My MP3 player hasn’t been working well for a while, the battery barely holds an hour’s worth of charge. So, I decided to take an old smartphone , delete everything I could off of it, upload music files onto it and use it as a music player. After I changed a handful of files from WMA to MP3 I was go to go. Mostly. I have two questions for you kind folk here on the forum. The files are in alphabetical order by title. Is there a way to separate them-perhaps by genre or maybe by artist? My other question is I ripped a song off a CD that was burned for me and instead of it showing up as the song that plays (Don Henley’s “Everything is Different Now”) it displays a song sung by Maria Callas. No matter what I’ve tried I can’t rename the file. Is there something that can be done or am I stuck with it?

My Daughter uses a 9 year old iPhone 3G for music.

I have no idea if any of this will help but...
The current default iPhone player will list, sort and play by either...
Playlist
Artist
Album
Song Title
Genre
in addition you can search for a song via entering some partial lyrics contained in it.

I would be surprised if an Android phone wouldn't do similar.

Perhaps a 3rd party app would work better? IDK.

iTunes on the computer will allow you to rename a song (or any other of its info) via the "song info" menu item. Just like editing the EXIF info of a photo.

I only have experience with iPhones; is it an iPhone? I have a very old iPhone which I use as a music player for my birds. I have it docked with a music player. I have the music I want to play for them when we are gone in a “Playlist.” You can create a playlist in anyway you want using iTunes; song title, artist, genre, etc. I too have had the problems of a ripped song having the wrong title and have just let it be; I actually haven’t even looked into changing it as I don’t care as long as the music plays.

quote:

Originally posted by StorminNormin:
I only have experience with iPhones; is it an iPhone? I have a very old iPhone which I use as a music player for my birds. I have it docked with a music player. I have the music I want to play for them when we are gone in a “Playlist.” You can create a playlist in anyway you want using iTunes; song title, artist, genre, etc. I too have had the problems of a ripped song having the wrong title and have just let it be; I actually haven’t even looked into changing it as I don’t care as long as the music plays.

I apologize, I left that part out, it is a android phone. I can sort of see your point about not being too worked up about the song title and artist, just so long as it plays.

Android files are organized like Windows files. Plug the phone into a computer, browse in windows explorer to the files on the phone, right click on a file and look at its properties.

You should see artist, title, genre, album, etc. This could be a long and tedious process, FYI.

Maria Callas. That brings back memories of my high school days. Heard her at the Met, in NYC, many times.

Different music playing apps will let you organize by Genre or playlist etc.

I've tried a bunch of file naming apps to try and fix problems with my music files and none of them seem to work. Good luck with that part of the issue.

Android phone is the best on that area, basically you can download any music on YouTube convert it to mp3 and drag and drop to your phone.

What type of Android phone do you have?

There are certain apps that do a very good job of identifying music files and organizing them for you.

I understand that Samsung's own music app does this quite well. But you need a Samsung phone for that. I would surmize there are other apps available to do this in the Google Play Store.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Maria Callas. That brings back memories of my high school days. Heard her at the Met, in NYC, many times.

I don’t mean to imply anything against Maria Callas, she had a wonderful singing voice, I am just perplexed that the music file that actually is Don Henley shows up as Maria Callas singing “Oh se una volta sola-Ah mon Crediam Miarti”.

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:
What type of Android phone do you have?

It’s a Alcatel one touch.

quote:

Originally posted by SBrooks:
Different music playing apps will let you organize by Genre or playlist etc.

I've tried a bunch of file naming apps to try and fix problems with my music files and none of them seem to work. Good luck with that part of the issue.

Yeah, I went into iTunes and changed everything I could, song title, artist, songwriter. It still shows up as Maria Callas. *shrug*

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and I use the standard Music app. IMO, much, much better than iTunes. I use E.A.C. in my laptop to rip my CDs into FLAC files organized into folders, including the cover art. I name the folder with the artist, then album title. All of ripped folders are in a master "FLAC" folder, which gets copied onto my Samsung's microSD card. On the music app in my phone, I organize the albums by folder, so whenever I open the music app, it lists all of the albums by artist in alphabetical order, with album title.

I've used the same music player program for my computers and my phones. It's free, with some advanced features. For a small price, you can remove ads and/or get even more features.

I copy and paste albums from my computer to the phone and it finds music files and sets up the albums. You can also set up playlists.

Just type in jet audio (yes, lower case) in Google Play and install it. Works great, many useful features.

You may want to get the same program for your computer.

There are lots of music players that will organize your music in any way you can imagine.

I use one called Neutron. Its interface is a little clunky, but it is optimized for better sound. Some other players have slicker interfaces. Take your pick.

Oddball described how to rip your music to files. I also use EAC and rip to FLAC files, which are CD quality, but bigger than the fairly crappy sounding mp3 files many use. EAC will generate the tags (labels) that let your music player organize the music.

Or you can just buy your music in digital file format from whatever source you like.

I use my regular phone. Storage is cheap now - you can put a lot of music on a phone. My phone has 128 gig of internal storage and a 256 gig SD card in it.

I use VLC on the phone because I prefer playing FLAC files, but it also does all the sorting you want.

MP3 files have "Tags" - metadata with things like artist, album, song genre, etc. The tags have nothing to do with file names. But these tags are how your MP3 player knows about the songs.

It sounds to me like you need a tag editor. You can tag files with an editor based on filename and other criteria, and you can manually tag files. I use Tag & Rename, but it's a paid app. There may be freebies out there.

quote:

Originally posted by IntrepidTraveler:
MP3 files have "Tags" - metadata with things like artist, album, song genre, etc. The tags have nothing to do with file names. But these tags are how your MP3 player knows about the songs.

It sounds to me like you need a tag editor. You can tag files with an editor based on filename and other criteria, and you can manually tag files. I use Tag & Rename, but it's a paid app. There may be freebies out there.

I found a free tag editor and was able to rename it. I uploaded it to the phone and deleted the previous version. SUCCESS!