A better integrated music player in Android?

[avenuePad]

I personally don't mind the default music player for Android. It plays all kinds of different files, and with Album grabber all my imported music has the proper artwork for each album. I'm just wondering if anybody has heard any plans for making the music player more integrated with the OS. When playing music it should really be part of the pull down menu.

I'm sure as Android gets their own music market to compete with iTunes the music player will get more attention.

 

[novox77]

I don't think "integration" is in Google's vocabulary. Integration by definition limits choice because it' can't be isolated/removed.

iTunes is music management. Perhaps google might be well off to create an app called Google Music Manager or whatever, and it can also play music. But I would not be in favor of a player that was integrated. What if I don't like it? It'd be no different than the crapware the carriers put in /system/app. They think you'd like it, but most people don't. And there's no option (aside from rooting) to remove them.

 

[avenuePad]

I don't think "integration" is in Google's vocabulary. Integration by definition limits choice because it' can't be isolated/removed.

iTunes is music management. Perhaps google might be well off to create an app called Google Music Manager or whatever, and it can also play music. But I would not be in favor of a player that was integrated. What if I don't like it? It'd be no different than the crapware the carriers put in /system/app. They think you'd like it, but most people don't. And there's no option (aside from rooting) to remove them.

That's a really good point. When you start integrating too many things you start to take away what makes Android special - customization. Maybe a widget would be possible?

 

[Guamguy]

I personally don't mind the default music player for Android. It plays all kinds of different files, and with Album grabber all my imported music has the proper artwork for each album. I'm just wondering if anybody has heard any plans for making the music player more integrated with the OS. When playing music it should really be part of the pull down menu.

I'm sure as Android gets their own music market to compete with iTunes the music player will get more attention.

The Honeycomb music player (ripped off from Android 3.0) does exactly what you say. The apk for this is floating around in some sites. However, I do not recommend this installing on phones with the vanilla Android such as the Nexus. Since it is the stock music player for Honeycomb, installing it on a vanilla Android will overwrite your stock music player because they have the same name: Music. If you don't happen to like it, there is no turning back.

So install this on phones that have branded UIs where the music player isn't named "Music". You can easily check for this, and I know easily phones with HTC Sense and Samsung Touchwiz doesn't name their music players "Music".

I do need to point out that phones with branded UIs like Sense and Touchwiz has music players that are well integrated with the UI. Playing them for example, they would show on the notification bar or even on the lockscreen that enables you to control them without unlocking the lockscreen.

 

[novox77]

Just throwing it out there for people who want to try the new music player: on HTC phones, the default music player is located in /system/app as:

HtcMusic.apk
com.htc.MusicWidget.apk

So no risk of conflict.

But I would think that if you're running AOSP, and you didn't want to overwrite the stock Music.apk, you could just rename it Music.apk.BAK, and then copy in the honeycomb version, and it should be just fine. Later, if you wanted to go back, you'd delete the honeycomb version and rename your old one back.

 

[Guamguy]

Do note the music player on the Samsung Galaxy S is not the default Android music player. However, it is the best I've seen in any phone---fantastic if you view it from a landscape POV---and it is hard for me to see why people would still use another music player in lieu of this.