[Q] Google Music and Album Art - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Where does Google music grab the album art from? Browsing through my collection the vast majority are horrific. I mean seriously small scale images, barely recognizable on the tablet.
Is there an app or program that allows a quick(ish) update of the album art? I dont have the time or energy to sift through 600 albums and update all the art manually.
It's just depressing. Google music isn't great by any means, but this is something so basic. Yet it seems to use the smallest files it can find and stretch them out to a horrible result?
Also is it true that there is no way to use a 3rd party music app with google music? No other player seems to be able to detect the music on my phone despite having several playlists pinned to the device?

Related

Album Artist tag in music player

I'm looking for a music player that reads the album artist (or band) tag of music files, if anyone knows of one. Or a means to modify existing players to read this tag. So far I've come up with absolutely nothing.
Appreciate it!
Do you mean like album art showing up? I re-tagged all my music on my pc, making sure artist/title/album and corresponding album art were all correct and the stock music player reads it just fine.
Bronk93 said:
Do you mean like album art showing up? I re-tagged all my music on my pc, making sure artist/title/album and corresponding album art were all correct and the stock music player reads it just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think he's referring to the fact that the Samsung player can't handle more than some small and finite number of artists. If you load too much music, it gives you an error when searching by Artist.
I just downloaded the new WinAmp and am definitely digging it. MixZing is also good if you need EQ.
What I mean is reading the ID3 tag value for %album artist% or %band%.
%band% is what WMP12 and iTunes use for their album's artist. %album artist% is used by most other players (foobar).
WMP12 uses the %artist% field for contributing artists on the track, which is how my whole music library is tagged (so none of my songs have ft. Kanye West in the title)
For an example song, The Fire by The Roots, featuring John Legend
%track% - 11
%title% - The Fire
%album% - How I Got Over
%album artist% - The Roots
%band% - The Roots
%artist% - The Roots; John Legend
%genre% Rap & Hip-Hop
The problem is that all of the music players I've encountered thus far read the %artist% tag as the album artist, so what I get is a ridiculous artist list like
The Roots
The Roots/Dice Raw
The Roots/John Legend
The Roots/Mos Def/Styles P./Dice Raw
The Roots/Truck North/P.O.R.N./Dice Raw
Which is a huge pain in the ass, because I can't easily select all the songs by the roots.
I don't have a problem with the artist list crashing in Samsung's Music Player, but I do have a problem with it and Cubed both crashing when attempting to search music. Also, Winamp's search just flat out turned up no results. Yet ringdroid's search works great. Lame.
I do have a gripe about Samsung's display of the album art, as every file has 500x500 px art embedded yet it displays junk art. But that's for another day.

[Q] Music Player App

Ok, so I've been using the stock android music player for over 2 months now. It has all the functionality I want in a music player except maybe editing tags (album name, artists, etc) and finding album art (Album Art Grabber is my current solution to this).
The problem I have been having with this player is that when transferring music to the phone via 'Windows Media Sync' option is that sometimes the album art will not appear on the phone (happens to quite a few albums) and also the tags will be messed up. For instance, just recently I turned the phone on and was browsing my music library and all of a sudden the song titles appeared in lower case (ie. 'Tighten Up' became 'tighten up') I know this is a small thing but I find it annoying a little. Other things like artists will appear as 'Unknown'.
Anyone experience these problems as well? What programs/apps do you guys use? I've tried out poweramp trial version and it does allow my to edit tags but I was wondering if there is an app that is a sort of one click 'Find Album Info' like in Windows Media Player?
Check the music player called Neutron on the app market
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

how to disable the Blur music app, only use Google

I cannot stand the Blur music app, mainly because you can't browse an artists songs by artist, only by their album (ie if I have an artist with 5 songs from 4 albums, I cannot listen to them in a row without going back and changing album, take up battery life). I downloaded the new Google one, like it, tho I don't care for the cloud part, but when I run it, after I've ended the Blur music app in task manager, it comes back on when I run the Google one.
If I freeze the Blur one via Titanium Backup, will I run into problems?
Also, anyone know if Blur is gonna update that? I do love their internet radio feature, I don't even use pandora. I like a lot on the GB Blur, just not the music app.
DiamondJay20 said:
I cannot stand the Blur music app, mainly because you can't browse an artists songs by artist, only by their album (ie if I have an artist with 5 songs from 4 albums, I cannot listen to them in a row without going back and changing album, take up battery life). I downloaded the new Google one, like it, tho I don't care for the cloud part, but when I run it, after I've ended the Blur music app in task manager, it comes back on when I run the Google one.
If I freeze the Blur one via Titanium Backup, will I run into problems?
Also, anyone know if Blur is gonna update that? I do love their internet radio feature, I don't even use pandora. I like a lot on the GB Blur, just not the music app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have completely uninstalled it with Titanium Backup and has been using Music Playerpro since.
Absolutely no problems a week since removing it.
go into menu>settings>applications>manage applications>All>Music (the motorola one) and select clear defaults. next time you load a music file it will ask you to select your media player and you can pick Google Music and set as default.

Why can't android developers make a working music player?

I'm sorry I know this isn't exactly the place to post this, and sorry for the all caps. But I AM TOTALLY ENRAGED BECAUSE NOBODY WOULD MAKE SOMETHING SO SIMPLE! and nobody would give an explanation as to why!
First of all, I know your music players can in fact, play music files, I tried every single music player avilable, yes I'm not kidding I tried all of them, over 50 of them. Most of them will start and play music. But that's not what's I'm after nor the reason I am so enraged.
Here is why:
THEY WON'T SHOW THE FULL ALBUM ART!!!!!
The ONLY music player, I repeat, the ONLY one out of over 50, that shows your embedded album art properly is the Neutron Music Player, but it's paied and I can't buy **** from the country I'm currently in. and the beep version is too old the touch controls suck.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
What's so difficult? You can make all these more difficult features work sometimes perfectly, but you can't make this very simple task of showing a jpeg image properly? Many of these features I have no idea why they have priority over showing an album art, especially when they seem more difficult to develop. I'm just glad I don't have an android tablet, I can't imagine how crappy it would look on one of those! I'm glad I use the iPad and all of my album art show perfectly in full quality it's just fantastic.
- lyrics and time stamped lyrics support. what's the point? most of you probably listen to music in your native language, what you can't understand what they're singing? Shouldn't you already know most of the lyrics in your collection? this seems like a difficult feature to develop because you have to make a scrollable surface for text ontop of the UI. Isn't that more difficult than just putting up a picture? in fact you have to show an album art anyway! why not just make it show the orginal one instead of the scaled down crappy version? it's like 5 minutes of coding!
- automaticly download album art and lyrics. I just don't get it, if you have pirated music you're too lazy to sort, get on a PC and there are plenty of programs for that! why would you do it over mobile network on your phone!?
-socal network intergration. I'm sorry I never use any of these features, I don't see the point of letting your friends know what you're listening every 5 minutes.
- n-band equalizer. get a better headphone, instead of your stock headset. it's 10 times more effective than any equalizer. the math involved in this must be very difficult especially those that can prevent capping or smooth the curve. Why does this have priority over the basic feature of showing an album art?
===============================================================================
A good music player is really very easy! but none of them will got that tiny final step! It's pissing me off!
Google Play Music: all you need to do is show the embedded album art, and get rid of that stupid blue background, just make it black!
Neutron Music Player: get someone to make you a new skin without all those 2006 style 3D effects.
Apollo Music Player: have an option to turn off the altomatic download, show the embedded album art.
================================================
ok I just saw another thread giving out a bounty for a fix. Maybe I should do the same. I'll also put up a bounty of $50 for a music player that satisfies the following requirements:
-has the basic functions of a music player (play, pause, shuffle, supports MP3/FLAC/AAC)
-displays tag information such as artist, album, title, etc. with full support for unicode, no question marks, random symbols or squares.
-shows the FULL album art embedded in the file it is currently playing, with good quality scaling method without stretching, and without size limit (at least not below 2mb)
-appealing UI. For example, Apollo. Or some of the Chinese music players. Or the MIUI/ Meizu MX defult music players. NOT LIKE PowerAMP/ PlayerPro/ Neutron Player. The album art must at least fit inside the screen, meaning 720pixels wide or more.
-Power efficient, uses NEON instructions.
-buttery smooth
-ad free
optional:
-has lockscreen (Jelly Bean default) integration with FULL album art embedded in the file it is currently playing, with good quality scaling method.
-shows embedded lyrics
It does NOT have to include these features:
-sort by album/artist/recents or any other categories. as long as it has a list of songs I'm happy.
-anything to do with internet, streaming, downloading,free music none of that.
-equalizers, effects
woo you got a new phone there, what is it? android?
yea, the HTC one X on the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean! here have a try! it's smoother than iOS!
oh cool! I heard it's also quad-core right? must be really fast!
of cours, browsing is a breeze!
how about music? I see it's got Beats Audio, is it a good music player?
errrr well it makes sound, if that's what you mean. but the sound chip isn't exactly top notch.
wait, what's that? why do your album arts look like crap?
errrr, for some reason all android music players show the crappy scaled down version?
What? why? you're been talking about all these high end hardware, the Infinity Display, the quad-core processor and the 1GB RAM. All these, but you can't even see the full album art? WTF? what a piece of ****!
Don't forget to add proper album track listing in order.. My pet peeve
Sent from my PG86100 using xda app-developers app
Sony device had cool media player specially Xperia S. It ported to all android device give a try.
Have you tried PlayerPro, its a great simple music player on Android. Fell in love with it after got sick of PowerAMP cause when you hit the back on PowerAMP it goes back to the library and not to my homescreen.
Just Another★Gamer said:
Have you tried PlayerPro, its a great simple music player on Android. Fell in love with it after got sick of PowerAMP cause when you hit the back on PowerAMP it goes back to the library and not to my homescreen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't show the full album art. haven you even tried it before suggesting?
play doesnt use embedded art?
Ive used a few players over my stay with android, my vote is with google play music. jet audio player was pretty kick ass too but i didnt like the restricted options for free version(and it let the system dsp take over if present)
for google play music personally like the blue background, after all it matches the ics/jb theme. and unlike jet player, doesnt get choppy on lock/unlock and orientation change.
btw, embedded album art for google play... miss something?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47004548/Screenshot_2012-08-23-23-43-20.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47004548/Screenshot_2012-08-23-23-44-05.png
on the second screenshot shows why jb lockscreen integration and "FULL album art" wont always work. the jb system handles the album art on that.
jacobgong said:
It doesn't show the full album art. haven you even tried it before suggesting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obviously I tried it, you know heres a funny thing I use PlayerPro and it does show full album art
N7player does a good job finding album art, better than iTunes IMO because I export my library from iTunes using iSyncr and iTunes has failed to locate album art for several albums I have however N7 can locate many more covers that are missing once on my phone in addition you can tell N7 to place the art in your music folder so it can be made available to other players if you don't like N7's interface. i keep just shy of 12GB of music on my phone and i'm pretty happy with the album art situation myself it's more complete than on my iPod or iPhone.
you also need to keep in mind that all players have to search a database in order to recover album art and making sure all the relevant info is in your ID3 tags will help alot in getting the correct art.
You don't need to whine to make a point (which you do, or maybe not as it seems that you didn't dig deep enough in your pursuit).
1) Here's a surprise for you: mobile phones, and particularly smartphones, have their screen turned off when they're used as MP3 players. They'll usually be stuck in a pocket, not displaying album art. They play music, and keeping the screen on to show the cover art takes a hit on the battery.
2) Here's another surprise for you: few people bother with album art. People play pirated music.
3) And here's another surprise for you:
most of you probably listen to music in your native language, what you can't understand what they're singing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is an utter falsehood. People will listen to whatever sounds cool to them, be it gangsta ebonics at its finest, Levan's Polka or J-Pop.
What has value in music apps is not cover art: that's tertiary for most people. What differentiates them is usually format support (yes, lossless formats are not a given in all players), sorting algorithms (yes, people want to sort their music) and interfaces (there I agree that an overhaul may be necessary in the top dogs).
Are you starring at your music album art while playing music and keep screen on?
I think most people just play music while screen off. Doesnt make sense. The most important of music player is how they produce sound quality! Not album art!
And one more things is go make you own music player if you good enough or DONT USE ANDROID!!!
BTW I prefer Google Play Music.
Cheer
ZN6 by Tapatalk 2
jacobgong said:
- lyrics and time stamped lyrics support. what's the point? most of you probably listen to music in your native language, what you can't understand what they're singing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol well i'm from Australia and you think I must love listen to the horrible crap thats the so called "real" mainstream western music.
Apparently OP doesnt know how to use android.
If you never used a Droid phone, then dont buy a highend one!
Sent from my Droid RAZR MAXX using Tapatalk
Rockbox.
mihovil13 said:
Apparently OP doesnt know how to use android.
If you never used a Droid phone, then dont buy a highend one!
Sent from my Droid RAZR MAXX using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the contrary, I'd start with the best phone possible. Otherwise you miss out on cool things. I'm very happy that I could pick the best Android phone of the time (Galaxy S) when I started using Android...
Hzu said:
Rockbox.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if only x.x
Am I the only one who found Rockbox a little annoying to use?
poweramp and playerpro both show embedded art
Just Another★Gamer said:
Am I the only one who found Rockbox a little annoying to use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? I found Rockbox the easiest to use. Simple, clutter-less, no-nonsense interface. The default Cabbie theme may not be that visually appealing though. So I changed to another one. At least it's a lot better.
Hzu said:
Really? I found Rockbox the easiest to use. Simple, clutter-less, no-nonsense interface. The default Cabbie theme may not be that visually appealing though. So I changed to another one. At least it's a lot better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I felt it seems to lack the nice interface that PlayerPro has.

[Q] Best music player to work with Google Music?

Hey guys,
I've been using GMusic for a while now, but I always found it very limited and not exactly to my taste.
Does anybody know a better music player that can load songs from GMusic?
danielfiller said:
Hey guys,
I've been using GMusic for a while now, but I always found it very limited and not exactly to my taste.
Does anybody know a better music player that can load songs from GMusic?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure if google put the music you buy onto your device or its streaming the music but you might want to take a look at cyangenmods apollo.
Trozzul said:
not sure if google put the music you buy onto your device or its streaming the music but you might want to take a look at cyangenmods apollo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It streams all your library, and that's what special about it.
Apollo doesn't support Google Music streaming.
Any other suggestions?
danielfiller said:
It streams all your library, and that's what special about it.
Apollo doesn't support Google Music streaming.
Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think there is a way to get it onto your device thought, i got one of their free albums and it was on my device even though data and wifi was turned off. dig around in the files maybe?
The music that's cached is on your device, but digging through the files won't do anything unfortunately, each one deeply encrypted, believe I've tried
If you're responding to me, make sure to quote me so I get an immediate email
Trozzul said:
i think there is a way to get it onto your device thought, i got one of their free albums and it was on my device even though data and wifi was turned off. dig around in the files maybe?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a way to do that, but then I lose the whole point of streaming - not having the files taking up space on my device.
The files you found in Apollo were probably some temp cache files leftovers.
So no suggestions?
Maybe someone else knows about an app like the one I'm looking for?
Maybe even some plugin that enables players to stream from Google?
been trying to find something for a while with no luck... I think its a great service, and the app isn't even that bad, but sometimes I just need that music to stream through another music program for a certain feature or option... or just because I say so! lol
(Most of my music I uploaded to the cloud was flac, so it is played back as 320kbps... In some areas I get only 1 bar of 3g, and at worst music playback may pause for 5-10 seconds... but even this is a rare occurrence... Others have complained about the quality, but I think it's great considering I have the options set for high quality playback only and still don't have issues)
what I don't quite understand, is the talk of 'lack of an api' for Google Music streaming.....
However, Android app's for DLNA or other wireless streaming, such as Bubble UPnP, and this app which streams to 'Sonos'? wireless speakers: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.youtec.android.macronos&hl=en
They DO support streaming from google music - the actual CLOUD (sorry it bothers me that someone names an app Cloud Music Sniper and flaunts allowing access to google music, then turns out its for the OFFLINE available apps that you pin for offline access? Oh and shockingly there is an app called Offline Music Importer that works the same - except it doesn't piss me off by implying it can access anything associated with my music on the cloud!) /end rant
So why are these streaming apps like Bubble UPnP able to access my Google Play Music collection on the cloud so I can play it back through my home receiver - yet I can't get it to work with a 3rd party music player at all? Hell, all I honestly want is a stupid visualizer, preferably that I can set as a live wallpaper... but they only seem to work with 1 out of every 5 songs that plays.... regardless of offline or streaming... and that REALLY confuses me =/
purplekush said:
been trying to find something for a while with no luck... I think its a great service, and the app isn't even that bad, but sometimes I just need that music to stream through another music program for a certain feature or option... or just because I say so! lol
(Most of my music I uploaded to the cloud was flac, so it is played back as 320kbps... In some areas I get only 1 bar of 3g, and at worst music playback may pause for 5-10 seconds... but even this is a rare occurrence... Others have complained about the quality, but I think it's great considering I have the options set for high quality playback only and still don't have issues)
what I don't quite understand, is the talk of 'lack of an api' for Google Music streaming.....
However, Android app's for DLNA or other wireless streaming, such as Bubble UPnP, and this app which streams to 'Sonos'? wireless speakers: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.youtec.android.macronos&hl=en
They DO support streaming from google music - the actual CLOUD (sorry it bothers me that someone names an app Cloud Music Sniper and flaunts allowing access to google music, then turns out its for the OFFLINE available apps that you pin for offline access? Oh and shockingly there is an app called Offline Music Importer that works the same - except it doesn't piss me off by implying it can access anything associated with my music on the cloud!) /end rant
So why are these streaming apps like Bubble UPnP able to access my Google Play Music collection on the cloud so I can play it back through my home receiver - yet I can't get it to work with a 3rd party music player at all? Hell, all I honestly want is a stupid visualizer, preferably that I can set as a live wallpaper... but they only seem to work with 1 out of every 5 songs that plays.... regardless of offline or streaming... and that REALLY confuses me =/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
found this baby:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169761
check it out
THANKS! Know a way to pick output device for the Web based version?
danielfiller said:
found this baby:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169761
check it out
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW! thank you so much for letting me know about this! :good:
I'm definitely gonna check it out and see how the streaming quality compares...
[sometimes it makes the difference between playing and buffering when using the Google Play Music app's settings for mobile streaming - the High, Normal, and Low quality setting]
Regardless, this is a good step in a good direction... I know Bubble UPnP app and even some file explorer apps could access cloud storage, including the google music account - so I'm glad someone finally incorporated that in a way that let other music players on the device see the cloud storage as if they were local!
As exciting as it is, I'm also cautiously optimistic... While this means that Google's All Access music service will become much more attractive and viable for multiple device use compared to it's competitors --- there will, of course, be issues regarding protecting digital rights. Already I mentioned the 'misleading' programs that allowed ON DEVICE/'pinned' music from Google Music to be played in 3rd party players, and some convert the file to a properly labeled mp3. Considering Google Play Music already allows for All Access subscription users to do the same to songs within their entire catalog (that is, 'pin' it to the device for offline play - which was really a surprise to me), this means those same programs can now convert the All Access music that is pinned to allow offline play into proper mp3 files.... Thus with some coding to make the process faster, one can essentially download any song they want from All Access and keep it as an mp3 - altho it is only meant to be a subscription service and the option to pin music from all access is just supposed to allow access to the subscription service without signal or without eating up data from a data plan.
I guess that means if Google Music wants their music streaming service to succeed, rather than taking away support for 3rd party players - they must provide an official API and a better means of protecting the songs stored for offline playback using a database and/or file level encryption for the 'pinned' songs. I'd hate to see the ability to use the service on other players be stripped and locked down even more to a single player due to these kind of concerns that Google surely already sees as an issue and is likely brainstorming solutions.
Question:
On the topic of Google Play Music, does anyone happen to know of a similar solution regarding Google Music Streaming on a DESKTOP ??
I have found gmusic (not the iOS app), but a standalone program that sits in the system tray...
http://gmusic.codeplex.com/
Some of the chrome plugins actually offer better features (last.fm integration, lyrics, etc....), but the one I found that said it allowed use of media keys didn't work for me...
This is the only one I found that allows me to A) not get my music player lost in a massive field of tabs, and B) change songs while playing a game!
The Main Player window, although, is nothing more than a customized browser window (like the ability to view webpages within winamp and other programs). It is nice that it is a separate icon not mixed in among other browsers, supports media keys, can be minimized etc ----
The one major thing I'm still unable to find a solution for, is the ability to select (non-default) audio output device!!
I have always had my pc connected to my receiver/surround sound system since I got 'my own' computer, so being able to select the audio output is crucial for me when playing music, as I direct the music through digital output to the sound system, but still want to hear other audio through the output jack.
Many times I'll have -Music through digital optical output, -Game SFX through pc speaker output, and -Google Hangouts (for voice chat with teammates) through USB headset.
However it isn't as common for a game to have audio device options as it is for a music/media player.... and always remembering to alt-tab after the games started to change the the default device is a major pain!
(Not to mention even if I'm just listening to music, I don't want to hear audio from a random ad... esp when I can't track down the source of the ad among my tabs, and it is blaring loud out the sound system along with my music)
Many people have complained/requested this to be a feature of Google Chrome - of course the Google team reading these complaints are thinking from the perspective of a simple web browser, something that usually has no need for such a feature...
However, plenty have brought up the issue of Google's Music Service being web-based, and thus such a feature is needed.
I'm not quite sure it is an issue that needs to be addressed by the Chrome browser, but it should definitely be an option within the Google Music web app itself - similar to how one can choose their input and output device in Google Hangouts, which is also a web-app run within a browser.
Of course, the best solution for me would be to find someone that has created something similar to GMusicFS that allows the music to appear as if it is local (similar to google drive's client) or if one of the better music players (Winamp, Foobar, MusicBee, etc.) had an extension somewhere that allows adding cloud music services like Google Music.
Anyways,
@danielfiller Thanks so much for pointing me to that app!
(sorry to any mods about how this post isn't -exactly- a proper topic for its location. Its just that Google Music is cross platform, not limited to mobile devices. While my question does not relate to any mobile platform, it is regarding the exact same functions the android app provides for the exact same streaming service.)

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