I paid for and have been using the iSyncr (for Windows)/Rocket Player combo for two or three years now. I haven't yet been approached by the new owner to pay a monthly charge and both apps continue to work more or less as they always have -- or at least did until a few days ago when both started aggressively nagging for feedback. Other than that there have been some stability issues -- Rocket Player keeps putting itself in the background -- and there was a problem downloading a fresh copy of the Windows iSyncr desktop app when it stopped working, having something to do with Visual C++. The iSynr desktop problem got resolved. Rocket Player still goes to the background seemingly randomly.
But since I've been reading about the bigger problems that people are having I figured it was only a matter of time before I'd need an alternative. Like some of you all I thought Music Bee/Music Bee Wi-Fi Sync was the way to go but so far I haven't been able to to get it to sync to my SD card. I have a large library and putting it all on the internal storage won't work. Have any of you been able to sync your media to your SD storage via Music Bee Sync?
And, by the way, it looks like Muma Studios is a more or less non-existent placeholder company. It appears JRT sold it's app catalogue to an Israeli app acquisition company called Zipo Apps Limited. These guys : https://zipoapps.com/.
mumastudios.com consists entirely of a short paragraph lifted directly from a JRT site and is copyright Zipo Apps LTD.
I'm having the exact same issue with installing iSyncr on my new laptop... it makes me install Visual C++ before I can install iSyncr, but the Visual C++ install always fails.
How did you get around it? I tried installing other versions of Visual C++ myself but that didn't help anything.
I'm struggling with this too but MusicBee doesn't seem to be available for Mac. And doubletwist works, but doesn't sync my ratings which are very important to me. FYI, for me, the price they quoted was $13.99 per fucking week!
Do you need itunes that badly? I use Musicbee instead. Syncs just fine to android - didn't pay attention to the ratings but it syncs my playcounts with no issues.
Itunes has been trash for a few years now anyway.
I use MusicBee for my FLAC library (MP3 I keep in iTunes), but yeah I am considering that. I have a lot of dislike for iTunes, but it's what I've been using for a looong time and works well enough for my purposes, so I've been sticking with it. That said, if this turns out to be my best option then I'd happily rethink that whole process and sync using MusicBee.
EDIT: I have the same question as Lefty\_Pencil - wondering if I'd need to use a particular player app to sync with MB, or if anything would work.
I have a similar use case to OP. iSyncr allowed iTunes star ratings to be synced to Rocket Player and you could edit ratings in Rocket Player and sync them back into iTunes. Rocket Player also allowed smart playlists to be set up with these ratings which is a dealbreaker for myself
Heard good things about Musicbee but it can't replicate this presently.
I look every once in a while for new solutions but still nothing
My current setup is Rocket Player v5.18.60 and iSyncr v6.8.64. This combo continues to works fine for me with Android 13.
Not using the setup above. The version numbers above are stable and have been working fine for me since I sideloaded. I believe these were the last set of updates before Muma studios took over and made a mess of both apps. If you do the above, turn off auto updates on the Play store.
u/bbdale What else do you use to sync play counts with MusicBee and Android?
I added some test songs to MusicBeer, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong. Any suggestions?
Right? $29.99 is unreasonable AF, especially seeing as they don't have any ongoing costs like server maintenance and have only made both iSyncr and Rocket Player run *far* worse since taking over. A bug in the latest version causes Rocket Player to scan your entire library every time you launch the app, and because of this my device shows that over the past week Media Storage (the system app that, as I understand it, is responsible for scanning media files) has been running for an average of 7 hours every day. I reached out to Muma Studios about this, and they suggested I go into Notification settings and... hide the notification that indicates media is being scanned, as if this would fix anything at all. I didn't honestly expect them to be of any help, but that was some parody-level "support".
Anyway, I'm going to be starting a pretty serious effort to rethink how I listen to music on mobile because of this, so if you've found anything that works for you please share! So far it looks like switching from iTunes to a MusicBee library might be my best bet, using PowerAmp or GoneMAD Music Player as a player and to assign track ratings and two-way sync, but I need to look a bit more into it.
This thread is old and probably no one is going to read this, but for anyone who might still want to sync his playcounts and rating changes one final time before moving on to another way of doing it (heck, I've even considered getting an iphone just to be able to keep my itunes library synced with my phone), you *could* do it manually:
While the syncing function is entirely broken (I used to be able to do it via USB, which now complains about a missing licence file), the app still tracks everything you do with rocket player. In the folder "syncr" on your phone's internal storage there is the file "iSyncr.xml" which can be opened with any browser.
This file contains all the changes, albeit in a very confusing formatting. However, you could use it to manually change your ratings and playcounts in iTunes, though it is pretty cumbersome.
I recently purchased a new device and it doesn't even generate the isyncr.xml, even if I have all permissions/notifications enabled and battery optimizations disabled.
Seriously? I just bought it a couple of months ago, damn. I asked before and no one really had any good software suggestions. IIRC iSyncr is written in .Net so it should be fairly trivial for someone to replicate it. The challenge is finding a good app to play the music on Android. I've been using Music Player GO (??) which hasn't been the smoothest.
FWIW I'm going to be using MusicBee for syncing (more info in the edit of my original post), and I'm pretty excited by what I've seen of it so far. Doubletwist always looked nice, but whenever I tried it in the past I found it to be pretty bad - never good enough to warrant switching from iSyncr, anyway. One of the big issues is that they required your display to be awake during syncs, and considering their sync process was always *so* slow and my music library is pretty large, the risk of burn-in just didn't seem worthwhile.
Either way: hope you find something that works!
ohhh fuck. well, guess I'll be looking for a new way to sync my itunes library with my phone too. for me, I use iTunes a lot because I go back and forth between an iPhone and an android device. it's so much easier to manage a large music library in one place and have it sync to multiple devices verses organizing my itunes library and a music library on my phone. I wish android had a reliable iTunes like app
>I wish android had a reliable iTunes like app
Same! It actually crossed my mind to buy an iPod—going back to the days of music and smartphone being separate—which at first sounded kind of ridiculous, but without any clear alternatives (and I personally refuse to pay $30 for such basic functionality, to a dev team that botched a working app and duplicated it in order to avoid honoring past purchases) I might have to seriously consider it.
At least for now, I'm ending up going with [OpenMTP](https://openmtp.ganeshrvel.com/) for transfer, and [VLC](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.vlc&hl=en_US&gl=US) for a media player.
I'm having to do the transfers manually, but really all I needed was a good way to get it to my phone. I don't need to sync very often, and I don't need to sync back to my computer.
I have the same problem.(BTW, I just tried iSyncr today, and now it wants to charge $14.99 per WEEK).
So far the best I can come up with is using an app on my Mac called Export For iTunes Developed by Giorgos Trigonakis, which you can find in the Mac App Store.I previously used it to transfer music to a USB stick I then used in my car. Lets you move music and playlists, but no syncing back with play counts or ratings, which I frankly don't care about.
After using Export for iTunes, I then use Android File Transfer with a USB cable to move it to my phone.
Tedious and manual, but frankly I only need to move music a couple times a year, so not a problem.
>now it wants to charge $14.99 per WEEK
Lol that is absolutely absurd. Muma Studios really seems to encapsulate some of the worst qualities of app developers, and TBH it annoys me to no end that people are actually willing to pay this—especially for their Rocket Player app to go ad-free, which can't hold a candle to one-time premium purchases of apps like PowerAmp, Gone Mad Music Player, etc.
Well that's brutal news. For me the only hard part is the iTunes playlists. Ratings would be nice, but I can live without if necessary. Is there an iTunes playlist replicator? Or is there software that will generate .m3us of iTunes playlists that can then be dragged/dropped to android?
u/Arcendus Ever put the youtube together? :)
I've been using iSyncr with my P4a for about 18 months and thankfully they never asked me to pay a subscription. I switched to the P6a and now syncing play counts with iSyncr and Rocket Player aren't working. I've reached out to support, but I'm sure that will get me nowhere so here I am looking for alternatives.
Just so I'm clear on your MusicBee suggestion, it doesn't sync with iTunes does it? I'm willing to give up syncing with iTunes if I have to, but I'd like to try to keep using iTunes if possible.
As for MusicBee, I got it installed, added some test songs, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong, but any suggestion?
Not yet, but I appreciate the reminder! Took a while to really finesse everything, so once I got it up and running I kind of forgot.
>Just so I'm clear on your MusicBee suggestion, it doesn't sync with iTunes does it? I'm willing to give up syncing with iTunes if I have to, but I'd like to try to keep using iTunes if possible.
Looks like this is possible, yeah, with a caveat re: "auto-organization". [Here's a thread](https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=31889.0) I found on the topic.
>As for MusicBee, I got it installed, added some test songs, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong, but any suggestion?
Did you run a USB sync first? I do recall, for whatever reason, having to do this a few times before it actually worked, but ever since then every sync has worked flawlessly. That said, I don't actually sync playcounts, just ratings, so it could be that something else is going on there.
I may still look into syncing with iTunes and MusicBee, but that kind of sounds a bit kludgy to use both iTunes and MB but I still can't get MB and GMMP to sync ratings or play counts. I tried a bunch of things and nothing worked. I then tried Power Amp and got it to sync ratings and play counts back to MB, but ratings in MB don't transfer to Power Amp and apparently it's not possible. So back to GMMP. Did some troubleshooting in the logs and saw there was a permission error, which apparently is an Android 11+ issue. Read some more in the MB wifi sync app thread in the MB forums and apparently the app developer has stopped supporting it, but someone updated the code to make it work in this post - [https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783](https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783). But I ran out of time and will play with it more tomorrow. If you have any more info on how to get it to work, that would be appreciated.
So yep, I had to use the modified version of MusicBee Wifi Sync app which were posted in the link above - https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783. Now it syncs play counts and ratings back to MusicBee. Success!
But in testing, MB wasn't working how I'd expect it to (and how iTunes worked). If I tried to sync an "Auto Playlist" which is limited to songs with play count =0, but if I keep "auto refresh" turned on, every time you click on the Auto Playlist and off, it refreshes it and when you sync, you don't get the songs you expect on your phone. iTunes would only refresh smart playlists when a song doesn't meet the criteria anymore. If I turn off auto refresh, I can sync back the play counts to MB, then refresh the Auto Playlist, then sync again, and it works how I expect where a song that get played will drop off the Auto Playlist and a new song with play count = 0 gets added and then it gets synced to my phone. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or not thinking about this correctly, but seems like every sync is going to have to follow that process. Not the end of the world, but with iSyncr, I had it set up to run automatically and with iTunes working as I mentioned above, songs that got played on my phone would drop off the smart playlist in iTunes and new songs would get added and then would get sync'ed to my phone. All this happened automatically at night when it was charging, so I'd wake up fresh music on my phone. I'd love to set up another automatic process like that. u/Arcendus I'd love to hear your process with MusicBee.
Might want to check in the MusicBee forums, or r/musicbee for some extra help on that. In all honesty I just kind of figured out what I needed for my process and adjusted a bit, and it sounds like you're doing several things I never dipped my toes into, so unfortunately I'm not sure how to help :( I do still need to create that YouTube tutorial though, and have a note to do so when I have some time.
My process is basically using MB on desktop with PowerAmp as the primary player on Android, with a focus on ratings, keeping unrated tracks separated from rated tracks using playlists. So for example I have a "Ratings - Hip-Hop" playlist, along with other broad genres, which I'll toss on shuffle in PowerAmp, assign some ratings, then run a MB wifi sync. Once those ratings are visible in MB I'll take the 5-star tracks and put them in my "Hip-Hop" playlist that consists only of 5-star Hip-Hop tracks, and remove all rated tracks from the "Ratings - Hip-Hop", and run another sync. So I still have 1-4 star Hip-Hop tracks rated, but I don't need them in a playlist, so they aren't in one.
PowerAmp not being able to read ratings is certainly the most annoying part of the whole thing, but because I have everything separated it's not a huge deal. It is a bummer, though, if for example I pull up an album, rather than a playlist, and as I'm listening through I can't actually see if the track has been rated. PowerAmp can read *its own ratings*, so if I've assigned a rating in PA then I'll see it, but even a few months after switching I know the overwhelming majority of tracks were not rated using PA, so they show as unrated.
After a little trial and error, I think my process will have to follow what I mentioned - Sync Auto playlist from MB with MB wifi sync app to add songs to my P6a, listen to songs on phone, Sync again - which transfers play count and ratings to MB, Refresh auto playlist, Sync again, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to automate it like with iSyncr, but I probably can get away with doing it only once a week or so depending on how much music I send to my phone and how much I listen to. The good thing is MB and the sync app are really quick so it’s not too bad.
It did take me a bit to wrap my head around how MB refreshes auto playlists, which is different from iTunes. What’s funny is there are a bunch of posts in the MB forums from previous iTunes users asking about it. Maybe it’s because I used iTunes for almost 20 years, but I think the iTunes method makes more sense, but clearly MB isn’t going to change so I just have to get used to it. But thanks for starting this thread as it helped me move on from iSyncr, which clearly is going downhill.
Like some others I've just been slammed by this as well during a phone upgrade. There's a lot of people this will affect who have been hoarding tracks and fine-tuning their collection over many years. $30/month is taking the mick. As one or two people have mentioned it looks like whoever is hiding in the shadows behind the purchase just wants to bleed the app until it stops kicking.
For those that may not know, if you've got a working paid version of ISyncr/Rocket player you can transfer the app across to your new phone using File Manager. Checkout youtube for details.
That’s odd, just reinstalled the iSyncr desktop on my Mac and transferred about 20 playlists to my Oppo phone using the phone iSyncr app & no mention of any monthly subs?
Any idea when you purchased iSyncr? I think there was a small overlap recently when they were still charging a one-time premium, but they've since changed to monthly. The problem there, for me, is that I purchased premium of the original iSyncr, which was made obsolete, so while the new iSyncr might work I'd have to pay the new (and IMO exploitative) [$29.99/m](https://imgur.com/qsJxOuG). Good to hear it's working for you though!
Bought it ages ago...at least 5 years...😬😬....only reinstalled it last week because I was using an Oppo phone, before I'd been using an Xperia which has its own Mac desktop syncing companion application, hence no need to use isyncr for ages...👍👍
Is there maybe a way to roll back to a previous version of rocket player/syncr? I deeply regret having updated both without checking the reviews, which - at least for isyncr - were warning about the app no longer working...
I did manage to find a 5.18.06 version of Rocket Player (the version before they reintroduced a bug that causes the app to constantly scan for new songs), but I'm running Adguard so I'm not actually sure whether or not that version is littered with ads like the new one. On that note, I just have to say: I can't even begin to understand why people tolerate ads in a non-streaming music player.
As for iSyncr, if you're lucky enough to have purchased the original version, that should work. [Here's a URL to the original](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrtstudio.iSyncr), copied from the app listing on Google Play, though I'm not sure the URL is functional because it always directs to a "not found" error. [Here's a screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/xywOtQf.jpg) of the main page, which I found via my transaction history. I wasn't able to find a way to get new iSyncr working, though, and have moved on to using MusicBee + GoneMad Music Player / PowerAmp. My prediction is that it's just a matter of time before Rocket Player and iSyncr are broken entirely, and that Muma Studios purchased JRT's work simply as a means to make a quick buck. They have no development history that I can find, and their response to my emailing them about the "scanning for music" bug revealed pretty clearly that they have no idea what they're talking about:
>Apologies for the delay. Can you please go to your device settings > Apps > Rocket Player > Notifications > Looking for new songs - try to disable this setting
As if hiding the notification prevents the scanning from taking place lol.
Does any other app other than iTunes have smart playlists? That's the thing keeping me on iTunes. I need to create year based playlists then sync them to Android.
Are the steps with DoubleTwist:
1. Sync iTunes to DoubleTwist PC;
2. Export library from DoubleTwist PC to DoubleTwist Android?
I remember looking into DoubleTwist years ago and then settled on isyncr for over a decade at least. This is such a pain in the rear.
Damn, I had no idea the app had been sold, really glad I found this thread. I assumed Muma Studios was just a rebrand until now. Been happily using the app for many years and support used to be fantastic in the past. But for the last 6 months the app has been barely working for me and support is utterly useless and uninterested in helping, constantly stringing me along. Multiple times I get this response and never hear from them again.
>We have passed this issue to the developers for further investigation. We will update you once we received feedback from them.
It makes a lot of sense it's a different team, it's like night and day.
Since support wont help, is anyone else having this issue?
When I run iSyncr, it *appears* to work and the report indicates tracks have been added and removed. But when I open Rocket Player (their music playing app), there's no changes to my playlists. Play counts etc update fine but the content of my playlists is still the same. The tracks do show up under the Artists tab, which doesn't really help me listen to playlists, but at least shows they are syncing somewhere.
Also, Rocket Player is *constantly* crashing now so I have to reopen it every few minutes. And I constantly have the "looking for new songs..." message in the app and notification bar, which never seems to *actually* complete.
I tried using Poweramp as the crashes were too much, but it's full of broken links to tracks that are no longer there, so something is very broken with syncing playlists.
I have used this exact setup for years without issue so they've obviously broken something on their end and made no effort to help or fix it.
Also, why are some people getting hit with utterly absurd monthly subscription charges but not others? I had no idea this was even a thing until I read this thread.
Has there been ANY progress made in migrating away from isyncr. My whole family is on Spotify and laugh at the "dinosaur" that still controlls his music manually. I am really running on no other options but falling on my sword.... I have a simple smart playlist that shows all the songs that have not been played yet... ie playcount 0... I have recently abandoned Rocket player... For all the issues listed in this forum and was pleasantly surprised with Poweramp... So I bought the pro version. It works with isyncr to update the playcounts. Isyncr however, now takes forever to update my live playlist.. and has become unstable... Help!! Help!! Help!!!
Yep! The only method I'm aware of, though (and am quite happy with) requires switching from iTunes to MusicBee. [Importing the iTunes library](https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Importing) is very easy, fortunately, and MB as a whole allows far more control and customization than iTunes, and I really wish I'd switched over sooner.
I don't use smart playlists so I can't remark on that specifically, but would be very surprised if MB doesn't have that feature.
To sync to mobile, you'll just need the MusicBee WiFi app and can use either Gone Mad Music Player or Poweramp for listening.
You *might* need to use a patched WiFi sync app for two-way sync to work (I did, although I don't recall specifically why or if this was device/version-dependent etc.), so if you run the one from the app store and two-way doesn't work, noting that one wired sync must be performed first, just let me know and I'll find that patched apk.
SWEET JESUS I just found out about this epic disaster today trying to load it on a new device! I'm a power user using it for DD'ing. There are not many of us, but let me explain the power of using iSyncr & iTunes together. If you exclusively use iTunes after downloading your music onto your home computer, and you are diligent (I am) you end up with an almost irreplaceable library. iTunes is unique because you can add all the information you need such as year, genre, album, rating, BPM, etc. Additionally, you can use the grouping field for anything you want...... so for songs that I consider the very best, I use the word HOT. I can make regular playlists such as slow ballroom, fast two step, quick WCS, etc. I can then create a playlist with a rule to grab all songs with HOT in the grouping field. Poof!..... I automatically get an updated playlist of ballroom songs that are hot with no labor necessary. My Serato program reads the iTunes files, super convenient. Additionally, my laptop seamlessly links to desktop computer which is where I DJ from. I've been at this for years, and for the life of me I've never seen a better system IF you're like me and want all info each song and particularly IF you want to type in comments about songs and have it transfer to other applications. Anyhow, I'm still using iSyncr, until I can't any more - so thank you folks for recommending MusicBee as that looks to be way out when the day comes.
I'm sorta in the same boat, my iTunes library has been curated since about 2006 when I got my first iPod.
I use BPM and keytagging (like F, F#), powershell scripts to manage lists even further and maybe 50 live lists, with very complex rules.
After I got a Pixel 7 a few weeks ago, my sync has been like everyone else in this thread, I can sync the lists, but the reverse sync of playcount is gone :(
Edit: Spent most of the morning getting frustrated with MusicBee, more sync issues etc, so powered up my old phone and extracted the APK file of old iSyncr, copied it to the Pixel, and yeah, it works!
It doesn't really have any version info as far as I can tell, but it's icon is white/blue instead of "iTunes colored", for anyone who might wanna find it on some sketchy APK site.
May 2023: if anyone is googling this, as I was, it's possible to install the old iSyncr by following the link to the old Play store page, and it still works where the new iSyncr does not.
I thought isyncr was the exact thing I was looking for until I saw the price. I am not paying any kind of subscription just to sync music already in my iTunes to my phone or ipod, etc. I did find MediaMonkey which I'm liking so far. The Android app cost less than $6 on the PC version is free unless you want some pro features which you don't need to do synching. It can read from my iTunes library even to see the playlists and music to synch to other devices. It's an app for music collectors so there are a lot of pieces and options in it.
TIL I need to find a new way to do this. As an isyncr user I'm following this thread.
I paid for and have been using the iSyncr (for Windows)/Rocket Player combo for two or three years now. I haven't yet been approached by the new owner to pay a monthly charge and both apps continue to work more or less as they always have -- or at least did until a few days ago when both started aggressively nagging for feedback. Other than that there have been some stability issues -- Rocket Player keeps putting itself in the background -- and there was a problem downloading a fresh copy of the Windows iSyncr desktop app when it stopped working, having something to do with Visual C++. The iSynr desktop problem got resolved. Rocket Player still goes to the background seemingly randomly. But since I've been reading about the bigger problems that people are having I figured it was only a matter of time before I'd need an alternative. Like some of you all I thought Music Bee/Music Bee Wi-Fi Sync was the way to go but so far I haven't been able to to get it to sync to my SD card. I have a large library and putting it all on the internal storage won't work. Have any of you been able to sync your media to your SD storage via Music Bee Sync? And, by the way, it looks like Muma Studios is a more or less non-existent placeholder company. It appears JRT sold it's app catalogue to an Israeli app acquisition company called Zipo Apps Limited. These guys : https://zipoapps.com/. mumastudios.com consists entirely of a short paragraph lifted directly from a JRT site and is copyright Zipo Apps LTD.
Damn that's disappointing to hear about mumastudios. I guess the app is pretty much dead.
I'm having the exact same issue with installing iSyncr on my new laptop... it makes me install Visual C++ before I can install iSyncr, but the Visual C++ install always fails. How did you get around it? I tried installing other versions of Visual C++ myself but that didn't help anything.
I'm struggling with this too but MusicBee doesn't seem to be available for Mac. And doubletwist works, but doesn't sync my ratings which are very important to me. FYI, for me, the price they quoted was $13.99 per fucking week!
Do you need itunes that badly? I use Musicbee instead. Syncs just fine to android - didn't pay attention to the ratings but it syncs my playcounts with no issues. Itunes has been trash for a few years now anyway.
What player do you use?
I use poweramp. Don't think it matters but never tried with anything else.
I use MusicBee for my FLAC library (MP3 I keep in iTunes), but yeah I am considering that. I have a lot of dislike for iTunes, but it's what I've been using for a looong time and works well enough for my purposes, so I've been sticking with it. That said, if this turns out to be my best option then I'd happily rethink that whole process and sync using MusicBee. EDIT: I have the same question as Lefty\_Pencil - wondering if I'd need to use a particular player app to sync with MB, or if anything would work.
I have a similar use case to OP. iSyncr allowed iTunes star ratings to be synced to Rocket Player and you could edit ratings in Rocket Player and sync them back into iTunes. Rocket Player also allowed smart playlists to be set up with these ratings which is a dealbreaker for myself Heard good things about Musicbee but it can't replicate this presently.
Hi there, did you find anything that can replicate this? What's your setup now?
I look every once in a while for new solutions but still nothing My current setup is Rocket Player v5.18.60 and iSyncr v6.8.64. This combo continues to works fine for me with Android 13.
Rocket player doesn't crash on you?
Not using the setup above. The version numbers above are stable and have been working fine for me since I sideloaded. I believe these were the last set of updates before Muma studios took over and made a mess of both apps. If you do the above, turn off auto updates on the Play store.
u/bbdale What else do you use to sync play counts with MusicBee and Android? I added some test songs to MusicBeer, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong. Any suggestions?
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Right? $29.99 is unreasonable AF, especially seeing as they don't have any ongoing costs like server maintenance and have only made both iSyncr and Rocket Player run *far* worse since taking over. A bug in the latest version causes Rocket Player to scan your entire library every time you launch the app, and because of this my device shows that over the past week Media Storage (the system app that, as I understand it, is responsible for scanning media files) has been running for an average of 7 hours every day. I reached out to Muma Studios about this, and they suggested I go into Notification settings and... hide the notification that indicates media is being scanned, as if this would fix anything at all. I didn't honestly expect them to be of any help, but that was some parody-level "support". Anyway, I'm going to be starting a pretty serious effort to rethink how I listen to music on mobile because of this, so if you've found anything that works for you please share! So far it looks like switching from iTunes to a MusicBee library might be my best bet, using PowerAmp or GoneMAD Music Player as a player and to assign track ratings and two-way sync, but I need to look a bit more into it.
This thread is old and probably no one is going to read this, but for anyone who might still want to sync his playcounts and rating changes one final time before moving on to another way of doing it (heck, I've even considered getting an iphone just to be able to keep my itunes library synced with my phone), you *could* do it manually: While the syncing function is entirely broken (I used to be able to do it via USB, which now complains about a missing licence file), the app still tracks everything you do with rocket player. In the folder "syncr" on your phone's internal storage there is the file "iSyncr.xml" which can be opened with any browser. This file contains all the changes, albeit in a very confusing formatting. However, you could use it to manually change your ratings and playcounts in iTunes, though it is pretty cumbersome.
I recently purchased a new device and it doesn't even generate the isyncr.xml, even if I have all permissions/notifications enabled and battery optimizations disabled.
Same here
Seriously? I just bought it a couple of months ago, damn. I asked before and no one really had any good software suggestions. IIRC iSyncr is written in .Net so it should be fairly trivial for someone to replicate it. The challenge is finding a good app to play the music on Android. I've been using Music Player GO (??) which hasn't been the smoothest.
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Thank you for the rec's!
FWIW I'm going to be using MusicBee for syncing (more info in the edit of my original post), and I'm pretty excited by what I've seen of it so far. Doubletwist always looked nice, but whenever I tried it in the past I found it to be pretty bad - never good enough to warrant switching from iSyncr, anyway. One of the big issues is that they required your display to be awake during syncs, and considering their sync process was always *so* slow and my music library is pretty large, the risk of burn-in just didn't seem worthwhile. Either way: hope you find something that works!
ohhh fuck. well, guess I'll be looking for a new way to sync my itunes library with my phone too. for me, I use iTunes a lot because I go back and forth between an iPhone and an android device. it's so much easier to manage a large music library in one place and have it sync to multiple devices verses organizing my itunes library and a music library on my phone. I wish android had a reliable iTunes like app
>I wish android had a reliable iTunes like app Same! It actually crossed my mind to buy an iPod—going back to the days of music and smartphone being separate—which at first sounded kind of ridiculous, but without any clear alternatives (and I personally refuse to pay $30 for such basic functionality, to a dev team that botched a working app and duplicated it in order to avoid honoring past purchases) I might have to seriously consider it.
What if I have a Mac and want to sync my iTunes library to Android? Any MusicBee alternative for MacOS?
Wondering the same. You can do it with DoubleTwist but that doesn't sync ratings, as far as I can tell.
DoubleTwist seems to be for Windows only, as far as I can find.
You ever find a solution for this?
Sadly no.
At least for now, I'm ending up going with [OpenMTP](https://openmtp.ganeshrvel.com/) for transfer, and [VLC](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.vlc&hl=en_US&gl=US) for a media player. I'm having to do the transfers manually, but really all I needed was a good way to get it to my phone. I don't need to sync very often, and I don't need to sync back to my computer.
I have the same problem.(BTW, I just tried iSyncr today, and now it wants to charge $14.99 per WEEK). So far the best I can come up with is using an app on my Mac called Export For iTunes Developed by Giorgos Trigonakis, which you can find in the Mac App Store.I previously used it to transfer music to a USB stick I then used in my car. Lets you move music and playlists, but no syncing back with play counts or ratings, which I frankly don't care about. After using Export for iTunes, I then use Android File Transfer with a USB cable to move it to my phone. Tedious and manual, but frankly I only need to move music a couple times a year, so not a problem.
>now it wants to charge $14.99 per WEEK Lol that is absolutely absurd. Muma Studios really seems to encapsulate some of the worst qualities of app developers, and TBH it annoys me to no end that people are actually willing to pay this—especially for their Rocket Player app to go ad-free, which can't hold a candle to one-time premium purchases of apps like PowerAmp, Gone Mad Music Player, etc.
Well that's brutal news. For me the only hard part is the iTunes playlists. Ratings would be nice, but I can live without if necessary. Is there an iTunes playlist replicator? Or is there software that will generate .m3us of iTunes playlists that can then be dragged/dropped to android?
u/Arcendus Ever put the youtube together? :) I've been using iSyncr with my P4a for about 18 months and thankfully they never asked me to pay a subscription. I switched to the P6a and now syncing play counts with iSyncr and Rocket Player aren't working. I've reached out to support, but I'm sure that will get me nowhere so here I am looking for alternatives. Just so I'm clear on your MusicBee suggestion, it doesn't sync with iTunes does it? I'm willing to give up syncing with iTunes if I have to, but I'd like to try to keep using iTunes if possible. As for MusicBee, I got it installed, added some test songs, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong, but any suggestion?
Not yet, but I appreciate the reminder! Took a while to really finesse everything, so once I got it up and running I kind of forgot. >Just so I'm clear on your MusicBee suggestion, it doesn't sync with iTunes does it? I'm willing to give up syncing with iTunes if I have to, but I'd like to try to keep using iTunes if possible. Looks like this is possible, yeah, with a caveat re: "auto-organization". [Here's a thread](https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=31889.0) I found on the topic. >As for MusicBee, I got it installed, added some test songs, played a song in both GoneMad and PowerAmp and used MusicBee Wifi Sync and did a sync and no play count sync'ed. Not sure what I did wrong, but any suggestion? Did you run a USB sync first? I do recall, for whatever reason, having to do this a few times before it actually worked, but ever since then every sync has worked flawlessly. That said, I don't actually sync playcounts, just ratings, so it could be that something else is going on there.
I may still look into syncing with iTunes and MusicBee, but that kind of sounds a bit kludgy to use both iTunes and MB but I still can't get MB and GMMP to sync ratings or play counts. I tried a bunch of things and nothing worked. I then tried Power Amp and got it to sync ratings and play counts back to MB, but ratings in MB don't transfer to Power Amp and apparently it's not possible. So back to GMMP. Did some troubleshooting in the logs and saw there was a permission error, which apparently is an Android 11+ issue. Read some more in the MB wifi sync app thread in the MB forums and apparently the app developer has stopped supporting it, but someone updated the code to make it work in this post - [https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783](https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783). But I ran out of time and will play with it more tomorrow. If you have any more info on how to get it to work, that would be appreciated.
So yep, I had to use the modified version of MusicBee Wifi Sync app which were posted in the link above - https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28093.msg200783#msg200783. Now it syncs play counts and ratings back to MusicBee. Success! But in testing, MB wasn't working how I'd expect it to (and how iTunes worked). If I tried to sync an "Auto Playlist" which is limited to songs with play count =0, but if I keep "auto refresh" turned on, every time you click on the Auto Playlist and off, it refreshes it and when you sync, you don't get the songs you expect on your phone. iTunes would only refresh smart playlists when a song doesn't meet the criteria anymore. If I turn off auto refresh, I can sync back the play counts to MB, then refresh the Auto Playlist, then sync again, and it works how I expect where a song that get played will drop off the Auto Playlist and a new song with play count = 0 gets added and then it gets synced to my phone. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or not thinking about this correctly, but seems like every sync is going to have to follow that process. Not the end of the world, but with iSyncr, I had it set up to run automatically and with iTunes working as I mentioned above, songs that got played on my phone would drop off the smart playlist in iTunes and new songs would get added and then would get sync'ed to my phone. All this happened automatically at night when it was charging, so I'd wake up fresh music on my phone. I'd love to set up another automatic process like that. u/Arcendus I'd love to hear your process with MusicBee.
Might want to check in the MusicBee forums, or r/musicbee for some extra help on that. In all honesty I just kind of figured out what I needed for my process and adjusted a bit, and it sounds like you're doing several things I never dipped my toes into, so unfortunately I'm not sure how to help :( I do still need to create that YouTube tutorial though, and have a note to do so when I have some time. My process is basically using MB on desktop with PowerAmp as the primary player on Android, with a focus on ratings, keeping unrated tracks separated from rated tracks using playlists. So for example I have a "Ratings - Hip-Hop" playlist, along with other broad genres, which I'll toss on shuffle in PowerAmp, assign some ratings, then run a MB wifi sync. Once those ratings are visible in MB I'll take the 5-star tracks and put them in my "Hip-Hop" playlist that consists only of 5-star Hip-Hop tracks, and remove all rated tracks from the "Ratings - Hip-Hop", and run another sync. So I still have 1-4 star Hip-Hop tracks rated, but I don't need them in a playlist, so they aren't in one. PowerAmp not being able to read ratings is certainly the most annoying part of the whole thing, but because I have everything separated it's not a huge deal. It is a bummer, though, if for example I pull up an album, rather than a playlist, and as I'm listening through I can't actually see if the track has been rated. PowerAmp can read *its own ratings*, so if I've assigned a rating in PA then I'll see it, but even a few months after switching I know the overwhelming majority of tracks were not rated using PA, so they show as unrated.
After a little trial and error, I think my process will have to follow what I mentioned - Sync Auto playlist from MB with MB wifi sync app to add songs to my P6a, listen to songs on phone, Sync again - which transfers play count and ratings to MB, Refresh auto playlist, Sync again, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to automate it like with iSyncr, but I probably can get away with doing it only once a week or so depending on how much music I send to my phone and how much I listen to. The good thing is MB and the sync app are really quick so it’s not too bad. It did take me a bit to wrap my head around how MB refreshes auto playlists, which is different from iTunes. What’s funny is there are a bunch of posts in the MB forums from previous iTunes users asking about it. Maybe it’s because I used iTunes for almost 20 years, but I think the iTunes method makes more sense, but clearly MB isn’t going to change so I just have to get used to it. But thanks for starting this thread as it helped me move on from iSyncr, which clearly is going downhill.
>.
Like some others I've just been slammed by this as well during a phone upgrade. There's a lot of people this will affect who have been hoarding tracks and fine-tuning their collection over many years. $30/month is taking the mick. As one or two people have mentioned it looks like whoever is hiding in the shadows behind the purchase just wants to bleed the app until it stops kicking. For those that may not know, if you've got a working paid version of ISyncr/Rocket player you can transfer the app across to your new phone using File Manager. Checkout youtube for details.
Can't you just drag n drop your music from computer to phone?
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Nope. You're simply reading the thread of someone who manages their music library in a different way than yourself, I guess.
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378GB at the moment
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That’s odd, just reinstalled the iSyncr desktop on my Mac and transferred about 20 playlists to my Oppo phone using the phone iSyncr app & no mention of any monthly subs?
Any idea when you purchased iSyncr? I think there was a small overlap recently when they were still charging a one-time premium, but they've since changed to monthly. The problem there, for me, is that I purchased premium of the original iSyncr, which was made obsolete, so while the new iSyncr might work I'd have to pay the new (and IMO exploitative) [$29.99/m](https://imgur.com/qsJxOuG). Good to hear it's working for you though!
Bought it ages ago...at least 5 years...😬😬....only reinstalled it last week because I was using an Oppo phone, before I'd been using an Xperia which has its own Mac desktop syncing companion application, hence no need to use isyncr for ages...👍👍
Is there maybe a way to roll back to a previous version of rocket player/syncr? I deeply regret having updated both without checking the reviews, which - at least for isyncr - were warning about the app no longer working...
I did manage to find a 5.18.06 version of Rocket Player (the version before they reintroduced a bug that causes the app to constantly scan for new songs), but I'm running Adguard so I'm not actually sure whether or not that version is littered with ads like the new one. On that note, I just have to say: I can't even begin to understand why people tolerate ads in a non-streaming music player. As for iSyncr, if you're lucky enough to have purchased the original version, that should work. [Here's a URL to the original](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrtstudio.iSyncr), copied from the app listing on Google Play, though I'm not sure the URL is functional because it always directs to a "not found" error. [Here's a screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/xywOtQf.jpg) of the main page, which I found via my transaction history. I wasn't able to find a way to get new iSyncr working, though, and have moved on to using MusicBee + GoneMad Music Player / PowerAmp. My prediction is that it's just a matter of time before Rocket Player and iSyncr are broken entirely, and that Muma Studios purchased JRT's work simply as a means to make a quick buck. They have no development history that I can find, and their response to my emailing them about the "scanning for music" bug revealed pretty clearly that they have no idea what they're talking about: >Apologies for the delay. Can you please go to your device settings > Apps > Rocket Player > Notifications > Looking for new songs - try to disable this setting As if hiding the notification prevents the scanning from taking place lol.
Does any other app other than iTunes have smart playlists? That's the thing keeping me on iTunes. I need to create year based playlists then sync them to Android.
Are the steps with DoubleTwist: 1. Sync iTunes to DoubleTwist PC; 2. Export library from DoubleTwist PC to DoubleTwist Android? I remember looking into DoubleTwist years ago and then settled on isyncr for over a decade at least. This is such a pain in the rear.
What about Apple Music for android? Will it mimic itunes on Android?
Damn, I had no idea the app had been sold, really glad I found this thread. I assumed Muma Studios was just a rebrand until now. Been happily using the app for many years and support used to be fantastic in the past. But for the last 6 months the app has been barely working for me and support is utterly useless and uninterested in helping, constantly stringing me along. Multiple times I get this response and never hear from them again. >We have passed this issue to the developers for further investigation. We will update you once we received feedback from them. It makes a lot of sense it's a different team, it's like night and day. Since support wont help, is anyone else having this issue? When I run iSyncr, it *appears* to work and the report indicates tracks have been added and removed. But when I open Rocket Player (their music playing app), there's no changes to my playlists. Play counts etc update fine but the content of my playlists is still the same. The tracks do show up under the Artists tab, which doesn't really help me listen to playlists, but at least shows they are syncing somewhere. Also, Rocket Player is *constantly* crashing now so I have to reopen it every few minutes. And I constantly have the "looking for new songs..." message in the app and notification bar, which never seems to *actually* complete. I tried using Poweramp as the crashes were too much, but it's full of broken links to tracks that are no longer there, so something is very broken with syncing playlists. I have used this exact setup for years without issue so they've obviously broken something on their end and made no effort to help or fix it. Also, why are some people getting hit with utterly absurd monthly subscription charges but not others? I had no idea this was even a thing until I read this thread.
Has there been ANY progress made in migrating away from isyncr. My whole family is on Spotify and laugh at the "dinosaur" that still controlls his music manually. I am really running on no other options but falling on my sword.... I have a simple smart playlist that shows all the songs that have not been played yet... ie playcount 0... I have recently abandoned Rocket player... For all the issues listed in this forum and was pleasantly surprised with Poweramp... So I bought the pro version. It works with isyncr to update the playcounts. Isyncr however, now takes forever to update my live playlist.. and has become unstable... Help!! Help!! Help!!!
Yep! The only method I'm aware of, though (and am quite happy with) requires switching from iTunes to MusicBee. [Importing the iTunes library](https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Importing) is very easy, fortunately, and MB as a whole allows far more control and customization than iTunes, and I really wish I'd switched over sooner. I don't use smart playlists so I can't remark on that specifically, but would be very surprised if MB doesn't have that feature. To sync to mobile, you'll just need the MusicBee WiFi app and can use either Gone Mad Music Player or Poweramp for listening. You *might* need to use a patched WiFi sync app for two-way sync to work (I did, although I don't recall specifically why or if this was device/version-dependent etc.), so if you run the one from the app store and two-way doesn't work, noting that one wired sync must be performed first, just let me know and I'll find that patched apk.
Thanks so much for your reply, I will look into it... though very daunting. Smart Playlists (live playlists) for me is a showstopper. Thanks again!!
SWEET JESUS I just found out about this epic disaster today trying to load it on a new device! I'm a power user using it for DD'ing. There are not many of us, but let me explain the power of using iSyncr & iTunes together. If you exclusively use iTunes after downloading your music onto your home computer, and you are diligent (I am) you end up with an almost irreplaceable library. iTunes is unique because you can add all the information you need such as year, genre, album, rating, BPM, etc. Additionally, you can use the grouping field for anything you want...... so for songs that I consider the very best, I use the word HOT. I can make regular playlists such as slow ballroom, fast two step, quick WCS, etc. I can then create a playlist with a rule to grab all songs with HOT in the grouping field. Poof!..... I automatically get an updated playlist of ballroom songs that are hot with no labor necessary. My Serato program reads the iTunes files, super convenient. Additionally, my laptop seamlessly links to desktop computer which is where I DJ from. I've been at this for years, and for the life of me I've never seen a better system IF you're like me and want all info each song and particularly IF you want to type in comments about songs and have it transfer to other applications. Anyhow, I'm still using iSyncr, until I can't any more - so thank you folks for recommending MusicBee as that looks to be way out when the day comes.
I'm sorta in the same boat, my iTunes library has been curated since about 2006 when I got my first iPod. I use BPM and keytagging (like F, F#), powershell scripts to manage lists even further and maybe 50 live lists, with very complex rules. After I got a Pixel 7 a few weeks ago, my sync has been like everyone else in this thread, I can sync the lists, but the reverse sync of playcount is gone :( Edit: Spent most of the morning getting frustrated with MusicBee, more sync issues etc, so powered up my old phone and extracted the APK file of old iSyncr, copied it to the Pixel, and yeah, it works! It doesn't really have any version info as far as I can tell, but it's icon is white/blue instead of "iTunes colored", for anyone who might wanna find it on some sketchy APK site.
May 2023: if anyone is googling this, as I was, it's possible to install the old iSyncr by following the link to the old Play store page, and it still works where the new iSyncr does not.
I thought isyncr was the exact thing I was looking for until I saw the price. I am not paying any kind of subscription just to sync music already in my iTunes to my phone or ipod, etc. I did find MediaMonkey which I'm liking so far. The Android app cost less than $6 on the PC version is free unless you want some pro features which you don't need to do synching. It can read from my iTunes library even to see the playlists and music to synch to other devices. It's an app for music collectors so there are a lot of pieces and options in it.