LG Dare music player

Hey guys, I'm very seriously considering the new LG Dare, but I'm so hooked on the iPhone that I'm about to leave verizon just to get it. The biggest thing keeping me away from the Dare is that I'm not sure if you can get your iTunes to recognize it.

If anyone knows how I can get the LG Dare to show up in my iTunes, so I can simply drag/drop my music, movies and pictures onto it pleeeasssee let me know. Gracias.

itunes will not recognize the Dare but you can create a playlist and then copy, drag and drop the songs onto ur micro sd card. itunes aac format works fine, thats what i use. as for movies u need to convert it. search up SUPER. its a great conversion tool that i use to put movies on my dare. pictures are drag drop.

Edit - if u select your music by albums, it will not be in tracklisting it will be alphabetical order. the only way to make it tracklisting is to use rhapsody and make a playlist

1. Where can I see the benefits of using rhapsody verses simply copying my mp3's over from my computer to my music directory on my SD card?

2. I hate to just have all my songs mixed in together. How can I have my songs in Albums or under certain Artists?... do I need rhapsody to make notes on the id tags of the mp3's? How does that work?

3. Do I need rhapsody on my cellphone and my computer or just one or the other?

4. Do I need rhapsody or the drivers from it before my computer will see my phone when viewing in windows XP explorer?

5. Once my mp3's are on my phone, if rhapsody is used, will the file quality stay the same?.. I prefer mine to stay in 320 file quality.

6. How does this "sync" work?.. is that a rhapsody function too... I see the option on my phone, but what can it do without rhapsody?

Sorry so many questions but this is a new gig for me.

I'll try to answer as many of your questions as I can.

1. By using Rhapsody, you will be able to make playlists. This keeps your songs in order and stops them from playing alphabetically. I am pretty sure this is the only program that this phone will let you use, because it is the only option that I see when you select "Playlists" from your music folder.

2. The only way that I have put music on my phone from an Apple laptop, using bluetooth. When I did that, I put 4 albums on my phone and they were automatically grouped with the correct album and artist info. You can choose to play a certain album or artist by going to the main menu and choosing "My Music", then choosing album or artist. The only downside to doing this is that you cannot keep the album from playing the songs in alphabetical order. You don't need rhapsody to edit id tags on your computer. This can be done by simply right clicking the song and choosing properties.

3. You only need Rhapsody on your computer. I don't even think you can download it to your phone.

4. Verizon wants you to use rhapsody with V Cast so they can sell you songs. I would just use a program like BitPim to transfer songs (or playlists) that you already own onto your phone. What I did was JUST install the phone drivers that came on the CD with my Dare, and NOT rhapsody w/V Cast. That way my computer can recognize my phone when I use BitPim to transfer files to and from my phone. If you want to make a playlist to keep the tracks in order, I would download the 14 day free trial of Rhapsody from rhapsody.com without V Cast. You also might be able to make playlists that are compatible with the Dare by using Windows Media Player. I am not sure if this will work but I will try it soon and update this post.

5. I am almost 100% sure that the Dare cannot play music at 320 bitrate setting. I would find a free program to shrink the bitrate to about 128. This will also drastically reduce the size that the files take up on your phone allowing you to have about 50-60% more songs than the higher quality sound would allow. If you want to I am sure that you can put songs on your phone that have a 320 bitrate, but this is just like using a top-of-the-line stick of RAM on your computer when your motherboard is a few years old and will therefore only use a fraction of the new RAM's potential.

6. I haven't even tried to sync my phone with my computer. I just use the program BitPim to transfer all of my files, including music, ringtones, picures and videos.

EDIT: You CAN sync with Windows Media Player, you do not have to install Rhapsody.

I'm struggling to get the Music Player on my Dare to be workable for me. There seem to be some real performance issues with Rhapsody and syncing to the Dare. For example, every time I launch it, it takes about 5 minutes for it to scan my device to find all of the songs that are already on it before I can do anything further.

For me though, the bigger issue is that the Player on the Dare seems to have extremely limited capabilities. Ideally, I would like this to just shuffle across the All Songs list (currently about 2200), but as noted on another thread out here, it will only shuffle within the first 250 songs. If I create smaller Playlists and sync them to the device from Rhapsody, it will only take the first 100 songs from the Playlist. And if I manually create a Playlist on the device, not only is it tedious, but it limits me to only 200 items.

Is anyone else seeing this limitations? Have you found a workaround? As an alternative, is there a way to manually create a Playlist via text or xml file and move it onto the device? Syncing via Windows Media Player works better in general for me, but does not put Playlists on the device.

What's the best way to get this feedback to Verizon and/or LG?

Thanks

EXCELLENT! I've been dying to find a way to keep my songs in the correct order! I'll finally be able to use my phone for music instead of bringing around my MP3 player!

I just got a micro sd card (PNY 4gig) and it's not fitting in the slot. This is my first experience with a micro sd card, but I assume that it should click in? uh, advice for a noob?

it has to be a micro SD and if you mean it won't stay all the way in its because you have to help it by pushing it in the final way with the tip of a ballpoint pin or similiar... same to get it back out.

Unless you got really good fingernails!

Hello everyone. I received a new Dare this week and love it.

However, how does one play music using a microsd card? I did transfer music from PC (MP3 and AAC files) onto the card, but the Dare doesn't "see" them. The Dare does tell me that the card has 387 MB used (which it does) but it isn't finding or seeing the individual files. In settings, I have told it to use card for sounds, etc but to no avail.

What am I doing wrong?

Using Vista PC and microSD card to transfer files; not using Rhapsody to transfer files.

Thanks!

UPDATE: I found the solution. Dummy me! I didn't explore the card well enough and told my PC just to copy files to the root level of the card. I didn't see the my_files folders such as my_music, my_sounds, etc file folders. All is well now as I copied music files to the right folder and Dare recognized them!!!!

Can someone confirm I understand this correctly? If I want to randomly play all songs that are loaded to the phone it will only randomize the first 250 songs? Or is this only when in a song list? I would think both are pretty serious limitations of the software. I’m thinking about getting a Dare to replace my Treo and MP3 player and be able to use the Blue tooth audio connection so I don’t need wires.

My usage of my MP3 player is pretty simple. I just randomize all songs and play them. Standard controls are fine with me, skip, scan, pause and stop are pretty much all I need. I don’t create song lists. I occasionally will search and play a single song and typically I search by artist and then either randomly play all their songs or just a specific one. Then it’s usually back to randomly playing all songs on my player.

Are you guys saying I won’t be able to do this with the Dare because of the 250-song limit? What’s the point of having all the memory available if you really can’t use it?

What’s the playback quality like? Anyone using the blue tooth audio connection to a set of headphones or car stereo?

Thanks,
Art.

I should have added some other questions. It seems like I can just add songs using Media player. Will it retain my artist and song name that seems to be imbedded into the MP3 or will it just use a file name? That would be a bummer. Some of my songs have been copied from CD, others bought and some from other nefarious Internet sources…

Does it charge/load/communicate from a PC using a standard mini-USB cable or do you need to use a specific LG connector cable?

Thanks,
Art.

it comes with an adapter for standard usb connection... I usually just pop my memory stick in my computer though.
It keeps any information that was already imbedded in the mp3.
When copied from CD you may not get some of that.. although you can add it on your computer if you really want to into the id tags.

I'm having the same problem, but I have my music in the media folder on my SD card and it still won't read it. Can anyone help?

put them in the "my music" directory and make sure the "my music" directory is not inside another directory "like the my media directory".

It needs to be from the root directory... in other words... "not in another directory" but it needs to be one of the main directories.... thats the way it was by default and thats the pathway Dare looks for.

ok i just got a Dare two days ago, and im curious on how do transfer itunes music onto my dare. i have a *MacBook Pro laptop, and a 2GB Micro SD memory card. if any help, that would be great.


*MacBook Pro -- mine only runs Mac OS X Leopard as of now; no Vista or XP or Windows applications whatsoever.