Several questions about music on the Razr

[Tracey4]

So sorry if this ends up sounding kind of rambling or all over the place, but I have a couple things I want to discuss about music apps on my new razr. I am coming from a Droid X, and I've only had the Razr maybe a week or so. I have an aftermarket bluetooth supporting radio in my car that I have used to play music over bluetooth with using the X and now my Razr. With the X as far as I recall there was 1 music app and it was pretty basic. I would get in the car and once bluetooth connected I would hit play on the stereo and my music would start playing at random. The stereo will then display the name of the song on the screen. I have come to realize that playing music on my Razr is not so simple. Hitting play does not start music or shuffle it. I have to open the music app I want to use and play from there, then I am able to control the tracks using my stereo.

So this leads into my next issue. From what I can see there are 2 music apps on the Razr. One is the Google app now called Play Music. The other is My Music which is Motorola's app, is this correct? I have a car dock that I am using with my Razr that has a music app on the homescreen. I believe this is a link to the Google app, not the Moto one, but I can't be 100% sure- maybe it is a separate app entirely? I feel like there is some confusion on my part because these apps don't actually work together. If I was using one app to play music, I can't then go into the other app and start up where I left off. In fact, I have had trouble selecting songs from one app from a playlist without first hitting play on the app's now playing section, pausing, and then going back to the playlist and selecting the song. I am not sure but I feel like the players in both apps conflict with each other. Is anyone else feeling this frustration or am I alone here?

So besides that, does anyone know if there is a way to edit track names, artist names, etc using the phone, or would I have to load them onto my computer for that. I have been using one of those free song downloaders from the market to download songs and a lot of times the track titles need some editing.

Finally, is anyone actually buying their music from Google now? I either burn Cds from the library or like I said, use a free downloader. I have gotten burned in the past with buying music from Rhapsody and then from iTunes because they used those protected files which made it super difficult to do anything with the music besides load it onto one of THEIR specific music players. Is this the case with Google as well?

Anyways, thanks for listening to me ramble and foor any advice you can give!

 

[thaDroidz]

One quick tip.

You should be able to setup a smart action to open the music app (of choice) automatically when it connects to the Bluetooth ..

Trigger-bluetooth
Action-launch application

I have 2 setup kinda like it for connection via the headphone (my car dock)
Trigger - headphone
Trigger - 7am-7pm (daylight)
Actions- brightness
Actions-launch app

Then another for night with dim screen

----posted maxx'ed out----

 

[JohnnytheK]

I now get my music through Amazon music app, it's DRM free and I even import my new music into iTunes. I use Shazam to ID new music and then ordering and buying the new song is painless.

 

[MysticalDreams]

were you using the stock app on the X? there are a lot of good music apps out there, maybe that would help you out along with the smart actions

 

[ablank]

Serious conflict between google and Motorola music programs. google offers voice search and play while Motorola offers lyrics while playing. on another, more important note, every time I put my phone in car dock I have to go to music, through the dock menu, then instead of just hitting play, I have to manually select what to play (I wanna just press play and let it be). Any suggestions? I know I could use smart actions but I really don't want to set it to a playlist and hear the same first song every time I get in the car lol. Even if i'm listening to music right up till I get in it will reset or something and I can't just continue playing. Its almost like the music app is ended and I have to start it every time. Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Sent from my DROID RAZR

 

[gtv630]

I have the same issue. I ride a motorcycle and play music, make calls, etc through a BT Scala Rider helmet headset. This worked flawlessly with my old Droid X2. As long as the phone BT was connected, I could push play on the helmet and music would start. It would play whatever playlist I was in the last time I played something on the phone. If I had just done a reboot, it would just start somewhere in my list of music. Alternatively, I could hit the command button on the headset, and say "play Blues" and that particular playlist would start. Now with the Razr, just pushing play will not start playing anything. It appears the stock music player no long has the "now playing" feature. Or more to the point, it is intermittent. If I start a playlist from the phone, then there is a now playing on the screen. I can disconnect the BT headset and the now playing is still there. However, when I reconnect the BT headset, now playing disappears and when I push play, nothing happens.

For another test, with headset disconnected, I started a playlist from the phone. Then stopped the playlist. The phone has now playing displayed. Then I connected the BT headset and it says everything is connected normally. At this point the phone still displays now playing. Push Play on the headset and nothing happens. Now playing is still showing on the phone, but there are no signs of the phone trying to do anything. With the headset still connected, I touch Now Playing on the screen and it gives me a spinning loading icon for about 30 seconds then the icon disappears along with the Now Playing button. In order to start the music, I have to go into playlists, and select one from the phone manually, then it starts playing through the headset. From this point, I can control start, stop, skip to next track of the music from the headset.

So once I got it up and running, the controls were working. To keep trying to figure this out, I powered off the headset, then powered it back on making it reconnect to BT. Then pushed play on the head set and it started playing where it left off - just like it is supposed to! So at this point, I am baffled as to what is causing the problem.

 

[gtv630]

One more update, after writing the previous post, I disconnected the head set and let the phone sit for a while. Came back an hour later and tried to unlock the phone. I had left it on the music player screen. When I unlocked it, I got the spinning loading icon again. I waited a couple of minutes and it never went away. I had to hit the home button to get out of it. At that point, there is no Now Playing button anymore as it has lost its memory of what it was doing. How frustrating!

 

[ablank]

Yeah same boat here. I just use google music, till they fix whatever it is.

 

[lovemyram4x4]

I didn't notice it mentioned but the stock car dock music player's shuffle/repeat buttons also don't work. BTW it uses the mymusic app not the Google.

Because of all the issues mentioned(I've reported them to Motorola) I now use power amp as my music player, it remembers what was playing & will start right where you left off just by hitting play.

Although you can add apps to the stock car dock the music player buttons & now playing text only seem to work with the mymusic app(at least when I test prior to update by setting other players as default). You'll be able to play just fine but you'll need to hit the short cut to whatever app you add to see what's playing or use the screen on the device to change songs.

I've switched to a third party car dock app & put a small power amp widget on my main screen & a full screen widget on it's own screen. I also like using the Widgets as they support album art, but the draw back is the screen control buttons are usually small however I don't normally use them as I'll either use BT or wave controls. Now I just Shoshone they'd make a Google navigation widget(full screen would be best) so I could just swipe over to it on my car dock app or at least make it so it automatically pops up in front for next turn then auto hides like my car's GPS does.

 

[lovemyram4x4]

Oh, I started using Amazon mop to buy music. As mention no DRM crap like those others & their new cloud thing is great. It can help you from having to rebuy a song if you delete your only copy, just set you default purchase d/l to cloud on you phone/PC apps & unless you remove it, it will always be there. You can set the app to also auto d/l to device from cloud. I don't use this myself but you can upload you own stuff to the cloud & stream from it but I have a 48GB Razr so I just store locally & save my data.

I have a few questions. Why doesn't any player I've tried pull embedded into MP3 file album art? Or is just that WMP sync to Android does put it? How come when player app fetches art it doesn't keep it saved locally?

 

[ablank]

Recently, I have started to use motocast so I have my whole library at my finger tips minus the drm. I use this only to download from my library, I use google music as my player. I also switched to car dock pro and am able customize which player I want, this fixes the startup problems.