Android app sees but won't play music

[ThatAdamGuy]

Hi there,

This has to be perhaps the strangest bug around, but...

I downloaded the Android app and I was able to play one song off your demo server, but now cannot play music anymore with the app.

I can see all the albums on the demo server (album art included), but when I click on "Play" it just stays at 0 seconds.

Thinking maybe your demo server was down, I installed a Subsonic server on my Windows box. After doing some port forwarding stuff, I now can see all *my* songs on my Android phone... but, once again, cannot play them.

I even tried rebooting the phone. Nope, still no luck.

Any ideas what might be up?

Thanks in advance for your time

[ThatAdamGuy]

Okay, after a bit more testing, some more details...

- *Some* songs will play. And it's consistent which ones.
- No rhyme or reason to why *these* ones play, though. They're not appreciably bigger or smaller (filewise) than the other ones.

Strange!

[sindre_mehus]

I see the same thing. I think it's related to two things:

1. The mobile data network bandwidth varies a lot.
2. The Android media player (a software component which implements streaming media) is "picky". It seems to time out if data isn't received fast enough.

Anyway, I recommend you to try out Subsonic 3.8 and the 1.0 version of the Android app, released today. The download feature is greatly improved, and can be used to overcome most of the streaming problems.

[moonraker76]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem. Just came across this app after looking for something exactly like this. I have set it up correctly on Android, see everything fine but only managed to play one song, it's ogg at 160kbps, the rest are mp3s at varying bitrates. I am using latest version as stated in your reply. Any suggestions?

EDIT: the other songs on that album all seem to play - all ogg at 160kbps.

EDIT 2: Sorted (I think). I changed the maximum bitrate to 128kps in the server settings and the songs that wouldn't play now do.

Hopefully this might help others?

[moonraker76]

Solved one and onto the next...

Now it stops playing the song halfway through the track and some, if not most, seem to be reporting incorrect playing time when playing, almost double the time it should be. This is when running at 128kbps. Any higher and pretty much all songs won't play.

For now the download and play option seems best but its a shame the streaming doesn't work very well at the moment. All in all though a very accomplished piece of work!

[MO]

I was having difficulty streaming to my G1...

If you look at your list of songs in the subsonic app, you'll notice the line of text immediately below each song title includes the artist and data regarding the bitrate (ex: "Mazzy Star (169 Kbps mp3)").

Changing the setting of the android player's max bitrate (via the Subsonic server) to accommodate the LOWEST Kbps contained in my personal music collection (32 Kbps) made me able to stream most songs via Android (on 3G and Wifi) without any increase in buffing time and no cutoffs mid-song. The only songs I am now unable to play are the handful that list a Kbps lower than 32 Kbps.

I am unsure if this will work for everyone, but I just wanted to share a possible solution.

...now I'm off to license my server...

[jneville]

I try everything. My problem is exactly as

Moonraker76

Solved one and onto the next...

Now it stops playing the song halfway through the track and some, if not most, seem to be reporting incorrect playing time when playing, almost double the time it should be. This is when running at 128kbps. Any higher and pretty much all songs won't play.

For now the download and play option seems best but its a shame the streaming doesn't work very well at the moment. All in all though a very accomplished piece of work!

I try all birates and always show incorrect length and stops playing in the middle of the song.
Download for me is not and option. I just wanna to connect to the server and listen to my collection at home.

Thanks,

[moonraker76]

Changing the setting of the android player's max bitrate (via the Subsonic server) to accommodate the LOWEST Kbps contained in my personal music collection (32 Kbps) made me able to stream most songs via Android (on 3G and Wifi) without any increase in buffing time and no cutoffs mid-song.

Ok, tried 32kbps, but the quality is lousy (as I guess you'd expect at 32). Played a randon song which is 3:38 mins and the time stated 26:16 when playing (as opposed to 6:34 at 128kpbs). It did play the song all the way through though (at 128kbps the exact same song stopped at about 1:30) - not sure how long I could listen to my music collection at that bitrate, or anything much lower than 128kbps but there seems to be some sort of pattern forming and its easy to replicate, which has got to be a good thing. Lets hope the fix is straightforward!

[moonraker76]

Topics 7429 and 7422 could be merged if that's possible? Seems both are related to the same issue.

[MO]

Yeah, I also noticed that the quality was lacking, but maybe since, as you mentioned, there is some sort of method to the madness, someone far more technically inclined than I will pop in and save the day with a solution.

[ThatAdamGuy]

Hi there,

Just tried the new Subsonic for Android. Good news: definitely snappier! But it didn't fix my problem.

I've narrowed it down the problem to a surprising subset of my music: it's *all* the songs I have legally bought!

MP3s from the following sources DO NOT play:
- Amazon MP3
- Lala
- Emusic

But rips from my personal CDs (even at 192kbps WMA) play fine.

[ThatAdamGuy]

Ah, setting the max bitrate to seemingly almost anything (128, 192, etc.) allows those stubborn songs to stream on my Android.

Downside, these songs seem to stop about 2/3rds the way through.

[dan1son]

I can't get anything to stream to the phone. Even the sample site won't stream over 3g or even wi-fi. I can't even stream over wi-fi on the network my files are stored on. I've tried dropping the max bitrate to no avail. MP3s or Oggs all encoded by myself and using Musicbrainz for tags.

As mentioned, everything loads fine, artists and albums are viewable, but playing an album causes the song names to quickly flash in order on the playback screen with no indication of failure.

[devin]

I can't get anything to stream to the phone. Even the sample site won't stream over 3g or even wi-fi. I can't even stream over wi-fi on the network my files are stored on. I've tried dropping the max bitrate to no avail. MP3s or Oggs all encoded by myself and using Musicbrainz for tags.

As mentioned, everything loads fine, artists and albums are viewable, but playing an album causes the song names to quickly flash in order on the playback screen with no indication of failure.

I've got the same problem. Nothing at all will play on my G1, and I'm on WiFi. Everything loads fine and I can download songs with no problem.

Any ideas?

[rage4order]

I've got the same problem. Nothing at all will play on my G1, and I'm on WiFi. Everything loads fine and I can download songs with no problem.

Any ideas?

I was able to stream tracks today for the first time, but *only* on wifi network at home. If I try to go over T-Mobile 3G, it fails every time. Looks like it definitely is bandwidth related, however it seems that other streaming applications such as last.fm and Pandora don't seem to have any problems streaming over 3G, so it seems to me that there has to be a solution. Perhaps the buffer isn't big enough? Grasping for straws here...