Google Music - now playing - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Google Music must store its "now playing" information in a file. If you play a song, pause it, reboot your phone, open Google Music and hit play, it'll continue playing where you left off before you rebooted your phone.
I'm trying to figure out how I can "bookmark" a particular spot on a track so that if I play another file, I can jump back to the first track at the bookmarked spot.
Anyone have any idea where this file would be or how I can go about looking for it?
Thanks!!

Perhaps it's embedded into the cached music file itself? Just a guess but it would make sense to me if I were to create an app like that.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

If anyone cares, I found it
/data/data/com.google.android.music/shared_prefs/Music.xml
I created two scripts, one that backs up this file and one restores it. Takes care of what I need done. Android is awesome.

Related

An Alternate Cloud Music Player

I am not sure where to post this question. This seemed like the best place.
I was wondering if there are any cloud music services for Android that are not Amazon Cloud Player or Google Play Music. Both of them disappoint me in some way. I use to use Amazon but since they switched to a service closer to Apple's, I am just turned off of using it. I do not like being limited to only uploading 250 songs to my player. I do not need the matching service at all. My mp3 files are fine as is and I feel that automatic uploads are overrated. I do not mind waiting a few minutes to upload my own files and really Amazon is not letting me do this anymore, as far as I know.
Google Play Music has never really clicked with me. I love how the playlist sync but I do not like how it mixes the pool of online and offline songs. It also seems to be too combersome for me to specifically tell it, I want my entire library on my device and get it to automatically download all of my music. Using Play Music is a lot like using an iOS device, so simple that I feel like I have lost some functionality. I could just be using it wrong but it just is not clicking even as I have been forced back into using it.
I want a cloud music service that allows me to set up playlist that I can accesses on both of my computer, android tablet, and android phone. I also want it to allow me to automatically download new music that I put up there on my computer onto my tablet and phone. Making it clear what is on the cloud and on my device is handy also. Besides these two programs, are there any others that do this or am I just not seeing Amazon or Google to their fullest potential.
Thanks.

Google Play Music.

I've started using Google Play Music as my media player. But when I buy something and "keep it on device" I can't find where its downloaded too. I've searched all through my phone. Sometimes I use the HTC music player nut I can't access anything I've bought from the Play store until I download it to my computer and copy it to my phones music folder. It's pretty frustrating. Does anyone else have this problem? Or know another work around? Thanks in advance
Diesel321 said:
I've started using Google Play Music as my media player. But when I buy something and "keep it on device" I can't find where its downloaded too. I've searched all through my phone. Sometimes I use the HTC music player nut I can't access anything I've bought from the Play store until I download it to my computer and copy it to my phones music folder. It's pretty frustrating. Does anyone else have this problem? Or know another work around? Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPM does keep the tracks on your device, but not is a format that can be accessed by other music players. It caches music in /data/data/com.google.android.music/file/music as mp3's with numeric filenames like 10.mp3, 11.mp3, etc. and the indexing of track Title/Album/Artist to the cached mp3's is stored in /data/data/com.google.android.music/databases/music.db
That's just plain stupid..... I paid for the music and should be able to move it to where I want on my own device. I love Google but they do some stupid things. Such as that and not letting you merge 2 separate Google accounts. Thanks a bunch though
Sent from my HTC One using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Yeah it's stupid. You're better off buying from Amazon.
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4
Kinda stupid, I agree. However, if you're storing music on your phone, you might as well plug in your phone, and just copy the music over to the folders you want, which will preserve file titles/tags.
I actually like Play Music .... but this closed music management is terrible. You can not choose where your music is stored and you can't open your music with another app. As it has been said above, there is the possibility to read out the music.db. So I've written me an app, that copies my MP3 files from Play Music to the sdcard and extended them with the ID3 meta data such as title, artists, albums and coverart. Now I can play the music with every app and theoretically even share.
Of course the whole thing is only one solution for rooted phones. But it makes play music a little more comfortable.
I even found a way to save music from AllAccess, but I'm not going to publish this App Version in the foreseeable future because of legal problems.
I would also like to create help thread here in XDA, but unfortunately I must have 10 posts written , before I can create am own thread in the developer forum.
Here is a Link to to the Play Store: Unfortunately I can not post links yet. Search 'Play Music Exporter' on Google Play.
Arcus92 said:
I actually like Play Music .... but this closed music management is terrible. You can not choose where your music is stored and you can't open your music with another app. As it has been said above, there is the possibility to read out the music.db. So I've written me an app, that copies my MP3 files from Play Music to the sdcard and extended them with the ID3 meta data such as title, artists, albums and coverart. Now I can play the music with every app and theoretically even share.
Of course the whole thing is only one solution for rooted phones. But it makes play music a little more comfortable.
I even found a way to save music from AllAccess, but I'm not going to publish this App Version in the foreseeable future because of legal problems.
I would also like to create help thread here in XDA, but unfortunately I must have 10 posts written , before I can create am own thread in the developer forum.
Here is a Link to to the Play Store: Unfortunately I can not post links yet. Search 'Play Music Exporter' on Google Play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great Idea thanks for sharing
here's the link ->> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.arcus.playmusicexporter

Google Play Music, On Device and Recently added to Library

Hi All,
So I've recently just got the Nexus 5, absolutely great phone (come from an iPhone) but I just have one big issue with it.
I have a fairly large library of songs currently in Play Music, and as many people I like to download certain albums and artists to listen to at certain times, while leaving others out. As I understand it you select the option to download these artists to the device, then in the play music app go to my library then select 'on device' and it will only play music you have selected to be downloaded, correct?
Not correct, for some reason there's a load of different albums and artists showing that 1. have not been downloaded to my device, and 2. seem to have been picked from complete random and dumped into my 'on device' library. I don't seem to have to stream these, but they're not showing as downloaded (still have the option to 'download to device'), so I literally have no idea whats going on....
Anyone else had this issue? or know of any known bugs that cause it?
Any help would be hugely appreciated as it's driving me mad!
Cheers.

[Question] - Music/Audio book Advice

Hi!
I'm having trouble finding an app, or even two apps, that'll suit my needs. I've got music and audio books all locally on my phone in separate folders. I'd like to be able to play my audio books in order and also separately shuffle all the music I have. I think if I could find a music app that let me specifically point to a folder to shuffle that would help a lot! Also, streaming isn't really an option.
Right now I've got Play Music that mixes in all my audio books between my songs. Not ideal! I'm on an S8+ if that matters.
Thanks for anyone who has advice for me.
After lots of fiddling I found a solution.
I hid the Audio Book folder.
Basically what I did was use Astro File Manager to add a dot to the beginning of my audio book's folder's name (and gave it a slightly different name just to make sure), and that made it disappear out of Google Play. Then the audio book reader I use, Smart AudioBook Player, can read hidden folders. I've now successfully separated my audio books from my music. So whenever I feel like it, I can jump into a book where I left off, or go to a random song!!
I hope this helps someone else.

[UCCW] Make a widget/button that plays one song

Hi all,
I'm putting together a puzzle for high school students to solve and I have 4 smart phones that I would like to use to play a specific song. I can get UCCW to open to a specific file folder and then the students can tap the file from there to play the song but I'm trying to make it fool-proof. I would like the widget to automatically open the music file and play it immediately. Does anyone know if this is possible? I will probably leave the music player up once it's opened so kids can replay it, but if it closes, I want the song file to pop right up and start playing when the widget is tapped.
Thanks

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