New phone with Lollipop (5.0.2) OS - not seeing my music files

[davd_indigo]

I just changed phones and providers. I went with Cricket and a Moto E phone. The phone and connection are much peppier than my previous LG-LS720 phone and Virgin Mobile service.

 

But after my micro-SD card was inserted into my new phone many of the files were NOT visible. It seems that files I recorded originally as MP3's (mostly radio shows recorded streaming using TotalRecorder) were being recognized. But it seems that files I ripped with WIndows Media Player and loaded directly onto the SD card (previously on an earlier phone) using a USB cable are NOT being recognized.

 

 

I googled this problem and found a suggestion that I delete the contents of the Music folder on my phone and recopy the music files. I did this as a "Sync" to my phone using WMP. 4 of the albums out of about 40 or so show up on the phone. I get the same results when looking at the albums in Google's "Play Music" and "Winamp". When I look at the files in the FileManager app, all of the songs show up but I can't play them. They are listed as .wma files.

 

I had a similar problem about 5 years ago with a 7" Acer tablet playing music. As I recall, the problem with playing music on the Acer tablet was that only the first 3 or 4 songs of an album could be played After shipping the tablet back to tech support, it came back with the same problem. Later a new version of Google's music playing app worked with my music files. .

 

 

[1001gear]

Change the extension on one and see if that does any good.

[MikeRivers]

Do you suppose that the player app that's installed on your phone doesn't recognize or play WMA files? Most of the apps that work with media files simply ignore (and don't display) files with extensions that they can't decode. Simply changing the file name extension might fool your player into displaying the file name, but it won't play the audio.

 

There's some history here:

 

http://forums.androidcentral.com/t-g...wma-files.html

 

Since 2012, somebody has come up with a player app that handles the WMA format. Visit your friendly local Google Play Store. HD Universal Player looks like it'll do the job.

[davd_indigo]

Thanks Mike. I'm going to have to wait till the weekend to fool with this again. I did try 2 other music player apps besides Winamp and Google Play Music and neither of them worked. I read someplace about SDCard Manager and moving the files to a different folder.

 

This is such a basic function, Google should have their act more together than this. IMO. This is why I'm glad I've collected physical media over the years. CDs and vinyl. I can always recopy, reload or re-rip if needed. I've spent a total of $.99 on amazon for one mp3 file.

[davd_indigo]

I went by the Cricket wireless store after work yesterday. The guy there downloaded MediaConverter and kicked off a conversion to MP3 for three albums that are stored on the phone but not recognized. This ran a very long time. Hours. After some hours I looked at WInamp and Google Play Music and the files are still not showing up.

 

Next, I think I'm going to try re-ripping a CD to my device. I found the following youtube video on this.

 

 

[davd_indigo]

After some pondering, I remembered that several years ago (maybe 5 or 6) when my (newly purchased) tablet was unable to properly play my mp3 albums, I read someplace about Poweramp. I purchased it (about $5) , downloaded it and it actually worked. So this morning I searched in the Google Play Store for it and downloaded it. And Google remembered that I had purchased it previously.

 

It seems to have worked. I plugged in some headphones and did a quick test. All my albums are showing up and I was able to listen to them. This was a big deal to me because my phone is my MP3 player when I go walking or biking for exercise.

 

A happy ending.