Topic: Android media library

[scottws]

When I first got my Droid Incredible, I wasn't sure where I was supposed to store music.  I later learned that it doesn't really matter, but most guides were saying to create a folder named "Music" on the SD card, so that is what I did.

I store my music on my server in the folder format "Artist - Album" instead of the "Artist" ¦ "Album" format more common these days.  Well I dragged the folders over as-is to the Music folder.  I noticed later that the phone seemed to generate its own library, sorting the folders in the more modern, iTunes like format with Artist parent folders and Album subfolders.  I thought that was pretty awesome.

Lately, I've noticed that it has stopped doing that and is leaving the folders as-is.  I am not sure if this behavior broke when I first installed PowerAmp or if PowerAmp was automatically doing it and it stopped doing this in a newer version either intentionally or due to a bug.  In any case, since to me it was a default/automatic thing, I don't know where to begin looking for correcting the issue.  Do any of you guys have any idea what I'm talking about and how I might look into solving this?

[gpw11]

I THINK I kind of see what you're saying.  Is it actually sorting the folders, or just the way the program sorts the folders?  I don't primarily use it as a playback device, and most of the music on it has been cobbled together from here and there for me, but PowerAmp definitely seemed to organize things a bit differently for me than the stock player did. 

[scottws]

Basically, with my phone hooked up via USB to my PC, I would drag a folders named "Soundgarden - Superunknown" and "Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger" to the "Music" folder on my SD card.  Later, I would notice that the OS or one of the media players automatically changed the two individual folders from:

mnt
   SDcard
      Music
         Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
         Soundgarden - Superunknown

...to:

mnt
   SDcard
      Music
         Soundgarden
            Badmotorfinger
            Superunknown

I never told it to do such a thing, but I liked the behavior.  Since the feature has broken somehow, I have checked in the settings for PowerAmp, the HTC music player, and just the general Android Settings app and I'm not seeing anything related to this.  I mean there are things like scanners that you can set where to (or not to) look for music, but I didn't see anything where it gives you the option of auto-organizing your music based on the tags.

And since I don't remember if this first occurred before or after I put PowerAmp on there, I don't know if it is something Android or the HTC music player was doing or PowerAmp was doing.  I'm pretty sure I had PowerAmp on there almost from the beginning though, which complicates things.  I've tried to Google this, but I can't come up with a relevant search string.