New problem playing music synced onto phone

Aiiyiiyiii

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I've done it this way for years. Buy mp3's from google music, download to my W7 PC, sync to my Samsung Note3 kitkat over USB using Windows Media Player.

Since last week, though, new music that I sync to the phone either plays all scrambled up, or simply gives a message "this file type not supported on this device". The music plays fine on the PC with WMP. But not on the phone, no matter whether using stock Samsung music player or other players. Rebooting phone causes these files to disappear. All my music that's already on the phone seems to still play fine.

I've tried rebooting, resyncing, and transferring with Windows Explorer instead. I have cleared the samsung music player's cache but have not cleared data, because it warns me I will lose all my files.

Files are being synced to SD card. Still plenty of room, but I'm wondering, is my SD card going bad? or is it some other kinda problem.. Aaaargh!!
 

Jonny Kansas

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Are you using the Google Play Music app on your phone, or the Samsung music player?

Because my first thought reading this is, why aren't you just downloading directly from Google Play Music to your phone, which is easy to do in the official app?
 

Sajo

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Excellent point @Jonny Kansas . I use the Play Music app to download my music straight to my phone, and it now has a Setting to select Internal or External storage. I set mine to External and all music I download using the app goes straight to my SD card. Pretty simple. I would suggest giving that a try.

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Aiiyiiyiii

Aiiyiiyiii

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I guess that's a workaround, but it doesn't address the root of the problem.. and doesn't work at all with music ripped from CD, which is also corrupted when downloading to phone.

Also, google music permits only two downloads, and now you've used them both (PC and phone), instead of still having one in reserve. This needs a better solution.
 
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Sajo

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Have you tried ejecting the SD card and inserting it directly into your computer and then copy the music to it? I have not had any issues with downloading directly from Play Music to my SD card, copying from computer via USB to my SD card or copying directly to my SD card while it was inserted into my laptop. All have worked out pretty good for me. I have not used Windows Media Player to sync music though; so just tossing out ideas about what might be corrupting the process.
 
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Aiiyiiyiii

Aiiyiiyiii

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My working theory is that the SD card goes bad. There's plenty of internet threads to that effect: either the cards go bad, or there are some compatability issues with Samsung. People are losing music, videos, photos.

I was going to prove this theory today by syncing directly to phone storage rather than the SD card, but now music that I sync to the card is playing just fine again! so I don't know.
 

mountainbikermark

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My working theory is that the SD card goes bad. There's plenty of internet threads to that effect: either the cards go bad, or there are some compatability issues with Samsung. People are losing music, videos, photos.

I was going to prove this theory today by syncing directly to phone storage rather than the SD card, but now music that I sync to the card is playing just fine again! so I don't know.
Since it's working fine now I'd have to agree your card is going bad or there is a corrupted file on there wreaking havoc and you might have deleted it when trouble shooting the cause. In the past I had video files get corrupted and cause my card to go wonky when accessing photos or music. That was back before Amazon music app, Google music app, etc when using the desktop was a must.

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Aiiyiiyiii

Aiiyiiyiii

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The weird part was, those unplayable files would just disappear when the phone was rebooted. I think these SD cards are more complex than we know. They are "overprovisioned" to allow for bad sectors, and it is my impression that the controller maps out and excludes those. Maybe it's an ongoing process, I dunno. Maybe I'm reaching. ;)
 
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Aiiyiiyiii

Aiiyiiyiii

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Okay, in case anyone has been following this thread, here's the resolution:

The problem returned. It apparently WAS a bad Sandisk SD card. Not the file transfer method or anything else, just a bad ssd. Replaced the Sandisk 64G Ultra with a 128G Samsung SD card, and all is peachy. Everything works, 90G available with all my stuff so far.

Yes, the Note3 does support 128G storage even though 64G was specced at the time (2014). :)

Not only has my ssd storage doubled, but it came formatted, included a SD adapter in case you want to use a card reader, and also included a USB stick card reader. All for less than the Sandisk, and installed with no issues. Owl happy :D

I was going to send the Sandisk in for replacement, and put the replacement on eBay, but I see Samsung is offering a very nice 32G USB3.0 stick for $11, 64G $18, ADD TO CART.

Screw it. I didn't realize how cheap ssd GBs are now. It's landfill.
 
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