What music database should a Windows user pick if they have an Android phone?

[deckeda]

I don't know which phone, all I know is he drags songs to it via USB using Windows 7.

I read about JRiver being popular, but don't know what, if anything allows a person to sync or otherwise avoid dealing with folders directly?

And will Android phones natively play FLAC files? For new additions to his library I'd like to get him graduated to something better than MP3 files, without taking up the space of a WAV or AIFF file.

My inclination is to avoid iTunes, because I'd then be tempted to recommend Apple Lossless files, which will be a problem for other databases he might switch to later and the phone itself. And also because, how do you easily get stuff out of it over to an Android phone?

[volcs0]

FLAC and other lossless formats (including apple) are easy:
http://code.google.com/p/andless/

I just use iTunes on my computer and then drag drop right onto the phone. It is very easy.

[deckeda]

Ah, so that player can do both kinds. For installation, does he just visit the downloads page and click on the .apk link? (sorry, I don't know anything about how those phones get software outside of Android's App Store etc.)

And regarding iTunes, can you tell me a little more? All he has to do is drag a song, playlist, album etc. from the interface and iTunes knows to send a copy to the phone?

I gather that there would be an icon on the desktop, er, My Computer window to drag content to?

[volcs0]

Just go to the google market place and search for that app. Or use barcode scanner and just point to that code.

There may be wireless options, but I just hook the phone to the computer via USB, choose to mount the phone (on the phone, this is an option). Then the SD card will appear. Then you can just drag music files to the Media/Music folder. The software takes care of organizing everything into a database by the tags.

I'm almost certain that I just drag right from the iTunes interface onto the open folder on the phone. I can confirm this for you later.

[deckeda]

Thanks for your help, volcs0!

[JoeM]

Take a look at DoubleTwist:
http://www.doubletwist.com/

[volcs0]

Yes - I was going to suggest a look at Doubletwist as well. I haven't tried it or
http://www.highwindsoftware.com/

But they look interesting. Don't know if they do apple lossless tho.

[volcs0]

This sounds even better.

http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr

[deckeda]

I worry a little about these small companies eventually getting the shaft from Apple regarding convenient syncing. Didn't Palm or someone try to have a device show up in the iTunes window, too, only to see it gone after the next iTunes update?

[BernDog]

deckeda wrote:
I worry a little about these small companies eventually getting the shaft from Apple regarding convenient syncing. Didn't Palm or someone try to have a device show up in the iTunes window, too, only to see it gone after the next iTunes update?

That's because palm was basically hacking the system to make its own hardware appear as apple-branded. AFAIK, the others just dig into the folder structure where your music is and do the rest themselves. They're not doing it via itunes. Completely kosher.