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I'm an avid music lover, and over my long life collected many rare CDs. I made MP3s of these CDs and had happily listened to them on my iPhone using iTunes.

This week I switched to Android (Samsung Galaxy s10e). I painstakingly uploaded all of my Music folder from my Windows 10 PC onto Google Play Music using the Chrome extension.

Only 3/4s of my MP3s successfully uploaded. Under Google Play Music > Settings> Music from My Computer, there's no mention of any failures.

After a quick look, it seems that the rarer recordings were the items skipped. These recordings are not in Google Play Music's library, so now I'm fearing that I can only upload MP3s that are in Google's database.

Questions:

  1. Can anyone confirm this theory?
  2. If it's true, what can I do to get all my MP3s, as they are, onto this Android phone and be able to organize them into playlists and listen to them?
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  • How many MP3s are in your collection?
    – Morrison Chang
    Jan 13, 2020 at 4:03
  • I don't know about Google Play Music because I don't use Google products as much as possible. But playing MP3 isn't a tricky thing. Just copy the MP3 files to Android device over MTP or through SD card or any other way you like (many questions on this site will help you with that). Then any media player like VLC would auto scan all mp3 (and other media) files. Android itself scans and categorizes files on their file (mime) type which the media player and gallery apps can query. So you don't need any special setup.
    – Irfan Latif
    Jan 13, 2020 at 9:39
  • @Morrison Chang I have about 10,000 MP3s
    – Marnie A.
    Jan 13, 2020 at 12:08
  • @Irfan Latif. Thanks, I can try that, but will it allow me to organize the MP3s into playlists? I need more that just a file browser to be happy with this phone. Already I'm seething over the fact that Android Spotify doesn't work wi-fi only. I'm trying to determine if I need to try to return this phone before my 15-day cancellation period ends.
    – Marnie A.
    Jan 13, 2020 at 12:09
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    @MarnieA I would also double chexkt that the files that Google Music had problems with are actually MP3 and not some DRM format that iTunes uses.
    – Morrison Chang
    Jan 13, 2020 at 14:16

1 Answer 1

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While I can't confirm it, I'm pretty sure Google Play Music needs to recognize the song to be able to show it in its web interface, much like Spotify does.

So instead of using Google Play Music, I plugged my phone into my Windows PC with its USB-C cable. Here, I could see the phone as a drive on the PC. It's a Samsung Galaxy s10e, and fortunately both the phone and the SD card were formatted to show some typical folders, including one called Music.

Using File Explorer, I copied my MP3s from my PC to the phone into the Music folder (on the SD card, but the Internal Music folder would have been fine as well).

Then I chose one of the many MP3 player apps. I did try VLC first since I've used it for years for other purposes and trust it. Because I wanted to do more with the music (e.g., create playlist), I opted to go with Musicolet. Both apps offer to scan your phone and SD card. When you give the app access, it pulls in the files, and then you can go from there.

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