[Q] Google Play Music questions... - Xperia Z1 Compact Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I just started using Google Play Music after giving up on Walkman as it does not allow for organizing my collection by genre (which would mean years of genre organization wasted...).
Anyway, as this is also my first Android phone, I would really appreciate if someone could help me with a couple of questions:
1) "Like" in lock screen: I would like to have a shortcut to the "like" button on the lock screen, as I want to teach Google my music taste so it can make better mixes for me... however I don't want to unlock the phone, open Play Music, swipe up for the "Now Playing" screen and then finally hit "Like" to do it...
2) Good album artwork support: I realized that Play Music just selected a random album artwork to display with all of a band's songs, regardless if they are of that album or not... is this a bug or what? The artwork itself is also not very high quality... perhaps it was already on my collection folder (which I copied to my SD card)?
3) How to see the album of a given song? When a song is playing, since the artwork does not match the actual album of the song (verified by a few songs and albums which I know the artwork well), I don't know how to check its album! It doesn't show neither in the lock screen or in the "now playing" Play Music screen... I actually need to hit the "Go to album" in the options menu in the now playing screen just to see its name...
4) Provided that #2 can be solved: is there a way to have the lockscreen show the artwork in full screen? Just to keep it less boring...
Many thanks!
Leo.

Related

Bugs/niggles with the built-in Music player

There is no way to *append* or *enqueue* songs to the Now Playing list, so you must create a playlist which will then lets you append - but not whilst it's playing - you must re-load the playlist (and possibly lose your place if you decided in the middle of the list that you wanted to extend it with another few albums). This is no major problem, since you can re-queue and navigate to where you were...
HOWEVER:
Once in the playlist screen when you choose "Add songs" from the Menu button and then choose the Artist - it displays *all* the artist's songs alphabetically (!) Very odd behaviour. Why doesn't it show you their respective albums as it does do if you choose to queue up a single album without first going into the playlist?
Sure you can add an album directly by going to the *albums* screen (from within the playlist), but it won't tell you who they're recorded by, so with a very large connection you simply have to know who your albums are by if you can't make out the thumbnail album cover...
Secondly, and most annoying of all is that if you choose to add songs to the playlist straight from the artist/album screen without first going into the playlist and choosing "add songs", it queues the albums' tracks in alphabetical *not* track order. All my tracks are MP3s and have clean v1 and v2 ID3 tags (with embedded album art) so I know they're not at fault - especially since if you add the albums from within the playlist, it orders them correctly.
Are these problems HTC's or Androids responsibility? It's difficult to tell if the player itself is a Sense app or native Android one with Sense mods since the Desire is my first foray into the Android OS.
I've tried almost every other highly rated free player in the market - MixZing, Museek, Vanilla, MortPlayer, Meridian, Cubed and they all either share some of the above behaviour or are just plain ugly and/or counter-intuitive.
The actual look/function of the built-in Music player is clean, simple and running in native resolution with no silly coverflow/3D effects - just regular browsing which I like, together with the excellent iPod Touch/iPhone-esque "drag/drop to reorder songs" feature, and I love the lockscreen widget (although its response time is sluggish to say the least when pausing a track).
The only other player I've found that allows proper enqueuing (it even gives the choice to append to the end or insert into the middle - thumbs up) and correct album/artist browsing and track ordering is Museek, but its interface is frankly pretty ugly and simply not as clean/efficient as the Desire's own - plus it lacks the lock-screen widget.
Does anyone know of any other (if only there were an Android version of IMO the very best Linux-based player - Amarok v1.4), or if there are rumblings of any of these "features" of the Desire's player being fixed?
Who should I be reporting to for bugfixes/feature requests (Android or HTC)?

Music player question

I have problem with my music player, in the default music player before I could scroll through albums by sliding the thumbnails pictures, now whenever I play music it's just single album, with fast forward and rewind buttons. I was looking for any settings, couldnt find any.
I want it to be like this
please watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGTn86QuHzE
It had this feature don't know what happened.
Please help.
found it, just select "play all" from artist, albums, or all songs.
but it's not organized , unlike nokia music player.
sorry I'm new to android.
its bcoz you've played the song from the albums list....
goto the song list and slide to all songs and play a song from it...
then you can slide through songs...

Music feat. Lyrics

Hi guys! I've read that many people want to have the one application that does two functions: Play music and display song lyric. The application MIUI Music does that kind of stuff and it also shows the lyrics for the song. What I wondered was if it was possible for the app not only to find and show the lyrics, but at the time of downloading the song, at the same time do the downloading of the lyrics, so that not only you can read it while your connected to the internet, but can save it in your phone. If any ideas on an existing app, please tell me. Thanks alot!
PowerAmp does that conveniently... just add the lyrics to a song via itunes or something similar before putting the song into your phone. A simple tap on the album cover while on poweramp will show/hide the lyrics

poweramp on mintberry

so i decided i wanted to change my homescreen, and wanted a music widget. had little luck finding one that supports the stock music player, so have recently installed poweramp, which seems like a great player, and has a nice widget.
the problems are that it tries to play all my mp4 videos and some small app sounds, which is annoying. is there a way to filter out the small files? as for the mp4s, ive tried to deselect the folder from my external sd\video folder, but every time i do that it either crashes the program or just reselects it. i think it sometimes crashes randomly also, but cannot be sure having only used it for a day.
also, ive downloaded a lot of album art, and works well within poweramp, but ive tried to go back to the original player and the old album art is displayed. is there any way to embed the album art back into the songs or whatever needs to be done?
sorry if these questions have been answered before, but ive had no luck searching or playing about in the settings myself.
might think of some more, but for now any help with the above would be great.
If you go to the settings, go to the folders/library section and click Music Folders it will come up with a little pop up type box called Folders Selection
it'll take a little while to load your whole folder list so dont worry, but when all your folders are shown, untick everything, and then find just the folders where your music files are stored and tick that. That way only files from those folders are played
And as for album art, there's no setting in poweramp for that as far as i know, and i dont know of any apps that do that, but there is one easy way to do it that should work perfectly, (it shows my album art on any player)
On your computer, download the Songbird player. Then set which folders are you library etc etc so all your songs come up in the player. Then get the album art files you've downloaded on your comp, and you can edit the album art of each song or whole albums.
To change the album art, click on the song or highlight all the songs in an album (to do this, click the first song on the album, hold the shift key, then click the last song, and all the songs in between will be highlighted too); and right click the selection.
Click view metadata
Where the artwork is displayed, click the replace button
In the box that pops up, navigate to the folder where your album art is stored, click the correct album art and click open, then close the metadata box by clicking the okay button at the bottom and the album art should be changed.
It is a bit of a long process if you have a lot of albums, but at least it doesn't mess up like those automated album art changers or tag editors you can download...
Hope this helps
nice one
although like i said ive tried that folder selection thing. ive unticked the videos one, and it just crashes, or fails to work.
Hmm... i've no idea why that happens.
Go the poweramp page on google play or go to poweramp's own site and email them. That seems to be an issue with the app itself

question about stock music player

so i have a question, and this may be an ignorant one... apologies...
so the stock music player for Note 4/3/S4/S5 (basically the same as far as im concerned)...
there is an option under the menu button to add tracks to the "now playing" list. every time i go through and add songs to the list it never plays that song(s) next. It's like it just ignores that i added songs to the now playing list.
just a little background here...
so i start up the music player and go through the "tracks" and select one to start playing. (also i keep the player on shuffle), while listening to the track i hit the menu button and select "add to now playing", it takes me to the "tracks" screen where i select 1 or more tracks and hit "done".
So now i am thinking that after it finishes the current song that it should kick over to one of the ones i just added to the list, right? WRONG... it just shuffles to something else in the "tracks" list, the "tracks" list being the 1 big list of all the tracks on the phone.
am i doing something wrong? or is this meant to be used another way or what?
any answer is appreciated.
raptorseye said:
so i have a question, and this may be an ignorant one... apologies...
so the stock music player for Note 4/3/S4/S5 (basically the same as far as im concerned)...
there is an option under the menu button to add tracks to the "now playing" list. every time i go through and add songs to the list it never plays that song(s) next. It's like it just ignores that i added songs to the now playing list.
just a little background here...
so i start up the music player and go through the "tracks" and select one to start playing. (also i keep the player on shuffle), while listening to the track i hit the menu button and select "add to now playing", it takes me to the "tracks" screen where i select 1 or more tracks and hit "done".
So now i am thinking that after it finishes the current song that it should kick over to one of the ones i just added to the list, right? WRONG... it just shuffles to something else in the "tracks" list, the "tracks" list being the 1 big list of all the tracks on the phone.
am i doing something wrong? or is this meant to be used another way or what?
any answer is appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First make sure you have all of your music correctly organized in a neat folder structure in "Music" folder on your internal or external sdcard. What you do is go inside your "Music" folder and create folders for each and every artist. Inside each artists' folder you want to have a separate folder for each individual album. Name the album folder correctly. Inside each album you will have all the mp3's along with the album art which needs to be named "AlbumArt.jpg" (or other compatible method). Even if you have random tracks and not the entire album, you still need to use the folder structure so that the music player can do the task you want. This should do the trick. songs in a specific album folder will be able to shuffle and your track list should play the songs you put in the now playing list. This is my only suggestion for your problem. Give it a try if you haven't done this already.
I appreciate your help, but f**k that lol. That would take forever. I will just keep ignoring that feature. Haha.
But thank you for the reply, I appreciate it
When working with mp3's the folder structure is crucial for media devices to be able to sort and display tracks correctly. Organization is key here. When making an mp3 cd or DVD, the same thing applies. You have to do this or fumbling to fing a specific song or album is gonna take a long time fumbling through one giant pile of mp3's in one single directory. I like things simple and organized and thats how mp3's need to be done. You might want to get on board with the program or youll always be fighting the system lol.

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