Music Manager that can properly see ID3 ratings tags and synchronize with Android

Solution 1:

Amarok supports the FMPS_Rating tags which Nick B refers to (and has for a while I think). Settings > Configure Amarok > Collection > Write statistics to file.

If you examine those files with kid3, you'll see the tags. I've only recently begun using it.

Solution 2:

OK, this is how I decided to solve this:

• Desktop side: use MediaMonkey in Win and gMusicBrowser in Linux. I really enjoy the latter because you can customize how the information is displayed in several ways. It is not fancy (no super-UI, controls, etc.), but I care more about the features, not the details in the UI. You can also set smart lists based on almost any criteria. Really nice product.
• Android: I have bought Poweramp, the highest rated player in the store. Another very solid product, extremely cheap considering the features you get. It does not read ratings from tags, BUT I have exchanged emails with its author and this feature is scheduled for the next release (no ETA, though..). The prayer is so good that I have bought now (and I will patiently wait for the upcoming release).
• Synch: solved mounting the SD card and running rsync (one script for Desktop -> Android, another for Android -> Desktop). I need manually run it depending on where I did my latest change, but I can live with that.

Thanks,

Solution 3:

My default ICS music player (which i rarely use) doesn't seem to show ratings, so it's hard to say.

As you've no doubt realised the only practical way around this problem is using ratings in tags. This won't work with iTunes AFAIK. However the problem is that for MP3 in particular, there is no universal ratings system for ID3. That said,

1. Various music players, including Quod Libet (I'm one of the devs) should be able to read these ratings formats for MP3. There are further subtleties about the scale used by WMP vs MM so your ratings may not be exactly the same, especially at the lower end of the scale. There is also discussion about adapting to fully support the new(ish) FMPS specs, which one day might solve this (but maybe not).

2. Once you've solved this, to keep the changes in sync across devices you're back to a much more familiar file synchronisation problem; there are many solutions to this. I'd recommend mounting the android disk locally then using something like Unison,but there are lots of file synchronisation alternatives.

HTH