Media Player question

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

I created a share called “Music” and moved all my iTunes music to that share.
I enabled DNLA & Itunes server. So far so good…

My PC & Mac’s iTunes see’s the WD Mycloud and I can stream music.

Also, my Definitive Technology Audio System has a great app called Play-Fi. It too detects my Music and gives great options on streaming the music.

Here is where things aren’t good and a question. I would also like to play my music on my IOS device. I have the WD My Cloud App on my phone.

Compared to DT’s Play-Fi. When I chose the music, I see all the normal options, Artist, Album, Song etc. I would like to select songs, and stream them randomly, which Play-Fi does very well.
WD does not. It lists all the songs 01-xxxx with all the track numbers with “01” first. When I select random play, it randomly plays all the tracks beginning with 01, until it cycles through those thousands of songs, it moves onto the 02’s…

(keep in mind Play-Fi is an IOS app that will only play music through the DT audio system, not an IOS device).

The numbering scheme is done by iTunes. I would have to un number every song… which I do not/will not do.

Ah, finally to the question.
Is there an audio media player for IOS that will play my songs on my device as desired or am I stuck with the way WD does it?

2

This not as simple as it appears.
I can likely help you, but your above comment needs some clarification:
You say you have an iPhone, so I assume that iOS device, for sure. Do you also have an iPad you want to play the music on, too? Are there any other iOS devices you have to play music on? Or is your main and only concern to play the My Cloud music on an iPhone? You’d better have some good head/ear phones (or Bluetooth speaker), because the iPhone speaker is pretty bad-sounding compared to other devices.)

Also, do you have any Android or Kindle devices?
Do you have a Roku, Amazon Fire TV, or Chromecast, a Smart TV or WDTV??

Do you use home-made Playlists?
Does you Play-Fi audio system have a headphone out jack?
And, finally, have you considered using Bluetooth in any way?
Do you have Bluetooth headphones?

I totally agree that the My Cloud is the lamest music app I have, and I have complained to WD. It lacks a REAL shuffle feature AND it cannot play from playlists;, both of which I use a lot. So, when it comes to streamed music, I don’t often use that app or even iPhone/Pad. Instead, I use my Kindle tablet (Android device) with apps on it that can do the job. I have a few iOS apps that I can get to do a better job,than My Cloud, but they are somewhat specialized.

After you answer my questions, I can most likely come up with a solution for you. With my arsenal of gadgets and devices, I can do most anything to get music (and other media) streamed from Point A to Point B.

3

No Android or Kindle
Only Apple TV, no smart TV
No home-made playlists
Definitive Tech Soundbar has an output jack
I use Blue Tooth Beats Pill connected to my Win7 Machine
No Blue Tooth Headphones

4

I’d look for a DLNA media streaming app for the iThing.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=iphone+dlna+app

However, I’ve not found a DLNA app on Android that is good at doing a genuine random shuffle play across an entire library (as MediaMonkey’s Auto-DJ does*); I suspect it’s something to do with the need to interrogate the DLNA database, versus having a local database.

If DLNA doesn’t give you the facilities you want, then may look to a better-specified network file storage browser app; the MyCloud app is (like most WD app) pretty poor.

MM’s Auto-DJ is a true random play, not a shuffle; it sometimes repeats tracks it’s already played.

5

I am back to help Paul, and CP, I have some interesting news regarding Android DLNA apps after I comment to Paul.

OK, Paul, you have a limited set of hardware devices, and I agree with CP, you need to use a DLNA app on the iPhone, but since Apple barely supports the DLNA platform, the choices of iOS apps are quite limited. I even searched the Apple app store for DLNA as well as UPNP (another term for DLNA). The most-reviewed app by a very large margin is PlayerXtreme, I have it and do not like it It’s UI is very plain-jane and hard to traverse. I could not get it to shuffle play from my entire iTunes Media library, although I did not try every possibility, so it might. It selects from both DLNA media servers on network as well as shared devices. You will see your My Cloud listed as a source twice, as each type of source can be accessed. The DLNA source shows you three folders, Music, Photos and Videos, use this source. See if you can find a way to shuffle or random play.

A free iOS DLNA app I know well and often use is called Belkin MediaPlay and it was developed from the highly regarded, (but not available anymore,) Twonky Beam app. The Belkin version is actually Twonky Beam wrapped up in a Belkin cover. It does not shuffle play, but you can create a playlist on it and then play from that playlist on your iPhone/Pad. I create100-track random playlists using iTunes program that are stored in same folder as my music, and MediaPlay can play from them. You can instruct the app to Play All tracks in succession. This is my way to “shuffle play” using iThings. The app has other nice features I will not get into for now.

OK, for CP, I have found quite a few good DLNA apps I like to use on my Kindle (Android) tablet. One is MediaPlay listed above. I also use the free Avia app, and it has been my favorite until a few weeks ago. I try not to put too many of the same kind off apps in my devices, but I have heard good things about BubbleUPNP, and it recently appeared at the Amazon app store and I installed it to give a test run. It is now my favorite DLNA app. So much so, I paid the price of $3.50 to completely enable all features such as “Shuffle Library” and remove the obnoxious ads. It will shuffle all music tracks from my NAS and elsewhere

And, just last night, I discovered that this past October, a new company has resurrected Twonky Beam, and they have released the DLNA receiver app for the Amazon Fire TV. I installed it on my Fire TV, and all three of my above mentioned DLNA apps can beam music to it. So, at this moment, the Bubble app is sending a shuffle of my entire music library to the Fire TV onto television, (which is also connected to my stereo system) where I am listening to it in excellent stereo sound. You have to try it yourself; it’s great.
(My Roku has the Twonky receiver app on it too, so I can do same as w/Fire TV.)

Paul, get yourself an inexpensive small Android tablet so you can join in the fun, too.

6

I’ve been using BubbleUPnP for about a year now, and also bought the licence, which is a bargain… I tried a huge range of Android UPnP/DLNA apps, but settled on Bubble as being the most stable and best performing. And, with the BubbleServer able to run on the MyCloud, courtesy of Nazar78, I can access my library remotely via BubbleUPnP.

But, in order to play ‘randomly’ from my entire collection, I have to do shuffle play on the entire library, and that works by adding the entire library to the playlist, shuffled, which takes quite a long time…

I resorted to buying a cheap secondhand Win7 all-in-one PC, and running MediaMonkey on that for home use.

7

Thanks Mike for all your efforts and research. I may do the same as CPT Paranoia, and just get a cheap win7 PC, load the entire library onto that, use the WD backup software so it’s on the cloud, and then get iTunes Match from the cheap computer with a single iTunes account.

The trick will be, iTunes match is only accessible via one iTunes login or IOS device??? If so, that won’t work either.
Need to share between me and the mrs.

8

My all-in-one Win7 Enterprise machine (a ViewSonic VPC-100, bought secondhand for £50, and upgraded to 2GB RAM with a £3.50 DDR2 SODIMM card; it has a decent screen, DVD player and is good enough to run Kodi, playing .TS streams pulled from my Humax) is just a media controller/player: no media is stored on it; it’s all on the NAS. Access to the NAS is as mapped drives, which remain connected. The only thing stored on the media PC is the MediaMonkey database.

I let the media PC sleep when not in use, with MediaMonkey left running. I measured the standby power, and it was less than 1W, so for the convenience of having MM ready to go as soon as the PC comes out of sleep (a couple of seconds), I’m happy to pay for the tiny power cost.

Decent sleep requires a bit of fiddling with the USB HID optical mouse driver settings, due to a bizarre quirk of Windows that prevented the device entering sleep; well documented on many forums across the internet, fortunately…

Can’t help with iTunes, I’m afraid; I tried it briefly on a PC when I got an iPad2, but found it the most awful piece of irrational bloatware I’ve ever encountered, that tried its best to CFU my music collection, so I uninstalled as much as I possibly could and still allow MM to talk to the iPad to sync music. MM works the way I tell it to, and puts media where I tell it, and puts its database and temp files where I tell it.

9

Paul.

I had a spare Win XP like the one I was using at the time, until the used one broke down a year later! They can be handy, though. Now, I have a working Win 7 and a newer Win 8 I can use, and do, .One thing I used it was for running two versions of iTunes on each PC. I used the used PC to update my 40GB original iPod and the other PC for updating my 160GB iPod. Same Apple account; no problem

In this case, I don’t recommend a second PC to play media from. One big advantage of a NAS is “no PC required” turned on to use NAS server. Why eliminate that advantage. Instead of a second PC, I suggest you get a new inexpensive and basic Android tablet. Keep it nearby and use it as a “music-accessing remote”. Although we have iPads, they are not so useful as android tablets for this purpose, so we also each have a Kindle tablet, too (Heck they were on sale, so we bought them!) I do like my Kindle, too, but one thing about them is they have Amazon’s version of Android OS, and not the standard version. I can’t even download apps from Google Play store; I have to use Amazon app store, and they don’t have a Kindle version of every Android app, and they don’t always work the same as the standard app.

One place I would look for an Android tablet is Costco since they have them. I get enough use from my Kindle tablets, so I do not want another tablet. but if I didn’t have a Kindle I might not get one today; I’d get a standard Android tablet.

Something else to consider.

10

Thanks for the help Mike. I think I’m going to go with iTunes Match using one of my Mac’s and just back it up to the Cloud.