A music player that doesn't depend on Android's interface

[Fallingwater]

It seems to me that most music players are basically only different frontends for Android's built-in music playing features. This upsets me, because it insists on interpreting my tags however the hell it wants - Play Music renames my songs according to whatever it thinks they are, even when they're clearly perfectly tagged in the original files, and other apps will do stupid things like indexing two different albums with the exact same name simply because some tags have album art and some don't.

I'd like to check out a few player apps that don't rely on Android's handling of music files, and do the job themselves. Ideally they would offer a filesystem browsing feature as well.

Would you happen to know any?

 

[Thom]

I think you will find that ...
Poweranp Music Player (Trial) & Poweramp Full Version Unlocker – complete music player
... does everything you want ant a lot more.

... Thom

 

[Hadron]

Neutron also has its own codecs rather than relying on the stock one.

I actually have both Neutron and PowerAmp. Excessive? Possibly

 

[RazzMaTazz]

I also had trouble with Android not properly reading my tags (especially WMA tags that displayed "Unknown artist"). I solved that problem by installing the (free) MediaMonkey for Windows (MMW) on my PC which I use to sync my media (music, videos, playlists, etc.) with the (free) Media Monkey for Android (MMA) on my phone.

When MMW syncs with MMA, it creates its own media database file on your SD card, which contains all of the tag information, playlists, and artwork from your PC. If that database file exists on your SD card then MMA uses the information stored in that wonderfully complete database file on your SD card. However, if you don't sync from MMW, then MMA relies on Android's crappy media database stored in your phone's memory.

When MMW is used in conjunction with MMA, it's the only TOTAL PC-Android synchronization solution that I know of. It's like iTunes-iPhone, only better with more capability and flexibility. You can selectively sync subsets of your media and playlists. You can sync one-way in either direction, or bidirectionally. You can sync additively-only (so that songs are never deleted) or full-sync. I wrote a detailed post about MediaMonkey's total solution here.
http://androidforums.com/threads/me...n-like-itunes-but-better.852296/#post-6788013

FYI: You don't need to use MMW as your primary PC music player, and you can export playlists from other media players (like Windows Media Player) to MMW so that your playlists sync to your phone.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Per Thom's and Hadron's suggestions above, I know that PowerAmp (and apparently Neutron) have their own codecs (for decoding file types that Android doesn't natively support), but I don't know if they create their own metadata databases per the OP's request, or if they simply rely on Android's metadata database. It's been a long time since I used PowerAmp and I seem to recall that it does a better job of reading tags than Android-- which may be adequate for the OP's needs. I've never used Neutron. Perhaps Thom & Hadron can comment.

 

[mikedt]

I also had trouble with Android not properly reading my tags (especially WMA tags that displayed "Unknown artist"). I solved that problem by installing the (free) MediaMonkey for Windows (MMW) on my PC which I use to sync my media (music, videos, playlists, etc.) with the (free) Media Monkey for Android (MMA) on my phone.

When MMW syncs with MMA, it creates its own media database file on your SD card, which contains all of the tag information, playlists, and artwork from your PC. If that database file exists on your SD card then MMA uses the information stored in that wonderfully complete database file on your SD card. However, if you don't sync from MMW, then MMA relies on Android's crappy media database stored in your phone's memory.

When MMW is used in conjunction with MMA, it's the only TOTAL PC-Android synchronization solution that I know of. It's like iTunes-iPhone, only better with more capability and flexibility. You can selectively sync subsets of your media and playlists. You can sync one-way in either direction, or bidirectionally. You can sync additively-only (so that songs are never deleted) or full-sync. I wrote a detailed post about MediaMonkey's total solution here.
http://androidforums.com/threads/me...n-like-itunes-but-better.852296/#post-6788013

FYI: You don't need to use MMW as your primary PC music player, and you can export playlists from other media players (like Windows Media Player) to MMW so that your playlists sync to your phone.

That's all Windows Media, which is a Microsoft thing. That is proprietary and subject to copyright, patents and other IP gobbledygook. Android doesn't implement it natively, otherwise device manufacturers would have to pay lots of $$$ to Microsoft in licensing fees.

Windows Phone devices would all completely support Windows Media of course.

 

[Hadron]

I don't know the workings in such detail, as for my purposes I've never had particular problems (apart from the time a while back when the duplicate file paths in Android confused PowerAmp, which I fixed by telling it to ignore one of them and rescanning). I know that both do their own media scans separate from the system, and that Neutron's faq includes the statement that Neutron does not use the system media database (in the album art question). Not sure whether that answers the question.

There are free trial versions of both, so my usual solution is to just install and see whether it suffers the same problem.

 

[mikedt]

Third party players often have no problem with Windows Media, either because they have licensed the technologies from Microsoft or they just don't bother and do it anyway.

If anyone wants a good legal read.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windowsmedia-components-licensing

Fees:

• $10,000 non-refundable advanced payment of royalties, due upon agreement execution.
• Per unit royalty and/or Annual Fee Payments. Review the product and royalty schedule in the sample agreement to identify what royalties might apply.

Many device makers are already paying a packet to Technicolor for MP3 codec support in the phones and tablets.
http://mp3licensing.com/

 

[RazzMaTazz]

That's all Windows Media, which is a Microsoft thing. That is proprietary and subject to copyright, patents and other IP gobbledygook. Android doesn't implement it natively, otherwise device manufacturers would have to pay lots of $$$ to Microsoft in licensing fees..

Third party players often have no problem with Windows Media, either because they have licensed the technologies from Microsoft or they just don't bother and do it anyway.

If anyone wants a good legal read.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windowsmedia-components-licensing

Fees:

• $10,000 non-refundable advanced payment of royalties, due upon agreement execution.
• Per unit royalty and/or Annual Fee Payments. Review the product and royalty schedule in the sample agreement to identify what royalties might apply.

Many device makers are already paying a packet to Technicolor for MP3 codec support in the phones and tablets.
http://mp3licensing.com/

Android used to natively support WMA, but the support was weak. My stock Android 2.3 player app can play most, but not all WMA-encoded songs (depending on the encoder). It can can read most WMA tag information, but not consistently the "Artist" field.

I know the engineering manager for the Android music group. A couple years ago I asked him if he was aware of the problems and if they would fix them. He said that he was aware of the problems but they wouldn't fix them. He said it's purely about corporate strategy. Google is a mortal enemy of Microsoft and so Google doesn't want to lift a finger to help proliferate Microsoft solutions, even if it means that Android users have to find 3rd-party workarounds. In the early days of Android Google needed to be able to check the marketing box for WMA support in order to win over potential customers, but Android's market share became big enough that they don't care-- especially since iOS doesn't natively support WMA either, and Android allows app developers to support WMA for WMA-diehards.

Since Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) Google has dropped WMA support altogether, though I didn't realize that until just now.
http://www.computerworld.com/articl...-audio-files-from-android-3-0-honeycomb-.html

 

[mikedt]

Microsoft used be very strict about Windows Media licensing terms at one time, during the "Plays For Sure" era of device licensing. Creative Labs was one of the biggest names in that. In fact they, Microsoft specifically prohibited licensed devices from supporting free, non-patented codecs like Vorbis and FLAC. they were WMA and MP3 only. And any media that used Windows Media DRM copy protection, could only be played with licensed devices, which was never Android. Although Windows Media DRM is effectively dead now.

All versions of Android have always supported Vorbis and FLAC, because no licensing is required.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Microsoft used be very strict about Windows Media licensing terms at one time, during the "Plays For Sure" era of device licensing.

Maybe back when Microsoft thought they had the muscle to impose a proprietary standard. But Microsoft allowed Android to support WMA, they STILL allow Android apps to support WMA. I'm sure Microsoft would be thrilled to have Android support WMA, free-of-charge.

And any media that used Windows Media DRM copy protection, could only be played with licensed devices, which was never Android.

My Gingerbread phone supported WMA-DRM through the Overdrive (audiobooks) app-- though I deleted it a long time ago and I think Overdrive dropped WMA-DRM support last year.

All versions of Android have always supported Vorbis and FLAC, because no licensing is required.

I doubt that Microsoft would charge Google for WMA support. Heck, Microsoft would probably pay Google to support WMA in Android. The key for Google is that supporting Vorbis & FLAC helps Android without helping (and arguably hurting) Microsoft.