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I wish all music and audio apps on Android wouldn't stop playback when swiped away
Spotify, YouTube Music, why do you do this?
Several years ago, developers of music players on Android had to implement a persistent notification in order to keep their app running and music playing even when users switched to another app. With better memory management and more available RAM on modern phones, this isn't a concern anymore, and most devs have forgotten about that commodity. That has had one annoying consequence on several audio apps: If you mistakenly swipe them away, your music or podcasts or audiobooks stop playing.
SoundCloud announced today that it's given the home screen of its Android app a fresh lick of paint. Until now, the app would open with a stream of the latest releases from the artists and labels you follow. That content is still there, in a new tab highlighted by a lightning bolt, but the home screen has a few new goodies to keep you interested.
Spotify is one of SoundCloud's biggest competitors, and the former has supported offline music for Premium subscribers for a while. SoundCloud has done the same thing for Go and Go+ users for over a year, but the company is now also allowing those premium users to download their music to external SD cards. Take that, Spotify.
The Google Home already supports a large number of music streaming services - including YouTube Music, TuneIn, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and NPR One. Today at Google I/O, Google announced more services will be compatible - including free Spotify accounts.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
For most web users, SoundCloud is just a quick repository of sound files for playing back in a browser - Imgur for songs and audio clips, if you will. But for those users that get deep into the highly specialized community of artists and designers on the platform, SoundCloud offers its premium "Go" package. $10 a month gets you an expanded selection of exclusive tracks, ad-free browsing and listening, and offline listening in the Android app. Today the service is shaking things up a bit: there's a new mid-tier service level for just .99 a month, while the old plan is now called "SoundCloud Go+."
If it's indie music and new, unknown artists, chances are it'll be on SoundCloud. The Berlin-based company has long pioneered a music platform that doesn't focus on the big, stadium-filling artists, but on the small, independent ones. An update to the app adds in Charts, letting users see what others are listening to on the service and what is popular at any given moment. While these were actually implemented in the previous version, they've just been added to the changelog, indicating it's possible they were rolling out on a server-side basis.
Sonos, the company most famous for having a logo that can be read the same way upside down, now supports SoundCloud Go. This announcement comes a few weeks after Plex's Sonos compatibility announcement. For people less interested in logos, Sonos is perhaps best known for its multi-room speakers that allow you to play the same song or different songs in each room of your house (provided that you can afford that many, of course).
SoundCloud is filled with music, but how do you find stuff that you like? You can search around on your own, pull up stuff other people recommend, filter by genre, or stick with what's popular. All of these methods may or may not produce content that you actually want to listen to.
Do you like to use YouTube to stream music, but wish it had the audio-centric interface and exclusive mixes that SoundCloud does? Maybe you're really a Spotify loyalist, but you're itching for some Taylor Swift in the middle of your playlists. Well, Qus, a relatively newcomer to Android, lets you stream from any combination of these sources, plus Deezer and tracks stored locally.
SoundCloud, the free music service particularly favored by independent and grassroots musicians, has finally added 'stations,' a sort of never-ending playlist of related tracks and songs. The feature has been in beta for about a week, and is now hitting the release version of the Android app. While new for SoundCloud, this is something that's been available on most other music streaming services for quite a while. Spotify and Apple Music call it 'radio,' and Play Music has 'instant mixes,' but they are all different names for the same thing.
Audio latency is defined as the time delay that a signal experiences as it passes through a system. On a mobile device, this is deeply related to how long it takes between tapping on a screen and receiving audio feedback. Low audio latency can be the difference between an immersive gaming experience and an unpleasant, disconnected one. Too long a latency and a device can begin to feel strangely laggy, even if every visual animation is snappy and responsive. It is especially important — essential, even — for recording and composing music, since slow audio feedback can easily throw off even the best artists and destroy their creative process. Low latency is absolutely fundamental in a modern operating system, and it's been absolutely terrible on Android.
Opera Max isn't a browser. It's an Android utility that works in the background to apply the same data compression you've come to expect from Opera's regular and Mini browsers, except it does it on all of (or most of) your apps without you having to worry about a thing.
The idea of using multiple phones as speakers to play the same music isn't new. It was popularized by Samsung's Group Cast way back in the Galaxy S3 days and has since gotten over that proprietary requirement thanks to third-party apps like SoundSeeder that made it possible to tune Android devices together, regardless of their brand. As a newcomer in the field, AmpMe has a lot to prove against tough and established competition. The app manages a few victories thanks to cross-platform compatibility, but loses in terms of services supported. For now, that's only SoundCloud, although the developers say more are coming.
The newest version of SoundCloud, which rolled out in the past week, has added a way to get independently created music streaming through your television sets. Now when you fire up the app, Chromecast-owning users will see the familiar icon located in the action bar. Or it will appear in the bottom left-hand corner if music is already playing.
If you use SoundCloud to listen to music and audio from your favorite artists, podcasters, DJs, and other audio genies, you've probably wondered why the Android app doesn't have the "related tracks" feature that has been present in iOS and the web version for a while. After all, it's so much easier to discover new tracks to your liking when they're recommended based on what you already know you love, than to go manually hunt for them and fall into a spiral of mediocre audio that doesn't suit your taste.
SoundCloud version 15.06.09 is now rolling out to devices, but its visual changes aren't immediately apparent. Here's where you need to look. When you go to record audio, you're in for a much whiter experience. And no, I'm not talking about anyone's lyrics.
The SoundCloud Android app has received a slight visual touch-up in the latest update, version 14.12.18-43. Users will now see a slightly more spacious action bar, rounded menus, and Lollipop notifications. These tweaks sit on top of previous user interface changes that still look bright, colorful, and clean.
Early this summer, T-Mobile announced a Music Freedom plan that would allow customers to stream music from select services without impacting their data allotment. Some people opposed this offering on principle. Others were simply upset to see their favorite services not supported. Around these parts, Google Play Music topped the list of what folks wanted to see.