separate folder inside the album folder. So it would be Artist>Album>SongFolder>Song. The files all still had the same artist and album in their tags, so in the player they were still organized in the same artist and album. But still it would select a random artwork embedded in one of the songs and use it for every song.
Sure it's not really that big of a deal for most people, but I do find it very annoying, since I really like all the different artworks (and the HTC Music Player) =\
If anyone knows a tablet optimized (or Flyer optimized, since well.. mine isn't Honeycomb xd) Music Player that doesn't have this problem, suggestions would be appreciated as well.
Same HTC Music Plaer Issue
Roadkill263732 said:
Thanks for the responses guys, but concerning the tags and embedded art, everything is correct I think. I made the folders myself (artist > album > music files) and in the MP3 tags, the artist and album (compilation) are the same, so they appear to be from the same 'artist' and compilation/album. The album/cover art is also included/embedded in the MP3's themselves. Because I made the folders myself, there are no other .jpgs to overwrite the art from the MP3.
Sorry that I forgot to mention that.
But as far as I know, everything is clean and organized. It really seems like the music player is just randomly selecting one of the artworks, since if I remove the entire folder from my Flyer, then re-add the exact same folder from my PC, it will have another randomly selected artwork for every file.
One of the possible solutions I read about was to put every file in a separate folder inside the album folder. So it would be Artist>Album>SongFolder>Song. The files all still had the same artist and album in their tags, so in the player they were still organized in the same artist and album. But still it would select a random artwork embedded in one of the songs and use it for every song.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this is from January, but the album art is rlly bothering me so...
I just got my HTC phone and I have the same problem, every album without cover art has the same random one. I'm kinda a noob when it comes to phones so I'm not sure how to fix the issue but will downloading a different music player fix the problem? Or did you end up finding a way to fix it?
[email protected] said:
will downloading a different music player fix the problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably not. Its sounds like the ID tags on your music files are screwed up. How do you organize and play music on your computer?
You might try one of these apps to fix the tags: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fix+mp3+tag&c=apps
Evening everyone, I have spent the last 20 hours of my life confused and beyond angry at Google Music. Missing Tags repeat albums and don't even get me started on the album art work missing. I am OCD about my music library, always have been that's why (when I used that god awful software) during my iTunes years I meticulously spent hours fixing genres adding art work and capitalizing the correct letters in titles artists and albums, spent hours downloading HQ album covers and all was well. Unfortunately for me none of that corrected info actually gets tagged in the actual file the metadata remains unedited and no artwork actually becomes embedded Tunes just simply says OK that's what you want to see for that song but only of course on Apple's devices. So I was left with all these files from which were jumbled up in Mp4 and Mp3 and WAV some with artwork some without.
So Yesterday I began the process of figuring out how to finally organize all of my music once and for all so that Google Music would show album art correct names yada yada yada. I then thought to myself I am sure of it that many others would like to see how I did it so that they too could enjoy a perfect Library on Google's wonderful streaming service, or off the SD card. I will say this is extraordinarily time consuming but since I am making this guide it should at least allow you to cut an hour or two digging for software and generally wanting to tear your hair out in frustration over figuring out why the hell the metadata editor wont edit the files or show up in the directory. So gentlemen and ladies alike here are my efforts in order to finally have a perfect music library forever.
Software you will need
ID3 - This is the program that allows you to edit the metadata and provide proper naming and artwork
http://www.nch.com.au/tageditor/index.html
Mp4 - Mp3 Converter - As Itunes and Apple are stupid and use a stupid file codec the Mp4 metadata cannot be directly edited The Tag editor can only edit when the files are Mp3( if you never used itunes you may be able to skip this) .
http://download.cnet.com/Free-M4a-t...7723.html?tag=dropDownForm;productListing;pop
1.) First will want to convert all non Mp3 formatted files into Mp3. You can either edit and convert together ( I would not recommend this) or you can queue everything that needs to be converted first. That is what I would do.
Sub Step a.) While it is converting go to Google and Image search all the album covers you will need and put the cover art .jpg into the folder for the album to which it belongs 500 x 500 pixels is perfect size for album covers and is the most widely used size for these images.
2.) While it is converting go to Google Music and delete your Library( NOTE that you better only delete things that you have the file for) I take no responsibility for you deleting music and then never getting it back that's on you. I have all my music in a specific folder and knew I could delete it. Also take note that DRM music from ITunes cannot be edited or uploaded. ( I paid well over a hundred bucks to Apple to get what I could DRM free) Once you have a clean slate you can allow the converting process to finish.
3.) Once you have your converted files you can go into your music folder location and see that you will now have duplicates of the files that were converted(One being Mp4 and the new Mp3 file). Create a new folder for your new files. What I mean by this is take all the Mp4 files( don't delete them just in case you still need it) and separate the Mp4 Files and Mp3 Files into new folders for example:
Folder 1 ( band Name: Mp4)
Folder 2 ( Band Name: Mp3)
THIS IS HUGELY IMPORTANT
if you do not separate the files you will upload duplicates to Google Music and it will default to the previous file leading you back to where you started (I did this and almost threw my computer out the window from frustration) Also leave the Cover art you downloaded in the Mp3 folder not the mp4 which will make adding the cover art much quicker
4.) Now that you have your library converted and separated the new and old files you will have an Mp3 Library and an Mp4 library( I know it blows to have identical folders but its just how it is and will make sure your library is as organized as possible and keep you from loosing your tunes.)
5.) Open the Stamp editor and you should now be able to edit all the Metadata you want using the program.
I am about to start Homework check back here later tonight or tomorrow for screenshots and tips to make this easier.
Quick Tip - this is how my Music Directory is organized
folder Named after artist
Sub folder contains Albums
Each Album is a sub folder containing the Google Image we downloaded earlier and the Mp3 Files to which will be edited ( I HIGH SUGGEST FOLLOWING THIS)
Very nice guide! im ocd about my music library too. I wish i could've just hired somebody to fix my whole library instead of wasting 20+ hours trying to. :crying:
I thought about it yesterday when I was doing all of this, A company that would organize music would probably be very profitable. Im not sure how you would structure paying but it would be a smart idea.
Thanks for the guide! Here's some things I found useful when dealing with my own library: (unfortunately I can't post links because I'm a new user, but all of these can be found as the top link when you google them)
mp3tag is a very powerful tag editor, and very easy to use for batch operations.
id3remover can completely remove all metadata from a file. I found this useful because sometimes files have tags that editing programs can't read but will mess up library sorting in Google Music or your music player.
Album Art Exchange is a great website for very high quality and high resolution album art.
Thanks for the guide - I've been meaning to do this for a while (I also fell victim to iTunes not editing the actual metadata but remembering the tags in its own devious way), and I may actually do it now.
However, I was wondering - is the conversion from mp4 or from m4a to mp3 entirely lossless? If not, is there an easy way to edit the metadata on m4a files?
Also, my music is about two thirds flac (my classical music) and the rest mostly m4a and some mp3. Will the tag editor work for flac files? (I of course cannot convert them to mp3).
Also, another slightly related question: I have been looking since I first got a phone for a music player in which I can set up the library the way I want.
That would be like this: first, I select a genre (Classical, Joshua Bell, Русские песни (Russian songs), Chansons françaises (French songs), or Other.
If I select Classical, I can choose to go to composers and then to albums, to artists and then to albums, or directly to albums.
If I select Joshua Bell, I can choose to go to composers and then to albums or directly to albums.
If I select Русские песни or Chansons françaises, it will go to artists and then to albums.
If I select Other, it will go directly to a list of albums.
So far, I have always just used folder players, but I will thank immensely anyone who finds a player that I can set up like this, that can also play flac files and is generally usable.
(Really - I will thank all of the posts you've made, or at least all that I can thank in 15 minutes of uninterrupted thanking).
Max725 said:
Thanks for the guide - I've been meaning to do this for a while (I also fell victim to iTunes not editing the actual metadata but remembering the tags in its own devious way), and I may actually do it now.
However, I was wondering - is the conversion from mp4 or from m4a to mp3 entirely lossless? If not, is there an easy way to edit the metadata on m4a files?
Also, my music is about two thirds flac (my classical music) and the rest mostly m4a and some mp3. Will the tag editor work for flac files? (I of course cannot convert them to mp3).
Also, another slightly related question: I have been looking since I first got a phone for a music player in which I can set up the library the way I want.
That would be like this: first, I select a genre (Classical, Joshua Bell, Русские песни (Russian songs), Chansons françaises (French songs), or Other.
If I select Classical, I can choose to go to composers and then to albums, to artists and then to albums, or directly to albums.
If I select Joshua Bell, I can choose to go to composers and then to albums or directly to albums.
If I select Русские песни or Chansons françaises, it will go to artists and then to albums.
If I select Other, it will go directly to a list of albums.
So far, I have always just used folder players, but I will thank immensely anyone who finds a player that I can set up like this, that can also play flac files and is generally usable.
(Really - I will thank all of the posts you've made, or at least all that I can thank in 15 minutes of uninterrupted thanking).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did not find anything that allowed for editing mp4 metadata(the DRM was to blame I believe). If I did it wasn't free which is why I ended up doing this in such a backwards way(spent an hour or so trying to find the software I used). There are flac to mp3 converters which I believe I saw on CNET. So you could in theory do this still but you would need to convert two different file types so it will just take longer.
As for You're second question I think "I think" poweramp allows for the kind of hierarchy control you are looking for. It also has the most options, auto album art work updater, and the best eq.
Sent from my Rezound using xda app-developers app
zkrp5108 said:
I did not find anything that allowed for editing mp4 metadata(the DRM was to blame I believe). If I did it wasn't free which is why I ended up doing this in such a backwards way(spent an hour or so trying to find the software I used). There are flac to mp3 converters which I believe I saw on CNET. So you could in theory do this still but you would need to convert two different file types so it will just take longer.
As for You're second question I think "I think" poweramp allows for the kind of hierarchy control you are looking for. It also has the most options, auto album art work updater, and the best eq.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What about m4a? And the reason I don't want to convert flac files is that flac is lossless. It has all the same information as a native wav file, but it somehow takes up a little less space, although much more than mp3. The flac codec is open source and all, so I don't see why there should be problems editing metadata in flac files, I just haven't looked which specific programs can do it.
And I tried Poweramp, but didn't see any settings for genre-specific hierarchy - you can choose to have it show genres-artists-albums or genre-albums or anything like that, but you can't make it different for each genre. By the way, I really don't care about options or eq - I believe that classical music should be heard exactly as in the natural performance, and I trust the professional sound editors whose job it is to optimize all the different instruments and ranges in the other songs I have. In fact, I have currently settled on EZ Folder Player, which just opens to a specified folder, from which I can navigate through the folders I set up to any album or song and play it. I believe it has no eq or sound settings at all.
I'm pretty sure that the mp4 and m4a files are both convertable using the program but I'm not sure lol. This was specifically to aid those that used iTunes in the past but switched to android and Google music' and how to add tags to mp3 files that people download from the internet. As for the hierarchy your looking for power amp allows folder browsing add well. But not in a custom way like your looking for. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful on that subject if I come across something I'll be sure to put an answer here for you.
As for your distaste to EQ all headphones are different because they produce different ohms and the studio quality sound the engineers get in the studio are on headphones that are studio quality I used to work in a f film department and trust me consumer grade headphones don't even compare. The eq just allows me to tailor my music b based on the pair of headphones I'm using on a given day.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
redwaldo said:
Thanks for the guide! Here's some things I found useful when dealing with my own library: (unfortunately I can't post links because I'm a new user, but all of these can be found as the top link when you google them)
mp3tag is a very powerful tag editor, and very easy to use for batch operations.
id3remover can completely remove all metadata from a file. I found this useful because sometimes files have tags that editing programs can't read but will mess up library sorting in Google Music or your music player.
Album Art Exchange is a great website for very high quality and high resolution album art.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on mp3tag, I use it all the time on my collection. You can drag a folder over it and it just loads all the tags for you for updating/reviewing/modification. You can mass update tags like album, artist, etc. You can also use the tags to rename the files.
dBpoweramp - Swiss army knife of file conversion, it integrates into the windows right click menu, highlight your tracks, right click, convert to, pick your format and settings and go. It's multithreaded and will use all your cores to convert also. http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm It's a little pricey but it makes things so easy. It is fully functional for trial use if you want to test it beforehand.
Did this awhile ago, ended up up just using media monkey to organize and found a lot of the meta data myself.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2
My music library is very well-organized; I use a tool called beets to synchronize all my tags with the MusicBrainz database. As a result, on desktop, all my albums are sorted by album artist sort. However, I have been unable to find a single Android music app that pays any attention to the "sort" tags at all.
Apps I've tried:
Lineage/AOSP Music
Poweramp
Blackplayer
Foobar2000
Musicolet
AIMP
DoubleTwist
Oto Music
Half of these apps just sort the albums alphabetically by title (gross!). The rest sort by album artist (non-sort), so that half my library ends up sorted under T, for "The".
This is important to me because all my albums end up in a totally different order with album artist vs album artist sort. For example, "Miles Davis" goes under M, but "Davis, Miles" goes under D. So now when I open my phone, I can't find anything. Is there even a single app that gets this right?
Music folder>Artist folder>album folder with track number/name.
Poweramp works perfectly after it's configured.
Poweramp is managing a music library of 231gb; 778 folders and over 6500 songs for me on 2 twin N10+'s.
Tags are a waste of time because they generally aren't transferable. Playlists however are easily backed up and recreated with Poweramp as long as the whole music database is also backed up.
Thanks for your reply.
blackhawk said:
Music folder>Artist folder>album folder with track number/name.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My library is already in this exact format already, in fact. Just switching from "Album" to "Folder" view in Poweramp doesn't change anything, but I can see how I could rename all my artist folders to the sort album artist instead. While I'm at it, I guess I should prepend the release date to each album folder—this would get me the exact sorting I'm looking for. With a library manager, this kind of overhaul is still a pain, but at least it's doable. Thanks for the tip.
blackhawk said:
Tags are a waste of time because they generally aren't transferable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would have to disagree…I have a dual-boot system where Quod Libet, Cantata, and Lollypop on Linux, plus MusicBee on Windows, happily read the same files and all their tags. Android is the odd man out—probably because the Android MediaStore doesn't include the album artist
In any case, I think I answered my own question: GoneMAD. It can handle the sort artist tags just like a normal media player, and there's an artist>year sort option for the albums tab. All I could ever ask…somehow it managed to duck every single listicle I've read and it gets no attention on the Play Store. Go figure. I've been looking for this exact app for years.
murmurous said:
Thanks for your reply.
My library is already in this exact format already, in fact. Just switching from "Album" to "Folder" view in Poweramp doesn't change anything, but I can see how I could rename all my artist folders to the sort album artist instead. While I'm at it, I guess I should prepend the release date to each album folder—this would get me the exact sorting I'm looking for. With a library manager, this kind of overhaul is still a pain, but at least it's doable. Thanks for the tip.
I would have to disagree…I have a dual-boot system where Quod Libet, Cantata, and Lollypop on Linux, plus MusicBee on Windows, happily read the same files and all their tags. Android is the odd man out—probably because the Android MediaStore doesn't include the album artist
In any case, I think I answered my own question: GoneMAD. It can handle the sort artist tags just like a normal media player, and there's an artist>year sort option for the albums tab. All I could ever ask…somehow it managed to duck every single listicle I've read and it gets no attention on the Play Store. Go figure. I've been looking for this exact app for years.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to see you're organized. That's important with a music database.
I use Poweramp because it's rock solid and it's settings, all of them, can be 100% backed up and recreated at will. Advanced troubleshooting and throughput options. It's graphic equalizer is the best I've used and supports multiple presets that can be tagged to song or folder. The equalizer is a big deal and mandatory for me. I spent a big chunk of time dialing in the Buds+ with it.
It's only downside is it doesn't support video for MP4's and such.