Great Android Apps for Music Lovers
- iTunes– It’s been around forever (in tech time, more than 10 yearsis forever) and has revolutionized music listening and music buying. It’s so basic, most of us don’t give iTunes a second thought. Butit’s a powerful software application that lets you acquire, manage and listen to music. Approximately 70 percent of the music downloaded in the U.S. is purchased through the iTunes Store [source: Keizer].
- Amazon Cloud Player– Music listeners get two bonuses from cloud computing. First, because the song files are stored in the “clouds” — that is, on remote computers — space on your computer or mobile device is freed up. Second, cloud storage means that you can access your favorite tunes from
any of your devices at any time. You can also synch your music with all your devices instantly - Rdio– Music is inherently social. People make music together. Friends share tunes, follow bands, attend concerts, groove to the same songs. Apps that incorporate social media and music are extremely popular. Rdio is a paid service that gives you access to streaming song tracks and playlists from a library of 8 million tunes.
- Pandora– Pandora is one of the original Internet radio apps. The “stations” are actually custom music streams tailored to your choice of artist and genre. Pandora lets you listen to specific songs or artists, create playlists and find new tunes. Pandora’s software draws on and analyses a huge
database of tunes to keep presenting you with new music based on your favourites and your listening patterns. - Spotify– The Spotify streaming music service started in Europe, but has been steadily expanding its reach to more regions. Spotify offers a truly enormous library of more than 15 million tracks. And it shoots them to your mobile device at 320 Kbps, a higher rate than some other services — the
result is better sound quality. With premium service, there are no ads, and you can access exclusive content like pre-release tracks. - Slacker Radio– Slacker is another Internet radio service. It has apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm. Like Pandora, Slacker creates custom stations that play music of a certain type. But for a fee, Slacker also gives you unlimited access on demand to the music or artists you choose
- Last.fm– Last.fm is a major music streaming service. Its claim to fame is its ability to help you find music that’s likely to be just what youwere looking for. Last.fm tracks what you listen to on Internet and your various mobile devices, then recommends new music just for you. Last.fm is available foriPhone, Xbox, iPod Touch, Android and Windows Phone 7.
- Grooveshark – Grooveshark is another streaming music app, but with a twist. Besides listening to preset stations, you can create and modify your playlist. You can also upload your own music into the Grooveshark library and add that to the stream you’re listening to, and access your tunes on mobile devices using Grooveshark Anywhere. The mobile app is currently available for Android, Palm,
- Shazam– If you’ve ever heard a song and gotten frustrated trying to remember the name of it or who performed it, Shazam just may make your life easier. Essentially, it’s an audio search engine. Available for iPhone or Android, the app can listen to virtually any track for a few seconds, compare
it to a database and almost instantly come back with information about the song. - TuneWiki– With TuneWiki, you can make almost any mobile device resemble a miniature karaoke machine. The service lets you check out lyrics of any song you’re listening to on your smartphone or tablet.
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