music - 12/17 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Aug

[Sunday Android Fun] Developer Goes Hilariously Ballistic In His Own App's Description + Entrance Music Every Time You Walk Into The Office

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Off-Topic

It's Sunday night, and as the news fairy is getting ready to go to sleep, I'm really itching to highlight a few things that caught my attention earlier today, for those who aren't following us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ (really, you should be).

1. Entrance Music

Have you ever wanted to be greeted by your own entrance music the same way boxers do when they enter the ring? Imagine music from Rocky or Eye Of The Tiger starts playing at your desk, and 10 seconds later you roll into the office like a champ.

fat_bloated_jesus from reddit has been doing just that for some time now, using a Jambox (which is a Bluetooth speaker), his Android device, and Tasker:

So I bought a Jawbone Jambox bluetooth speaker since the Xoom speakers are not all that loud and I like to listen to music at work.

Jul

[App Roundup] Five Apps From July 2011 That We Thought Were Awesome

Posted by Matt Demers in App Reviews, Applications

Last Updated: August 3rd, 2011

DeskSMS

As a Canadian, I can't use Google Voice in order to send my SMS. However, there are numerous apps that act very similarly, including the new DeskSMS from the developer who brought you ClockworkMod.

DeskSMS transfers SMS to both your e-mail and other IM applications through the use of your Google Account. This allows you to answer SMS on-the-go and with the use of a full keyboard. As someone with big fingers, I can't tell you how annoying it is to try to do a large amount of typing with an on-screen keyboard. This definitely helps.

The app is in free beta, but presumably won't stay that way forever.

Jul

[New Release] LauncherPro Dev's New Project, UberMusic, Leaves Beta

Posted by Matt Demers in Applications, News

Last Updated: August 2nd, 2011

Last month we had the chance to play around with LauncherPro developer Fredrico Carnales' latest app, UberMusic. I, personally, had a great amount of fun with it, as it evokes a certain "Zune" feel while remaining largely functional.

The app's left its open beta phase and is now available on the Android market for a price of $3.49; for a music player that pulls in album art and artist data, I'd say that isn't too bad of a price.

It also looks like there's been some UI changes to the Artist and Album sorting, as well. Albums show up with their art individually, and everything looks a whole lot cleaner.

Jul

Review: Spotify For Android (US) - Is It The Music Streaming Service You've Been Waiting For?

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

No, it's not. At least not for Android - and that's what we're here to talk about today. The merits of Spotify as a music streaming subscription service for your desktop are substantially greater - it's well organized, searching and streaming are quick, powerful, and pretty. There's a lot to love - and at $10 (or free for ad-supported and no Android playback) a month for unlimited streaming, those plusses are hard to argue against.

Unfortunately, if you plan on using Spotify on your Android device, there's a lot less to love, unless your musical needs are very specific. Spotify for Android is good for one thing: finding music.

Jul

Subsonic Updated To 3.0 - Brings UI Changes And... An Equalizer!

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, News

Long have Subsonic users awaited the day the do-it-yourself music streaming platform would finally incorporate an equalizer in its Android app. Today is that day. Subsonic has been updated to version 3.0, and there's a slew of changes. For one, there's a brand-new widget. There's also a basic music visualization option, and the notification on the pull-down menu now shows album art. Take a look at some of the new features, below:

Subsonic, if you aren't familiar with it, is a music streaming platform that utilizes your home computer and personal music collection to provide a cloud-esque experience. That is to say, it's 100% your bandwidth being used, there's no unnecessary middleman transcoding the files (ahem, AudioGalaxy), and you can customize the experience from the server side to almost no end.

Jul

[New App] Last.FM Releases 'Festivals', Looks To Be In Your Pocket While You're In The Mosh Pit

Posted by Matt Demers in Applications, Apps/Games, News

I've used Last.fm for a couple of years now, logging (or, in their terminology, "scrobbling") over 58,000 tracks as I listen to them. It's kind of your music player's "most played" list on steroids, as it's cross-compatible with everything.

Last.fm also works with local event listings, as well; they've just released a new app called "Festivals" that will hopefully find its way to music fans' phones everywhere.

Festivals works like a trip planner to make sure you get the most out of your festival experience. It provides you with a list of shows that are occurring during the day, as well as matching your compatible tastes according to your Last.fm account.

Jun

LauncherPro Developer Releases New App "UberMusic" To The Wilds of Beta

Posted by Matt Demers in Applications, News

LauncherPro developer Fredrico Carnales made headlines a couple of months ago by announcing that, on top of maintaining his popular homescreen replacement, he was going to tackle development on a music app. That app, now named UberMusic, has made it out to the public in the form of a downloadable beta.

And damn, does this app look good. It downloads artist/album data in the background, allowing the menu wallpapers to be spiced up with some truly awesome art. These images are artist-specific and add a little bit of flair to what could've been a very boring app.

UberMusic also comes with a homescreen widget, and functions a lot like the stock player; however, there's some deeper options - like Last.FM scrobbling and headphone controls - that cause it to stand out from the pack.

Jun

Yahoo! Releases Play Music App, Knows What You Want To Hear

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

You know that music thing people like to listen to? Well, Yahoo! seems to think that it may be the way back into users' hearts, as it just released a music-identifying, brain-crawling, news-delivering music player for Android powered by Instinctiv. It's called Yahoo! Play, and it has some basic, run-of-the-mill features, but it also has some... interesting features. Let's take a look.

First up, it has a feature called Identify, which is basically a Shazam or SoundHound clone: it listens to the track in question, then tells you what it is. It does differ from the aforementioned apps in one way, however - it offers continuous mode, where it will scan a series of songs, returning results for each one.

Jun

[Updated] Sony Quietly Launches Music Unlimited For Android, Powered By Qriocity, Complete With A Gorgeous UI

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Now that continuous waves of attacks against Sony's servers have slowed down a bit (it's been over a week since the last hack), the company found some strength to regroup and released an Android client for its popular cloud music service Music Unlimited, powered by Qriocity.

$3.99/month for basic and $9.99/month for premium (30-day free trial available) buy you streaming of various catalogs of music from the web (à la Pandora) as well as syncing of your own library to Sony's cloud servers with subsequent playback from said cloud (à la Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Music).

Jun

[Review] Rebirth Brings A Basic But Faithful (And Free) Lumines Port To Android

Posted by Matt Demers in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Puzzle games are some of my favourite titles for the Android because of their tendency to play well in short bursts. Rebirth looks to take the gameplay behind Lumines and bring it over to the mobile market: the question is, will it do the original justice?

The Concept

For those looking for a basic clone of Lumines (more on that later), you've come to the right spot. Rebirth is pretty much the game to a "T", and brings the block-stacking madness to the Android platform with good faith.

For those unfamiliar, Lumines was a puzzle game that was first developed for the Playstation Portable System.