Develop Bugs

[Q] Music Beta on Galaxy Nexus

Did anybody else notice in the preview videos that the Music Beta app is the only music player on the phone? I don't currently own a phone that is supported by the Music Beta app but I thought when you download this app, it lives alongside the default music player, not replace it? But it looks like in ICS the old music player no longer exists and the Music Beta player is the default one?

Yeah. I dont know why you'd want the old one anyway... the new one is much much much better.

Why not? It can play local and cloud music files. It's the only one I use on my phone and tablet.

Just curious what Google's plans are for Music Beta going forward. If it's now the default music app on Android, then it's less likely that Music Beta is going to end up being canceled like Wave or Buzz. So you guys can confirm that on existing devices, Music Beta is an app that's in addition to the default music app?

Chirality said:
Just curious what Google's plans are for Music Beta going forward. If it's now the default music app on Android, then it's less likely that Music Beta is going to end up being canceled like Wave or Buzz. So you guys can confirm that on existing devices, Music Beta is an app that's in addition to the default music app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it's integrated into the music app itself. I'm just beginning to upload my music to it now and, I think it's something i should have done from the beginning. As much as I switch devices, it can be nice to have.

They live side-by-side on my Continuum, but that's with adding Music Beta as a Market App, instead of a stock app.

You can remove the old one with root explorer on gingerbread. It's not needed. no point in have 2 apps, with one that does the functions of both.

Google Music is a Gapp that sits right next to GMail.
If a company doesn't want it, they'll use the AOSP music source, or load up their own.

You can disable Google Music syncing in the settings, or just use a different music app (in which there are plenty.)
Sent from my Fascinate with MIUI Gingerbread

Best music player?

I am on the hunt for the best music playing app. I currently use Google Music, as it is one of the best I have used to date. My problem is with the new limitation on devices I am eventually no longer going to be able to use it because I flash new roms all the time.
I don't want to store all my music on my SD because it is not exactly the most efficient way for me. I want to be able to stream my library just like the way Google Music does it, but I can't find anything that works as nice.
I'm sure I will not be the only one that will encounter this problem with the stupid limitation thing.
Any ideas???

I thought Google had fixed that a couple weeks ago? Have you tried checking on the Google Music webpage on your computer?
Sent from my Incredible 2 using XDA

Yea, Google responded pretty quickly to that uproar
http://www.androidmag.com/google-resolves-music-device-de-authorization-issue-now
I'm all for Google Music because of the cloud integration. I still find it amazing that I walk around with my 15,000 songs and 100+ playlists in my pocket.
I believe the stock audio player for CM9, Apollo, will also be a market app if I'm not mistaken. Anything from those guys is definitely worth checking out

thanks. I didn't know they fixed it. I cleaned up my device list now. Let's just hope that they don't put a limit on this in the future.

Gapless Playback on Jellybean

Is gapless playback working for anyone on Jellybean? I heard it was supposed to work with Google music but there's still gaps in between my songs.
Sent from my Jellybean powered Galaxy Nexus

BLAQK ROXSTAR said:
Is gapless playback working for anyone on Jellybean? I heard it was supposed to work with Google music but there's still gaps in between my songs.
Sent from my Jellybean powered Galaxy Nexus
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've read in the developer docs, gapless playback requires implementing a new feature in apps from the Jellybean SDK. I have a music app that I'll be modifying to use this, within the next month or so. I'm going to wait for the official JB OTA release for my US GSM Galaxy Nexus so I have a stable phone to test it with.

highvista said:
From what I've read in the developer docs, gapless playback requires implementing a new feature in apps from the Jellybean SDK. I have a music app that I'll be modifying to use this, within the next month or so. I'm going to wait for the official JB OTA release for my US GSM Galaxy Nexus so I have a stable phone to test it with.
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Click to collapse
I wanted to follow up on my post above. I was able to implement gapless playback within my music app via the Jelly Bean/4.1 Android SDK. It works wonderfully. It's great to finally be able to listen to _Dark Side of the Moon_ on my phone without gaps!

highvista said:
I wanted to follow up on my post above. I was able to implement gapless playback within my music app via the Jelly Bean/4.1 Android SDK. It works wonderfully. It's great to finally be able to listen to _Dark Side of the Moon_ on my phone without gaps!
Click to expand...
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Mine explaining how you did it? :laugh:

UnknownFearNG said:
Mine explaining how you did it? :laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most the credit goes to Google for introducing the ability within the Jelly Bean/4.1 SDK.
Android has a MediaPlayer class that takes care of all the underlying needs of media playback. You create an instance of this class and use different method calls to control playback. Prior to Jelly Bean, when the end of a music track was reached, a "completion listener" would be called, where the programmer could set up code to handle loading the next track into the MediaPlayer instance and then start play of this next track. Jelly Bean introduced a setNextMediaPlayer() method. Now, instead of having just one MediaPlayer instance, the programmer can have two. The first one is the "current" player and is the one actively playing a track. The second one is the "next" media player and is prepared with the next track in sequence and is passed to the current player via a call to its setNextMediaPlayer() method. When the current media player reaches the end of the track it is playing, the next media player immediately starts playing the next track. Thus, no gap while the app messes about with loading up the next track in the current player via the completion listener.
The completion listener is still needed to handle updating UI elements, as well as telling the app to swap the roles of the current and next media player instances and load up the next track.
I'd imagine most developers have or will soon be implementing gapless playback, since it's pretty straight-forward now. If you're interested, I just released the updated version of my app that includes gapless playback. It's called Just Playlists and can be found at Google Play.

just FYI, I use PowerAMP, and it does gapless playback great. on Jelly Bean (and it did gapless playback on ICS as well - no problems).

jss2 said:
just FYI, I use PowerAMP, and it does gapless playback great. on Jelly Bean (and it did gapless playback on ICS as well - no problems).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I understand, PowerAMP uses custom media player code rather than the built-in Android MediaPlayer class, so they were able to code in gapless playback from scratch.

Yeah, AFAIK Winamp has gapless playback too, but I want the stock music player to do that. I hate to install another app that does the same that the built-in one.
The same happens with the browser. I only installed Chome because I like the sync feature. Other than that I would stick with the stock browser.
Cheers!

el_charlie said:
Yeah, AFAIK Winamp has gapless playback too, but I want the stock music player to do that. I hate to install another app that does the same that the built-in one.
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Click to collapse
Since Google has added gapless playback support to the Jelly Bean SDK, I'd guess that the stock player will eventually support gapless playback when run on a device with Jelly Bean. I'd have thought Google would have added this into the stock player immediately. Hopefully soon.

For what its worth... I've downloaded and played with pretty much every big Media Player on the market in the hunt for perfect Gapless Playback. From my testing I can say that it does not exist!!
The player I found to handle it the best was GONEMAD MUSIC PLAYER. Although there was still a very very slight gap in between songs. Listening to mix albums or Pink floyd albums (as Member was saying above) tend to provide a pretty good test to any 'Gapless' player.
I only hope that JellyBean can solve this!!
MEMBER - I've downloaded your app to give it a go too!

zim_zimmer said:
For what its worth... I've downloaded and played with pretty much every big Media Player on the market in the hunt for perfect Gapless Playback. From my testing I can say that it does not exist!!
The player I found to handle it the best was GONEMAD MUSIC PLAYER. Although there was still a very very slight gap in between songs. Listening to mix albums or Pink floyd albums (as Member was saying above) tend to provide a pretty good test to any 'Gapless' player.
I only hope that JellyBean can solve this!!
MEMBER - I've downloaded your app to give it a go too!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So far, playback of all my "gapless" albums using my app with the new Jelly Bean code has sounded perfect running on my Galaxy Nexus. I've played through my Pink Floyd collection and have been very pleased that the gaps are gone.

highvista said:
Most the credit goes to Google for introducing the ability within the Jelly Bean/4.1 SDK.
Android has a MediaPlayer class that takes care of all the underlying needs of media playback. You create an instance of this class and use different method calls to control playback. Prior to Jelly Bean, when the end of a music track was reached, a "completion listener" would be called, where the programmer could set up code to handle loading the next track into the MediaPlayer instance and then start play of this next track. Jelly Bean introduced a setNextMediaPlayer() method. Now, instead of having just one MediaPlayer instance, the programmer can have two. The first one is the "current" player and is the one actively playing a track. The second one is the "next" media player and is prepared with the next track in sequence and is passed to the current player via a call to its setNextMediaPlayer() method. When the current media player reaches the end of the track it is playing, the next media player immediately starts playing the next track. Thus, no gap while the app messes about with loading up the next track in the current player via the completion listener.
The completion listener is still needed to handle updating UI elements, as well as telling the app to swap the roles of the current and next media player instances and load up the next track.
I'd imagine most developers have or will soon be implementing gapless playback, since it's pretty straight-forward now. If you're interested, I just released the updated version of my app that includes gapless playback. It's called Just Playlists and can be found at Google Play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is more to gapless playback than just playing one song immediately after the other finishes without waiting for the completion listener for formats like mp3 and aac. This works fine for the natively gapless formats like ogg and flac

GoneMADSoftware said:
There is more to gapless playback than just playing one song immediately after the other finishes without waiting for the completion listener for formats like mp3 and aac. This works fine for the natively gapless formats like ogg and flac
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's probably true, but whatever needs to be done to make gapless playback work is being taken care of by the process I describe, when using the setNextMediaPlayer() method. The documentation for the SDK indicates that this is what the new method is for, and it definitely works for the MP3 format, which is the format that I use for my music collection.

Gapless solved (but 1 issue remains)
highvista said:
...definitely works for the MP3 format...
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Click to collapse
Yes, works for my MP3s, and they are encoded VBR (variable bitrate), on my S4 Mini with ver 4.2.2 of Jellybean. Tried lots of other players, none has true gapless playback. Finally, Just Playlists and Just Playlists Plus have solved the gapless issue. This leaves only one other major feature still to be desired but not available in any Android music player: Skinnability
There are music players on Android that let you choose skin style, color, etc. But not one supports skinability via XML coding, yet. (Hopefully, somebody can prove me wrong by pointing to a truely skinable player. Or better yet, Keith Folsom will provide skinnability for JPP's main UI screen?)
Edit: UberMusic appears to have been skinnable for years! (I'll soon find out for sure.)
http://www.ubermusic.com/skinning/
Edit #2: Now I find that Poweramp has gapless playback, is skinnable, and has a currently active forum thread for skinning:
http://forum.powerampapp.com/index.php?/topic/3578-building-skins-quick-start-guide/

Gapless Test results
Did some testing re gapless playback with MP3s on my S4 Mini. Here are results:
The stock Samsung 'Music' player:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
UberMusic Player:
PowerAmp:
Just Playlists:
For details see my report, here:
https://googledrive.com/host/0BywTBh0QvABcQXY2R3pYUGk2cm8

zim_zimmer said:
...player I found to handle it the best was GONEMAD MUSIC PLAYER. Although there was still a very very slight gap
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Quite right. Sorry to have miss'd GMMP in my recent tests. Better late than never; it has now been put to the same test, and has come out better than Poweramp for playing tracks completely with smallest gap. But still, Just Playlists remains the winner for zero gap with slightest cut into a track.
GoneMAD Music Player:

BLAQK ROXSTAR said:
Is gapless playback working for anyone on Jellybean? I heard it was supposed to work with Google music but there's still gaps in between my songs.
Sent from my Jellybean powered Galaxy Nexus
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no problem with gapless playback using Player Pro on ShinyROM 4.4.2 or 4.4.3 or any previous AOSP-based ROM.

eKeith said:
I have no problem with gapless playback using Player Pro on ShinyROM 4.4.2 or 4.4.3 or any previous AOSP-based ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe because you have OGG music files, or AAC with gapless info in ID tags? When I put PlayerPro to the same test as above, the result was a 0.427 second gap with waveform similar to UberMusic. But it was the *trial* version, which had some playback selection choices gray'd out. The gapless checkbox was gray, but it clearly was check'd. I don't know whether this means it functions the same as the paid version and nothing at PlayerPro's website nor on Google Play Store provides any clue re gapless playback or differences between trial vs paid versions.

MrGoodtunes said:
Maybe because you have OGG music files, or AAC with gapless info in ID tags? When I put PlayerPro to the same test as above, the result was a 0.427 second gap with waveform similar to UberMusic. But it was the *trial* version, which had some playback selection choices gray'd out. The gapless checkbox was gray, but it clearly was check'd. I don't know whether this means it functions the same as the paid version and nothing at PlayerPro's website nor on Google Play Store provides any clue re gapless playback or differences between trial vs paid versions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All of my files (excepting my Amazon auto-rips) are Level 5 Compressed FLACs ripped with dBpoweramp.
I also do not know if there are any differences/shortcomings with the trial version of PalyerPro. Perhaps you can consider purchasing and testing within the 15 minute refund window...

eKeith said:
All of my files (excepting my Amazon auto-rips) are Level 5 Compressed FLACs...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GoneMADSoftware said:
...works fine for the natively gapless formats like ogg and flac
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apparently, FLAC is 'natively' gapless. Amazon rips vary widely, some VBR, some CBR, some even go a little way into the following track! Thanks for the 15-min refund idea, didn't know about that. Bought it for keeps anyway, due to the nice way it handles my huge oldies folder, better than any other player for that useful listing.
Got the same result as trial version out of the box as is. Gapless setting was still gray. I figured the DSP pack is necessary. After installing and activating, there was a big improvement. No more clicks, first track no longer getting cut off short, and the gap got reduced.
PlayerPro (with DSP pack):

What is the best music app?

So there are several different music streaming services out there, who in essence have the same music and pricing structure.
What I am asking is which has the best performing app (not service) on Android 4?

My vote is Deezer as I use it daily on my Desire and it is quite good but not perfect.
Rdio looks like a very well developed app, whereas Spotify has several negative reviews.
Opinions?

I love turntable.fm when it works lol.
And I like soundcloud as well.

Normally I use Sony music Unlimited because of the sheer number of albums available unfortunately it isn't available officially for the nexus and the side load crashes.
I've fallen back to Pandora, tune in and rdio
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

MortPlayer is free and my new favorite that has more advanced features is PowerAmp

Most of the time I use Google Play Music since I've got over 1k songs already up, and they let you have a max of 20k songs. I can't imagine being able to find 20k songs that I actually like. No syncing across my computer/phone/tablet, just upload the files once into Google Play Music and then stream it anywhere.
The rest of the time I use Pandora.

So is Google Play Music the online store to rival iTunes that is only available in the US? Or is it the Android "Music" app to play local MP3s?
Pandora is interesting but also only in the US...!

simplyphp said:
Most of the time I use Google Play Music since I've got over 1k songs already up, and they let you have a max of 20k songs. I can't imagine being able to find 20k songs that I actually like. No syncing across my computer/phone/tablet, just upload the files once into Google Play Music and then stream it anywhere.
The rest of the time I use Pandora.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. Our N7 is our first tablet, and first Android device and I immediately liked the 20,000 song storage ability.
Love xda, getting some great ideas from just browsing around here. :good:

bertles86 said:
So is Google Play Music the online store to rival iTunes that is only available in the US? Or is it the Android "Music" app to play local MP3s?
Pandora is interesting but also only in the US...!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google Play Music lets you store songs you own, in the "Google Cloud", allowing you to play your songs from your phone/tablet/pc. You literally can upload all your mp3s into it - no questions asked.
You can also play music locally with it. And then the Google Play store also has music you can purchase which is added to your collection.
:good:

simplyphp said:
Google Play Music lets you store songs you own, in the "Google Cloud", allowing you to play your songs from your phone/tablet/pc. You literally can upload all your mp3s into it - no questions asked.
You can also play music locally with it. And then the Google Play store also has music you can purchase which is added to your collection.
:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do i store music in the cloud? I have like 10 gigs of music on my phone I wanna share at least some with my nexus 7.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app

I know Deezer lets you do the same as Play Music. You can upload to the "My MP3s" section of your Deezer account and stream them through the app.
It works quite well, but in Offline Mode obviously only the albums you download are available not any of the My MP3s tracks.
Also one flaw of Deezer is you cannot sync a single track for Offline playback, only full Albums.

My favorites in favorite order:
N7
Google Music
Cubed
Jango
I do own Poweramp, but like N7 better. I find Jango much nicer than Pandora. Cubed is just visually cool. I use Google Music on my PC at work 90% of the day.
edit:: sorry, I missed the "streaming" comment. Therefore GM and Jango only.

For playing music, the answer is simple - Neutron. It is amazing. What's even better is that you can get a special version for Tegra devices. Here's a link:
http://neutronmp.com/downloads.html
You want the NeutronMP_64.apk. If you are an audiophile like me, then you will be in heaven. Grab a good pair of headphones (NuForce is an amazing brand that not many people know about) and enjoy!!

topolovich said:
For playing music, the answer is simple - Neutron. It is amazing. What's even better is that you can get a special version for Tegra devices. Here's a link:
http://neutronmp.com/downloads.html
You want the NeutronMP_64.apk. If you are an audiophile like me, then you will be in heaven. Grab a good pair of headphones (NuForce is an amazing brand that not many people know about) and enjoy!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NEUTRONMP is the champion between hundred of music players.
Gửi từ Galaxy S3/Tapatalk

topolovich said:
For playing music, the answer is simple - Neutron. It is amazing. What's even better is that you can get a special version for Tegra devices. Here's a link:
http://neutronmp.com/downloads.html
You want the NeutronMP_64.apk. If you are an audiophile like me, then you will be in heaven. Grab a good pair of headphones (NuForce is an amazing brand that not many people know about) and enjoy!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't find the tegra version with the 64 in the file name, there's only a normal and a neon version
Sent from my HTC One X using ncx 2.17 v10 b3

PlayerPro, still the best in my opn.
Sent from a cave...

h3r3tic said:
How do i store music in the cloud? I have like 10 gigs of music on my phone I wanna share at least some with my nexus 7.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think the only way to upload is to install the music manager on your pc. you'll then select the folders you want it to upload.

NeutonMP is awesome for its sound quality , but I hate its interface. I love n7 player interface but their sound quality isnt as awesome as neutonMP.

I'd bought both Poweramp and N7 and switch between them. Using Poweramp more and more. Like the album art display much better, more sound adjustments (not that it matters much on a Nexus 7). N7 starting losing album art (or not finding it), so it's not getting used much.

download utorrent
Sent from my LG-MS770 using XDA Premium App

Can anyone suggest a music player that's used for music on the phone- no cloud wanted

Still using the P2 Xl, but I don't want Google Play Music. I want a player that only plays files I loaded into the phone. I know Google Play music does that but I don't want any "services".
Thanks

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=code.name.monkey.retromusic
Works well for me.

Thanks, I also saw one called Black Player that's been getting good reviews

Pulsar is by far my favourite

Poweramp

For my needs, I use Vanilla Music player. It's basic and a light footprint.

Highly recommend poweramp

Poweramp all the way! - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xsoftstudio.musicplayer.pro
Been using it for years and never disappointed, especially with the new GUI changes they've rolled out.
Close 2nd for me would be : Player Pro - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tbig.playerpro
Another neat one, but kinda cluttered is N7 Player - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n7mobile.nplayer
Hope you find what works for you. Everyone tends to lean toward the cloud services, I still like loading my own music on my phone as well

I'm a fan of Shuttle. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=another.music.player

Power amp is my Fave , plays flac files also , Highly recommend it :good:

Pulsar is my favorite player

PowerAMP, been using it for years.

Also shuttle. It's free software as well

Look, get Poweramp and enjoy forever. There is no comparison. I've been using it for more than 8 years maybe. Tried other players only a first few years, then I stopped venturing out.

I like using Eleven music player https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-lineageoss-music-player-arm64-t3784730
devlamania said:
Look, get Poweramp and enjoy forever. There is no comparison. I've been using it for more than 8 years maybe. Tried other players only a first few years, then I stopped venturing out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Neutron. The gui might need a material redesign but the app itself is great for sound quality.
http://neutronmp.com/technology.html

blackplayer ex

I've tried and tested them all as i got over poweramp after many years with it . In the end, poweramp owns.
And its latest beta update is even better than ever!
Musicolet is my second favourite , but in the end poweramp just has everything you need.

pbman1953 said:
Still using the P2 Xl, but I don't want Google Play Music. I want a player that only plays files I loaded into the phone. I know Google Play music does that but I don't want any "services".
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really like the Sony Walkman app! Try it out

Thanks to all! I have been using Black player but will try the others mentioned too.