[Q] Google Music Offline Location - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi Guys,
I have searched the forum for possible answers to my problem, but couldn't find any satisfing answer.
I have uploaded all my music to Google Music, but as I only have 1GB of mobile data in my plan, and no WiFi at work, I decided to save some of my albums on my internal storage, so I can play it offline.
There is an option called "Choose on device music" which when you choose it, saves the files to make them available offline, but the problem is I can't find it anywhere on my device.
I have found possible locations in Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache - this is what google search gave me, but there is nothing in that folder. I have used the ES File Explorer with root roghts, as I thought, maybe its hidden somehow, but the result was exactly the same.
Could anyone pleas help me and tell me where the music stored from Google Music is located? And how does it exactly work? Does it simply download all the files you choose to your storage?
My temporary solution was just simply copying the music from my laptop using the USB cable.
Thanks in advance.

When you pin it to your device you play it right from the Google play music app. There is an option for on device music only in the settings menu, use this when you want to see your downloaded music.
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Yes,I know that, but my problem is, I'd I make it available offline then I need to wait for it to download and I'm wondering what it's the location of the downloaded files, because the one that I mentioned in the OP doesn't seem to be right.I'm also suffering it's the music made available offline takes as much since on the device as the same music chipped straight from my pc.
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What exactly are you wanting to do? I guess I don't understand why you need to know where its stored. I'm not trying to be a wise guy.
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check this path. And musics are randomly numbered.
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I would like to remove it when not needed anymore and also other music players can't find those stored albums.
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@dany7915: that's exactly what I meant. Thank you for that
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Related

Where to put mp3 files so they show up in Google Play Music App?

I put some mp3's in sdcard/music. They do not show up in the play music app. I hit settings, refresh, but they still don't show up.
What's the deal?
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I put a fair amount of music in that same location and I got an error about one file but all the others show up and play normally.
Maybe try restarting the app? Otherwise it might be something about the files themselves that the app is having problems with.
Try am app called "SD card rescan" that a worked for me with slight patience or try rebooting it
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Mine showed up eventually, the app seems to take its own sweet time finding stuff
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I had to wait a week for it to show that I had added songs to a playlist
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Mine take a reboot to show up.
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I have tried rebooting, turning the device off, etc. When I click on any of these mp3's, play music opens and plays the files. So the app has no problem playing these mp3's.
Obviously it's not rescanning the device.
Edit: still no joy this morning. Then I turned the device off and back on.
Now it shows up under artist, but not album. Is there some secret to making a folder so it shows up under albums?
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leebo said:
Now it shows up under artist, but not album. Is there some secret to making a folder so it shows up under albums?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In whatever you're using to sideload the mp3's, you can make sub-folders in the target folder. If you're connecting from a PC with USB, you can simply make folders the same way you do on your PC. I did this, and now the folder shows up in the music library.
The Android OS have a system service called the "Media Scanner" that will once in a while scan your storage for media.
I read the thread and what is been reported is two different points:
1. Sometimes it really does take a bit for the scanner to kick in and start its thing. 99% of time you reboot it does perform a full scan, so rebooting and waiting a few minutes before checking always helps.
2. the music show under artist but not album, that is to do with the MP3 tags. If you check your mp3 on Winamp or iTunes there are options to change/edit the MP3 tags, where you can set artist name, album name, year, style, album art, etc, etc... if those info are correct in the file, it will show on the player in the correct section, if it is not correct, well.. fix it, then move to your device.
hope it helps.
Budius said:
2. the music show under artist but not album, that is to do with the MP3 tags.
hope it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it finally also showed up under albums. What's weird is it showed up under artists a few hours b4 it showed up under albums. What's up with that?
Another question: After copying MP3's to your device, even after they show up in the Play Music app, they do not get uploaded to your Play account?
I went out today and thought I would listen to this album on my phone. It didn't show up. Back at home, it doesn't show up on my computer's web browser when connected to my Play account. So is it a one way upload? Computer to cloud, but not mobile device to cloud?
Yep, the only way to upload is from the PC. The mobile app was never meant to do it.
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I put mine on Google's servers A lot easier to stream it all rather than worry about remembering to copy it to my phone and tablet.
Usually I do too. But I downloaded this album direct from the artists web site on my Nexus. Later I will connect it to my pc and copy it over.
It just seems so archaic.
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I was having some similar issues, but after trying out a few different things that seemed to work for others, mine showed up. Not sure exactly what was the magic trick, but a mix of restarting, rescanning, etc. seemed to help... Thanks all!

Music files not seen?

Hi,
I cannot find this through the search function on this Nexus 4 forum, although it is very weird.
I have downloaded (with my browser) several MP3 music files (from the web and from my own dropbox) to my Nexus 4 phone.
I can play them by clicking them from a file manager and choosing Google music player to complete the action.
But ... they do not show up in the Google music player. Neither do they show up in a few other music players I have installed (and removed again).
There are two exceptions:
- All music files do show up in the built in music player of the ES File Manager.
- I have set one downloaded MP3 as the standard ringtone on my phone. That file shows up in any music player.
What do I do wrong? Why does a downloaded MP3 not show up in a music player, unless I set it as my standard ringtone?
I live in a country where the Google Play Music store is not supported. But the ringtone-mp3 does not come from there!
Did you move the songs to your music folder?
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I have the exact same problem. I have also moved the files to my Music folder!
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PR0XiMA said:
I have the exact same problem. I have also moved the files to my Music folder!
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure there isn't a .nomedia file in that folder
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El Daddy said:
Make sure there isn't a .nomedia file in that folder
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But one thing that i thought was very weird was that, if i added an other song, it would show up...
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That is right! Just after I added them, I could see them! Very weird.
And yes, I moved them to the Music folder, but the ringtone I use (also a downloaded mp3) is still in the downlosd folder, and I can nevertheless see it.
A ".nomedia" file is hidden. You would need to have show hidden files enabled to see it.
[SOLVED] Use MTP from your Pc / laptop
Well, the problem has solved itself for me in the following way:
I am an Ubuntu user, and I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 yesterday evening.
Ubuntu (Lubuntu, Kubuntu etc.) 13.04 supports the MPT protocol Google wants us to use with our Nexus 4 'out of the box'.
I have read that Windows should do so too, but I cannot check that.
You connect your Nexus 4 to your PC or laptop and choose MTP (Media Tranfer Protocol) as the protocol to transfer files (I believe your phone chooses the other protocol by default). You do this from the notification area (where your notifications for new mail and app updates also appear).
Then you can copy music files from your PC / laptop to your phone to any directory in your phone. I suggest the Music directory. And, surprise, surprise, if you do it that way, the music files also appear in your Google Music Player!
The strange thing is, however, that you cannot transfer music files from your phone to your PC. It is a one-direction traffic. You also cannot delete files on your phone from your connected PC.
So if you want to make the invisible files on your phone visible in your Google music player, you have to delete them on the phone (from a file manager on the phone). I would copy them to Dropbox first, however. Then get them on your pc / laptop (by downloading them from Dropbox e.g.) and then copy them through the USB cable from you pc / laptop back to your phone. Strange, but that is how it works!
Do I understand this strange procedure? No, but it works. Enjoy!
renehasekamp said:
The strange thing is, however, that you cannot transfer music files from your phone to your PC. It is a one-direction traffic. You also cannot delete files on your phone from your connected PC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Negative! For me, using Windows 8 Pro x64. It works just fine using MTP, the only problem I am having is making folders. Then Windows Explorer crashes.
On Linux on my laptop (Linux Mint 14), i use ADB, which works just fine.
I only have this problem with two mixes from Never Say Die Records. But other songs works just fine...
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Google music hogging storage

Yesterday I was looking at my storage usage, play music had over 500mb of data. I cleared data and it went down to 12mb. Checked again today and there's 200mb in there. I hadn't even opened it since I cleared data. Wtf is it doing in the background? I'm guessing it's downloading music to the device, because it's killing my data also, but it's not downloading it to any obvious folder. I don't see any settings to control this, typical of a google app the settings are quite minimal. I haven't selected any songs to be pinned to the device either.
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Don't sync your Google Music and it will not use quite as much. When you do Sync the music file get stored in /data/data/com.google.android.music in the files folder. ....
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Word. I never used the sync feature even though I had it set up, so I just deleted everything from my play library. I'm on the all access trial. Any song I can stream from my library I can stream from Google, so why bother.
Thanks :thumbup:
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There's a modified google music apk floating around which let's you save the music to any directory (thus offloading it onto an SD card potentially).
Make sure you hit the "on device" setting so it doesn't stream everything and kill your data
jthrasher47 said:
Don't sync your Google Music and it will not use quite as much. When you do Sync the music file get stored in /data/data/com.google.android.music in the files folder. ....
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not the case on my phone. I am using ES File Explorer.
I don't know why I just checked again on my phone and thats where it is are you not syncing your music
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Play music is at it again. 510mb of data nowhere to be found. Luckily whatever it's doing, it did on wifi this time. I can't find anything in any location. No songs, nada. I'm close to deleting it and canceling my subscription.
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You did say you were streaming right?
Use Greenify and make it hibernate while not in use
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I haven't been streaming much, and when I do it's on wifi. This is app data not cellular data.
I unchecked sync google play music, automatic caching in the app, and cleared all data and it hasn't downloaded anything to my internal storage in two days. If I could contact google about it I would, because it downloaded 500mb of something to my phone over 4g, and that ain't right.
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Yeah I checked mine too and it had over 800 megabytes of data also I just froze it I'm not going to deal with it until I get it fixed or either I will revert to the old one
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Make sure you've disabled the option that automatically caches streamed music locally.

Adding a song from Google music to storage??

I would like to create a ringtone however any song I purchased on Google music is not available on my storage. Any way I can access it so I can create one?
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Look through your files with a file managing app and move it to a mother music folder. I don't know if you'll even find it because I haven't tried. But I'd like to know a 100 percent legit option too
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No luck with that bud
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you need to be rooted and need a file browser that can access root folders
got to data/data/com.google.android.music/files/music
they don't have proper names or date accessed info so if you have lots of files like me... good luck
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You can download google music manager on your pc and download your library. Then copy and paste to your s4. If you look for the songs in root explorer they show up as numbers if I remember right.
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MoReNitO303 said:
I would like to create a ringtone however any song I purchased on Google music is not available on my storage. Any way I can access it so I can create one?
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Find the song in your music player and click the pin button beside it.
That saves it to your phone. Done.
If you want use an app to make it a ringtone make sure you have root and use root explorer or anything root capable file explorer and navigate to data -> data -> com.google.android.music -> files -> music -> (artist/album)
Copy that file to your default Music folder that doesn't require root and wella any ringtone app should be able to find it.
OR
do as someone else suggested and download it to to your computer from Google Play Music then manually copy it over

Audio files undetectable

Hi all,
Nexus 4 is running on Lollipop 5.1.1 stock.
For the longest time, audio files are not detected by any of the music players be it Play Music or any third party apps.
Since I have ton of data on my phone I cannot format it either to install a new rom.
Streaming songs over YouTube or music apps works flawlessly just cannot play the MP3 files on my phone.
Any suggestions to rectify it will be highly appreciated.
Thanks
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Are the files visible when connected to your computer or through an app such as ES File Explorer?
Yes, they are visible. I can play them individually but a music app doesn't detect them.
Sent from my Nexus 4
I don't have an answer but suggest trying some new app like Rocket player. Library info will be rebuild from scratch so may be that'll solve it
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Take this with a grain of salt, but I think you can try wiping data of the "media storage" app in settings and rebooting. This will force the system to rebuild the media database. I remember reading this a few years ago when I had the same issue and this solved it. If there is anyway for you to make a nandroid or something, I would advise it in case it causes Android to stop finding your media all together.

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