Stream from PC to Android

Robm1955

I have all my music on an external hard drive, and up until recently, when it started acting up, streamed all my music through my Logitech Squeezbox. I want to stream it now, through my phone. I read about a program called Skifta, which you install both on your pc, and your phone, then you need Windows Media Player to stream. I started setting up libraries on media player yesterday, and it looked as though it was still going this morning. Does it actually copy the files over, or just syncs to the external drive? It seems to be putting all my music in what order it thinks, and not the way it is set up on my drive. I have folders for Artist, and in within those folders, the Albums, etc. If anyone could recommend a better/easier way, I would be grateful. I would use Plex, but without creating playlists, it will only play one song, and then you have to click on another to hear it, whereas Logitech just played the next song in the folder, until it came to the end.

Neil_Jones

I'd say it syncs, as its quite unlikely your Android phone will have copious amounts of space if you have a decent sized external hard drive.

With regards to Plex, you should be able to add the lot to a playlist, shuffle it, save it (for later retrieval) and then process it; its not primarily designed to "look at all this music, pick something at random and play it, then pick something else and play it" etc.

Robm1955

Neil_Jones wrote: »

I'd say it syncs, as its quite unlikely your Android phone will have copious amounts of space if you have a decent sized external hard drive.

With regards to Plex, you should be able to add the lot to a playlist, shuffle it, save it (for later retrieval) and then process it; its not primarily designed to "look at all this music, pick something at random and play it, then pick something else and play it" etc.

Thanks for that Neil. I didn't mean installing the libraries on my phone. It looked as though Media Player on my pc, was copying the files over to my pc, from my external drive, but perhaps not. Maybe just me, but I still don't think the file structure in Media Player, is the same as on the external drive.

dipsomaniac

Have you looked at Google play music? You can point Google music manager to music on your drive and then stream via app on phone

wongataa

dipsomaniac wrote: »

Have you looked at Google play music? You can point Google music manager to music on your drive and then stream via app on phone

That method does not stream from a local computer. It will upload your music to Google and then you stream it over the internet to your phone.

wongataa

Can you put SD cards in your phone? If you can it might be easier to copy all your music onto a suitable SD card which you then put in your phone. Then you can use a music app to play your music off the SD card.

dan958

I don't steam music to my phone often, but I use Samba Network Music Player and just connect to my music through a smb share. (this is on my media server, but you can do the same with your pc)

fenlander_uk

Share your Windows media drive. Install VLC media player on your phone. Job done - music and video.

Robm1955

Thanks again for all the great advice. I do have VLC on my phone, so I will looking into streaming my media with that. No point in installing uneccessary software.

Robm1955

Still having problems. I've changed the settings for sharing, and everything seems to indicate, that it's a shared folder, but I've tried VLC, and Samba, and can't see my drive.

AndyPix

are you using the correct path to your share ?


eg ..


[URL="file://\\ComputerName\ShareName"]\\ComputerName\ShareName[/URL]


If you type the above into the search box on your computer and press enter, does the folder appear ?