How to get music from Dropbox to Droid Maxx & help with downloading
May 24, 2014 1:55 PM   Subscribe

I have a new Droid Maxx phone. It doesn't have an SD card - just internal storage. I can't figure out how to get my music on it.

My old phone, another Android (Motorola Bionic) has WinAmp on it. WinAmp, however, is no more so I can't download it to my new phone. I loved WinAmp because when I "favorited" (i.e. downloaded) my songs on Dropbox, they went directly to WinAmp and I could make playlists easily.

I have not been able to find anything that will do this on my new phone. And I don't really understand my new phone, either. I downloaded a whole bunch of music player apps to see if they could substitute for WinAmp, but none of them are able to find my music on Dropbox. I even downloaded an app that specifically says that's what it does -- gets Dropbox music files into...someplace. But I could not figure it out.

Then I downloaded an app called AIMP(beta). People seem to love AIMP (I guess for PC, not phones). Somehow I was able to get some songs into the playlist. But there is no way to make another playlist. Also I can't remember how I got my songs into it yesterday! (I've been futzing around with too many apps at once.)

So then I connected my phone via USB to my PC to try to look around and see what's going on in there, and there was an icon that said "Internal Storage." Sounds great, right? But there's virtually nothing in there -- not in the Music folder or Ringtones folder, etc. within there. So that the factory ringtones are somewhere else, and where they are is not obvious or accessible (there is no "Files" icon on the phone).

I seem to be able to go to a song on Dropbox, Export it, it goes into "Music" folder, but then no app recognizes it as music. If I sound utterly confused, it's because I am.

Why is my phone so mysterious? Is there a music player that will recognize my music in Dropbox and let me make playlists?

So basically I wouldn't really need a music app like WinAmp that will retrieve my files automatically from Dropbox if I had instead some way to get those Dropbox music files into --- somewhere on the phone, where they would be recognized by any one of a zillion free music players for Android that are available. Thanks.
posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
At least on my phone, I can connect it directly to my computer using USB, and transfer files into the directory structure found there. The computer treats it like a USB flash-drive.

That's how I unload pictures I've taken with my phone camera, for instance. I don't know which directory should be used for music, but it's worth experimenting with.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Best answer: So do you want to store the music on your phone? The easiest way to do this should be:

1. Connect your phone to your computer via USB.
2. Copy the music from your Dropbox on your computer to the phone's Music directory (or somewhere else, Android doesn't really care).
3. Disconnect the phone.
4. Start your music player.

Android's music library should automatically detect the music, and essentially every music player uses the default library.

If you want to dynamically change your music downloaded between the cloud and your phone on the go, I would consider uploading your music to Google Play and then use the "pin" feature on that app, it works well.
posted by selfnoise at 7:19 PM on May 24, 2014


I know there was that kerfluffle about WinAp being shut down, but unless I'm missing something here, WinAmp is still available on Android.
posted by BeerFilter at 10:32 AM on May 25, 2014


Response by poster: BeerFilter, when I go to that url I get: "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server." The page seems to be connected to Google Play.

Speaking of Google Play, I can't get it to do anything. It just keeps going to a "Learn More" page and then connects me to tutorials. I don't get any of this.

However I did futz around and seem to be able to download music somehow which some music player recognizes. So thank you.
posted by DMelanogaster at 3:21 PM on May 25, 2014


Huh, that's weird. On my PC that page does indeed go to the WinAmp Play Store page and will let me install it to my two phones and a tablet. Are you logged in to a Google account?

Anyway, good luck!
posted by BeerFilter at 9:21 AM on May 26, 2014


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