Playlists missing tracks on Android (Fixed?)

[GorillaCat]

A while ago I had the problem of having tracks missing in playlists (track count wasn't the same as exact playlists on the computer) even though I copied the entire music folder to the phone maintaining the folder structure and editing the playlists in Notepad++ to change the paths accordingly. So I tried a bunch of different ways and here's what worked for me.

Have your music organized, you'll have less headaches.

1. Make sure your music is copied on the Phone/Tablet first. Adding new files? Be sure to move them to the device before the updated playlist.
I copied my files with Windows Explorer since some tracks weren't being copied with Winamp.

2.Save playlists as *.m3u8 files (I used Winamp for this) and rename them as *.m3u so Android can read them.

3. Edit the playlist with Notepad++ to batch replace paths eg."\" with "/" & "/Users/*USERNAME*/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/" with "/storage/external_SD/"
I also like to get rid of the lines starting with #EXTINF, but that might not be needed.

4. This Might not seem very important but I put playlists I'm copying in an uncompressed .zip file since for some reason my computer copies them faster than .m3u files. This can also be helpful because playlist issues can be hit or miss. If the track count is wrong just delete the file and unzip a new one (worked after a few tries).

There's no guarantee that this will work 100% of the time but it's been working for me up until now. I'm posting this because I've looked around & didn't find much help.

Tested with GoneMAD Music Player & Default LG Music App (on Lollipop)

[iomegajaz]

Nowadays I just play the 176 songs that I have on my HTC phone using its default Music app, no playlists, so I'm not your target audience. The steps you suggest seem sensible enough.

I often think, "y'know, I really oughta put more songs on my phone", but then I never get around to actually doing it. I guess I just don't care that much about music anymore.

[GorillaCat]

Re: Playlists missing tracks on Android (Fixed?)

5. If you're updating a playlist and having problems, try changing the name from eg."Playlist.m3u" to "Playlist DD-MM-YY.m3u"

Chances are that this problem stems from issues with the way Android discovers files. Apps that scan for files and maintain libraries on their own, like GoneMAD, might be less likely to have this problem (Tested).

[GorillaCat]

Yes, I'll keep updating this thread whenever I learn something new that'll help

6. Certain characters like this one ¢ (cent sign), aren't supported by apps and will have to be changed if they're in the filename and the corresponding playlist entry for that file.