Yes, I know... iTunes sucks. But over the years I've got a stack of music ripped to my iTunes library and all of my iPod devices have died. I have a "leftover" Samsung S4 Mini I wonder if I can use as a replacement.

The Mini was my phone before I upgraded, and now it's just taking up space. "Let's put it to use," I thought.

I did some quick surfing on it, and the one article I read that seemed to be from a "reliable" source (Consumer Reports) ends up having you upload your library to Google's servers, and then streaming it back down to your device. That's not what I want to to. This ought to be simple -- I want to be able to put music files directly on the device, plug in some headphones, and get on with the mowing or other chores.

Anyone have a simple solution? Or is the simple solution just non-existent?

Thanks, all.

Can you convert to another format and then use the player, device, software of your choice?

mediamonkey works really well with android devices & playlists. I haven't used Itunes in ages (shudder to think about it), but it's playlist function is similar (that was the only thing I liked about Itunes).
Not 100% sure, but I'd bet you could install it, let it access your music folder, import all your playlists & sync your android extremely easily.

The short answer is no. iTunes will not recognize or download files to your S4.

You can install a file converter program on the computer that converts AAC files to a format your android will recognize (which is just about any other format) and then add them to your S4.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Can you convert to another format and then use the player, device, software of your choice?

Probably... I'm just not sure where even to start yet.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
mediamonkey (...) I'd bet you could install it, let it access your music folder, import all your playlists & sync your android extremely easily.

I'd be willing to give it a shot. Playlists were one of the good things about iTunes.

Simple answer: No. Longer answer is do you use PC or MAC?

If PC, just drag and drop your music onto your phone. If you have a MAC, you'll need to download Android File Transfer from Google to drag and drop.

For Playlists, you need to Export your playlists in iTunes (File/Export/Export Playlist if I remember right) in .m3u format and drag those files onto your phone.

If you have a PC, DoubleTwist Pro will act as iTunes and do it automatically, but doesn't work too well with MicroSD cards.

Thank you, DanH, I think this just got a lot easier.
I'm using PC. Maybe that makes it even easier?

What's the difficulty with DoubleTwist Pro and MicroSD cards? I'm not sure I understand.

First off, having a PC makes this much easier. I swear that Apple goes out of their way to make using an Android phone as hard as possible.

As far as DoubleTwist goes, it runs in the background and opens a window when you plug in a new device. You can choose to either save to the phone or microSD card. In my case, I've got over 200 GB of music and no microSD card I've used as been able to handle all of that at once. I usually have to use Windows Explorer and transfer music in blocks.

If you don't have as much music, you'll be fine with DoubleTwist.