Android Music Stats Sync (Ratings, Playcounts etc)

[jadjam]

Hi people,

Just thought I'd point out an app for us android owners who are craving for decent sync with mediamonkey. It's a music player app called MusicPlayer Pro, been trying it out and it seems pretty good. Lots of interesting customisations and it can read tags by mediamonkey and other players for ratings, playcounts etc, its the best solution I've seen so far. Only problem is syncing back to mediamonkey it seems because it uses a separate database to deal with all the different tags music players use.

Anyone found anything better?

[Wargazm]

thanks for the tip. A question just to clarify: you're saying it can read the playcounts/ratings from MM, but not write any changes back to MM?

[jadjam]

Yeah, I'm afraid it doesn't look like there is anyway to write changes back to MM. I thought there was at first through the use of an external database but it seems its only compatible with iTunes and Songbird. Maybe there's an extension or script for MM that can import the database the app creates for iTunes?

I found a guide from the official forum; http://www.aplayerpro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=89

[Wargazm]

thanks for the reply.

sigh...I'm about to switch to android and I'm really anxious that I won't find anything that fits my needs. I don't even need playcounts synced back and forth, just ratings.

[jadjam]

MM is great but if you really want to sync ratings, I think you're only options are the iSyncr (actually a really good app) android app and iTunes (horrible!), doubletwist and its android player or winamp and its android player. I think a few apps work well with Songbird too. Oh I think meridian has some basic support for MM's ratings.

I'm looking for the same functionality as you and there doesn't seem to be anything near perfect at the moment.

[kazadharri]

I have a Samsung Fansinate and would like to use it as my player. Do I use this app to snyc just the playlist and counts, or is it an all in one app. Also What App are you using on the phone? Just the stock one?

Thanks,

Jeff

[zombiefly]

I am 99.9% there with this in theory. I have a player on android that exports playcounts, skips etc to xml, I have a last.fm import script that syncs lastfm plays back to MM.
All i need now is someone with the time to adjust the script to use the xml from the android player as I simply don't have the time to spend on this.

If anyone can help with the vbs scripting side of things, check this thread:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 19&t=52546

[kazadharri]

What Player are you using? I am also thinking about "rooting" the phone, and wonder if that will cause any issues.

[ACraigL]

Is there any progress here? I'm interested in migrating away fully from iTunes to MM4, and I am currently evaluating Music PlayerPro, but now finding myself in the same situation -- I can't write ratings back to MM4.

Any working solutions yet?

[Lowlander]

No, MM4 is a bit more sync friendly, but otherwise there is just this intent on making an Android player: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 19&t=57366

[rausch101]

Great news. I finally have a seamless and flawless sync going on by doing the following:

• Get PlayerPro: https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rpro&hl=en
• Set "Rating System" in PlayerPro Settings to "Music files"
• Change ratings in PlayerPro or MediaMonkey
• Make sure you don't have a file open in PlayerPro that you changed or else MediaMonkey won't be able to copy it.
• Sync in MediaMonkey.

It will prompt you if you want to overwrite from your phone to MM, or you can disable that. It works perfectly. FINALLY

I have a Motorola Atrix 4G on AT&T
MediaMonkey 4.0.0.1399
Phone set to "USB Mass Storage" in debugging mode

[ACraigL]

@rausch101:

That makes sense -- I even considered it for a while, but the problem is that it copies over the whole song, rather than just the metadata for the ratings. A preferrable solution would be MM having access to the PlayerPro library, or vice-versa, so only this information transfers. I suppose it's unlikely, but corruption could occur during the copy (not to mention it takes a whole lot longer) and may result in data loss.

[rausch101]

@rausch101:

That makes sense -- I even considered it for a while, but the problem is that it copies over the whole song, rather than just the metadata for the ratings. A preferrable solution would be MM having access to the PlayerPro library, or vice-versa, so only this information transfers. I suppose it's unlikely, but corruption could occur during the copy (not to mention it takes a whole lot longer) and may result in data loss.

Agreed that would be the preferable solution. But I'm quite thrilled with this implementation!

[ACraigL]

I actually found a kind of flaw with this. Because my music library, even my playlist, is too large for my SD card (I also keep video on there), I use a smart playlist that limits the tracks to 12GB of random songs. The sync-back logic only works for songs on an active, or last synced playlist.

Since the smart playlist re-randomizes every load, the songs on the device are not necessarily, and in fact often not, the same songs in the smart playlist. As a result, the sync-back does not always occur.

I wonder if there cpuld be a way to choose a sync-back playlist (i.e. the whole library) instead of the device playlist to cover this use case.

[Aff]

Great news. I finally have a seamless and flawless sync going on by doing the following:

• Get PlayerPro: https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rpro&hl=en
• Set "Rating System" in PlayerPro Settings to "Music files"
• Change ratings in PlayerPro or MediaMonkey
• Make sure you don't have a file open in PlayerPro that you changed or else MediaMonkey won't be able to copy it.
• Sync in MediaMonkey.

It will prompt you if you want to overwrite from your phone to MM, or you can disable that. It works perfectly. FINALLY

I have a Motorola Atrix 4G on AT&T
MediaMonkey 4.0.0.1399
Phone set to "USB Mass Storage" in debugging mode

This doesn't work if "Level volume when synchronising" is activated! Probably in order to avoid overwriting of the original by a levelled one.
I'm quite unhappy with this, it seems there is no solution yet to sync back song ratings as meta info from android.

As a workaround MM should be able to read, compare and sync back only the file tags (from usb mass storage), not the entire file!