2

I spent an hour trying to get this to work so I could get some sleep in my noisy hospital bed last night.

I wanted to listen to some noise on loop. I downloaded some waves lapping type music.

It's on my internal SD and is an mp3.

Clicking the file in Astro browser doesn't open the file in a player fully but only a popup preview window. It's in the foreground, doesn't offer many controls and stops playing when the focus is removed.

Searching for the file in all 3 of my players doesn't result in anything, even after a restart. I have also tried a SD card rescan utility from the play store.

Music apps I tried were Fusion, Bubble UPNP and the Samsung Music App. All of which seem to rely on some internal media index. Frustratingly I can't simply browse to the file from inside the apps, I have to search the library.

It should not take an hour and a post to here to figure out how to manually play a simple file, added to my phone in such a way.

It would be great if it were like Windows or osx and allow the user to "Open with... ", and then select the app. I know you can dig in and change this, but it's a more permanent solution for a temporary requirement.

Anyway I must be loosing my mind:)

How can I add this file to my library from within Android or otherwise open this file in a full player to make use of controls like loop etc?

Update from a comment on an answer:

It's mp3, and plays in the popup player just fine. Perhaps the tags are corrupted and somehow blocking it from appearing in the library. I tried an mp3 tag utility and it can't see the file in the folder. So perhaps it is corrupt in some way.

Improve this question
2
  • How did you download it? Usually the downloading app should cause the new file to be added to what you call the "internal media index" without any action on your part.
    – Dan Hulme
    Oct 1, 2014 at 21:30
  • Firefox, then I moved it to its own folder, then tried the music folder.
    – square_eyes
    Oct 2, 2014 at 2:04

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
0

As already suggested your files are most likely wrong tagged or not tagged at all.

In order to be recognized by apps relying on meda scanning, mp3 files need to contain at least a valid "title" id(3) tag.

On linux you can check your file with the tool "eyeD3" which can be installed on debian based distris from the package: eyed3

A simple:

eyeD3 /path/to/mp3/file

should give you all id information.

If there is no title tag you can tag by:

eyeD3 -t yourtitle /path/to/mp3/file

If you push this file now to your device and perform a reboot it should be recognized by the media scanner.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    Does anyone know why players insist on not showing mp3's that aren't tagged? Why do they care?? What speaks against just doing the obvious thing and picking up ALL mp3 files?
    – antred
    Aug 11, 2017 at 8:02
1

If it doesn't turn up in the library even after a reboot (which should definitely have triggered the media scanner to add it to the library), the only reason I can think of is some .nomedia file being in the path. You can try to analyze that (finding whether there is one), or...

There are media players not using the library, mainly for FolderPlay & AudioBooks. Using one of those, you can navigate to that folder from within the app, and play the files. If that doesn't work either, the files might be corrupted or using an unsupported format.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    It's mp3, and plays in the popup player just fine. Perhaps the tags are corrupted and somehow blocking it from appearing in the library. I tried an mp3 tag utility and it can't see the file in the folder. So perhaps it is corrupt in some way.
    – square_eyes
    Oct 2, 2014 at 2:08
  • Especially that tagging problem is an important detail, so I've copied that information into your original question. I'd try copying the file to your computer to check with some other MP3 software. There are tools recognizing errors in MP3 files and giving detailed information on those – but that's no longer an Android issue then: if you need closer details on this issue, maybe SuperUser is a good place to ask (make sure to check their /help/on-topic first to confirm).
    – Izzy ♦
    Oct 2, 2014 at 8:51
  • Had the same problem with file downloaded from Torrents. Wondering who put it there.
    – Kees C. Bakker
    May 21, 2015 at 8:28
0

I found an album that android would refuse to recognise, until I renamed the files. I'm guessing android doesn't like the three dots (elipsis):

Original name:

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - 05 - The Rest Will Follow

New name:

05 - The Rest Will Follow

Improve this answer
1
  • To be exact, Android (and Unix) doesn't like file that starts with dot. Related: What are dot-files? on our sister site, Ask Ubuntu.
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Sep 16, 2015 at 1:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .