Samsung S3 playlist problem

June 24, 2009 6:58 PM

I bought a Samsung S3 mp3 player for the specific purpose of studying sets of mp3s that need to be played in a specific order. Problem: it doesn't seem to want me to play those songs in order.

I can create and organize playlists on the computer, and have no problem.

But, when I import them to the device, the songs on the playlist get sorted by name, instead of staying in the correct order.

I cannot figure out how to force the songs on the playlist to play in order, sort of manually renaming hundreds of mp3s. Can anyone help? I feel like there's some really simple solution.

Shuffle is not on. The actual list of songs on the mp3 player is arranged by mp3 file name, not in the correct order.

posted by flibbertigibbet to Technology (9 answers total)

Best answer: Doing a little reading, this seems to be a problem that other people have as well. Here's one person's hacky solution

organize the MP3 files of your playlist as a compilation album (don't forget to make copies first). You can then find the playlist under the MP3 player's "albums" list. I called my list "Tunes for Tindys" because I like aliteration.

posted by jessamyn at 7:40 PM on June 24, 2009

Response by poster: Off to figure out how to set them as a compilation album, because I honestly have no idea how to do that, either. Either way, thanks!
posted by flibbertigibbet at 7:46 PM on June 24, 2009

Basically you need to make up some name for the album of all the songs [might want to make copies, because this will screw up the metadata for the songs] and then tell iTunes (or whatever program you're using) that all these songs are on a compilation album which means it's okay for them to have different artist names for each song. So in iTunes -- and again sorry if that's not what you're using -- I select a song, choose get info and then I can type in an album name and click a box that says "part of a compilation" I'm not 100% sure how to make sure they're ordered correctly, but I suspect that's the easier part of this task.
posted by jessamyn at 7:52 PM on June 24, 2009

Best answer: You could use a tool like Tag and Rename (my personal favorite, but there are lots of tools that do this) to automate renaming of all the files in a folder (you can just have it add numbers and autoincrement in the filenames according to your preferences) if nothing else works.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:33 PM on June 24, 2009

Also, this sort of thing works flawlessly on my several-year-old Samsung T9, so there must be something that you can do. It may just be a matter of adding the correct metadata (in this case, track number, to the files. Again, a tool like Tag&Rename will automate that task for you.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:37 PM on June 24, 2009

Response by poster: I'll see if that works. If not, I'll have to buy another mp3 player, which, bleh, but is looking mighty tempting right now... because I'll be winding up with another couple hundred mp3 files every few weeks, and I really don't want to have to deal with this on an ongoing basis.

Stav: yeah, see, that's the thing here. One would think that transferring a playlist would be moron-proof, and yet, here I am.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:15 AM on June 25, 2009

Hmm. I've never used playlists, although I guess my device supports 'em. I just name/tag the files so they appear in the order I want (well, in fact, I almost never have to do that, as they're usually tagged and named correctly already), then play them by folder. Your device looks a lot like mine, right down to the firmware, and is newer, so I think I must be missing something as to why you're having problems. You definitely can do it the way I do, if it's as similar a device as I think it is. I use mine primarily to listen to lecture series, some of which are partitioned into literally hundreds of sequentially named files. I just play the folder -- playlists are modern wizard technology and I don't understand 'em and would like them to exit from my lawn -- and it's all good.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:01 AM on June 25, 2009

Response by poster: After the sheer annoyance of trying to re-tag thousands (no joke) of extremely short mp3 clips, even in a semi-automated way, I gave up and bought an iPod Nano.

I believe it was a good decision.

But thanks jess and stav!
posted by flibbertigibbet at 7:00 AM on June 26, 2009

*weeps*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:09 AM on June 26, 2009