Jump to content
IGNORED

Android music listening solutions


Guest Ron Manager

Recommended Posts

Guest Ron Manager

just upgraded my phone to a Nexus 5. it's awesome. it's my first android phone (been using a Nexus 7 tablet since they first came out though), and i'm unsure of which music listening route to follow.

 

i use Spotify (premium) a bit, and the android app is great, but i want to have mp3s on my phone, as i have limited data and live in a rural area, so won't want to/can't stream music that often.

 

one problem is that i'm still quite attached to iTunes for playlists and music organisation on my computer. i've been messing around with importing my iTunes playlists to Spotify and then making them available offline on my Nexus 5, but it's not very user-friendly, and anytime i update a playlist in iTunes i basically have to re-import to Spotify and then re-download the whole thing to my phone - not ideal to say the least. in addition, Spotify doesn't appear to let me browse songs on my phone by artist or album (only by playlist? maybe i'm just being thick). i don't really use my iPod any more, so i know i should really just abandon iTunes, but i've used it for over a decade and am still quite fond of it...

 

so basically i was just wondering what other Android users do for their portable music fix. there don't seem to be too many great mp3 player apps (Poweramp seems well-reviewed). but is it worth using one of those in conjunction with Spotify? or do some of you use Spotify solely on the go? (and on a related note, do you use Spotify to organise/listen to mp3s on your PC?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Ron Manager

Cheers for the replies. Hadn't heard of n7, so will look into that one. DoubleTwist I had heard of but haven't tried, thanks for the link. Guess it's just a case of trial and error to see what works for me.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

i use Spotify (premium) a bit, and the android app is great, but i want to have mp3s on my phone, as i have limited data and live in a rural area, so won't want to/can't stream music that often.

 

but is it worth using one of those in conjunction with Spotify? or do some of you use Spotify solely on the go? (and on a related note, do you use Spotify to organise/listen to mp3s on your PC?)

 

Spotify in offline mode is excellent for you're rural/limited data issue and my wife did this with her Android phone - basically turn all of your favorite albums into playlists and click them as "available offline" and you can play them anywhere. My wife and I did this for a 10 hour road trip in the middle of nowhere (West Texas/East New Mexico desert) followed by a week in a mountain cabin, and we had hundreds, probably a 1,000 + plus songs. (I think it's 320 mp3 Might take some time to organize and "upload" into offline mode, but it's worth it imo.

 

Afraid I have no suggestions on iTunes, I haven't had my digital files organized in ages :/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Ron Manager

I just use the inborn player but maybe the Nexus 5 doesn't have one? I have the Galaxy S4 and it actually has 2 different options. Both players recognize tags so I just chuck music on there through USB, sort via artist, album, etc. and make playlists like any other environment. What I love most is Google Play but it runs 251 MB per hour for me. With my cheapo 2.5 GB/month data plan, I can run into trouble pretty early in the billing cycle like that so I wait for Wi-Fi. As an aside, I have to put a plug in for the Mini Boom

 

This thing fucking delivers. If your phone has NFC, you just have to tap the phone to the top of it and it connects automatically. You actually have to be careful because one night at work, I put a Surgeon mix through it and the sheer homosexuality repetitive bass caused it to walk itself off of the desk. Well worth the $89 of you want to do any mobile, non-headset listening

 

the Nexus 5's built-in player is Google Play. at first i was really tempted by Play - uploading up to 20k songs seemed great, but i actually found the stream quality to be pretty mediocre, especially compared to Spotify (which i set to 'extreme quality' - presumably 320kbps. don't think Play has this?). maybe i'll go back and have another look. it's useful for at least having all my mp3s streamable...

 

thanks for the Mini Boom tip. looks like a nice bit of kit, might well be looking for something similar soon!

 

 

 

 

i use Spotify (premium) a bit, and the android app is great, but i want to have mp3s on my phone, as i have limited data and live in a rural area, so won't want to/can't stream music that often.

 

but is it worth using one of those in conjunction with Spotify? or do some of you use Spotify solely on the go? (and on a related note, do you use Spotify to organise/listen to mp3s on your PC?)

 

Spotify in offline mode is excellent for you're rural/limited data issue and my wife did this with her Android phone - basically turn all of your favorite albums into playlists and click them as "available offline" and you can play them anywhere. My wife and I did this for a 10 hour road trip in the middle of nowhere (West Texas/East New Mexico desert) followed by a week in a mountain cabin, and we had hundreds, probably a 1,000 + plus songs. (I think it's 320 mp3 Might take some time to organize and "upload" into offline mode, but it's worth it imo.

 

Afraid I have no suggestions on iTunes, I haven't had my digital files organized in ages :/

 

 

yes, the playlist-album method seems to be the only way to really get albums on spotify. this still seems a bit clumsy, as i would really like to have my albums separate from my playlists, but i guess this will have to do, at least for now... Depending on how practical this turns out to be, this could spell the end of downloading/occasionally purchasing mp3s for me, apart from stuff which either isn't available physically or is download exclusive and unavailable on Spotify.

 

one thing i would miss from iTunes, though, is its ease of tagging and organising - Spotify's tags are just dreadful. lots of album art doesn't seem to display for me, even when the album is available on Spotify. a huge amount of my mp3s don't appear to have been 'paired' with what Spotify has in its databases, even when the tags are identical. from what i can tell, there doesn't seem to be any way of fixing any of this. but i guess the music is the main thing, and from that angle, i'm pretty pleased with the service.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Ron Manager
another question: if i save an album as a playlist and make it available offline, will it use my mp3s, or will it just download whatever Spotify has in its database?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"the Nexus 5's built-in player is Google Play. at first i was really tempted by Play - uploading up to 20k songs seemed great, but i actually found the stream quality to be pretty mediocre, especially compared to Spotify (which i set to 'extreme quality' - presumably 320kbps. don't think Play has this?)."

 

You can change the streaming quality in the "Google Play Music"app, go into settings > Mobile networks stream quality. I upped it on mine as it wasn't good enough when streaming in the car.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Ron Manager

"the Nexus 5's built-in player is Google Play. at first i was really tempted by Play - uploading up to 20k songs seemed great, but i actually found the stream quality to be pretty mediocre, especially compared to Spotify (which i set to 'extreme quality' - presumably 320kbps. don't think Play has this?)."

 

You can change the streaming quality in the "Google Play Music"app, go into settings > Mobile networks stream quality. I upped it on mine as it wasn't good enough when streaming in the car.

Cheers - yes, I did this but it still seemed poorer than Spotify. Although I presume signing up to the premium Play, like Spotify, gives you 320 streaming... I'll have to have a dig around to see what Play's selection is like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Albeit somewhat shitty for Electronic Music - Spotify is what I use. With the premium subscription, it more or less ticks all the boxes for a person with multiple devices. A lot of folks on the Android section of The Verge use Google Music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I switched to Play about 6 months ago and found it to have a better selection of electronic music, it has the recent Modern Love releases and a load of the dubstep (for want of a better word) labels that vanished from Spotify last year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Ron Manager

yeah, in terms of labels i follow pretty closely, Modern Love is a fairly glaring omission from Spotify. i really can't see why they wouldn't want to get in on it - pirates gonna pirate, so they might as well earn at least a minimal amount from streamers, and one suspects they'd benefit greatly from the exposure...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

i just got a new android phone, my previous one (htc) had a standard musicplayer that allowed me to 'Play All' and it would line up all the albums on phone/sdcard and play em seamlessly

is there a player out there with this feature?

 

players ive tested so far (doubletwist and google music play) seem to be more focused on single songs and artists.. manually putting albums in a playlist seems redundant/annoying. also doubletwist seems to be too stupid to fetch cover.jpg files out of corresponding album-folders wut

 

edit: ok shuttle seems to do the job just fine, no extra bullshit either likey

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=another.music.player

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a Nexus 5 too, which I'm posting on now, and I love it, but I still use my 7-year-old ipod classic for portable listening! The Nexus has so little storage, plus i don't like the idea of using a phone for music since you can be interrupted by calls and shit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i just got a new android phone, my previous one (htc) had a standard musicplayer that allowed me to 'Play All' and it would line up all the albums on phone/sdcard and play em seamlessly

is there a player out there with this feature?

Used to use Winamp, though my android player of choice is now this :

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n7mobile.nplayer

Still my player of choice - s'great !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've always used Poweramp and have zero complaints about it, but I'll have to give N7 a try.. just loaded it at and so far it looks pretty nice. Lacks a lot of advanced features that Poweramp has but the UI is nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.