General / Off-Topic Help! Desperately need SIMPLE MP3 software.

Stealthie

Stealthie
Got a fancy new Android car stereo which does many, many clever things.
The only thing it doesn't do very well is, erm, play music. :confused:

I have a collection of 500-odd CDs, dating back 30 years, which have been ripped to MP3s and saved on a HDD, sorted by artist and album title etc.

On my PC, with Windows Media Player, I can just click on a folder, click "play all" and WMP creates a track-list and then plays through every track in that folder, also allowing me to skip up and down the list at will.
Alternatively, I can select a bunch of folders, click "play all" and it'll create a gigantic track-list and then I can click on "play random" and it'll play random tracks from any of the folders I selected.
Etc.

Question is, is there an Android MP3 app' that works in a similar way?

I've read a bunch of "Best MP3 app" articles and tried a variety of the app's they recommend but they ALL seem to insist that I create playlists before they'll play any music.
It usually requires that I click a menu to select the folder, then I have to click on all the tracks in the folder, then I have to click on "add to playlist" and then, finally, I can click "play" to actually start music playing.
This is a PITA while trying to drive a car.
It's also a PITA when I listen to a couple of tracks from one album, decide I want to listen to something else and then have to go through the whole palava again for a different album.

I DO understand that, once I've created a playlist for each album, it's ready to go the next time but that'd mean going through every album and creating a playlist beforehand so I'd rather just select an artist/album from a file-list and be able to just click "play".

Any suggestions?


Oh, I asked a couple of mates about this and they all said "MP3s? Dude, just join spotify and then stream your music!".

Erm, no.
Having paid for the music once, I don't want to have to pay again AND use my phone's data just so I can listen to stuff I already own...especially since I live in an area with lousy cell reception which makes data flaky.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
"Android" isn't necessarily "Android" - especially if your system uses Android Auto. Nevertheless - I'm using Amazon Music on my phone. Don't know if that one requires an Amazon account, though. But it will handle locally stored music and play by artist, album or whatever (as long as your title numbering is correct).
 

EUS

EUS
Personally I've been not too happy with many android players. Clunky, bad track tag reading, default of sorting album playlist by alpha instead of track #, etc.
Musicolet is the one I'm currently using.
 
Last edited:

Stealthie

Stealthie
Thanks for the replies.

Plenty of suggestions for me to have a look at. (y)

It's kind of a "catch 22" situation at the moment, where I haven't bothered to transfer a lot of my music to my car stereo 'cos the onboard software is lousy but I can't properly test other apps because I don't have a lot of music on the stereo.

Bought a couple of 64gb micro-SD cards a couple of days ago.
Will bung a heap of music on them and then test out all the suggestions here.

Technology is a funny thing.
It's great that there's so many alternatives but when there's only ONE choice you just get on with using it whereas when you have a bunch of choices you end up faffing around, trying to decide what's best.

I do already use VLC Player for listening to audiobooks on my phone.
I like the way it works but, superficial as it might seem, I'd like to use something that looks fancier on my car stereo.
Still, at least if all else fails I know I can fall back on VLC Player.
 

Mr T

Mr T
If you want something that works on Android Auto, I've found JetAudio to work best (for me).

Note that to use Android Auto you have to plug a USB cable into your phone from the car, if won't work wirelessly.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Mr T said:
If you want something that works on Android Auto, I've found JetAudio to work best (for me).

Note that to use Android Auto you have to plug a USB cable into your phone from the car, if won't work wirelessly.
Click to expand...

Will give that a look too.

My stereo doesn't have Android Auto but I can, apparently, buy a USB dongle that enables it.
That's something else I was wondering about.
I googled "Android Auto" and I couldn't really understand what extra stuff it provides that an Android device can't already do using suitable apps. :unsure:
 

Northpin

Northpin
Stealthie said:
Will give that a look too.

My stereo doesn't have Android Auto but I can, apparently, buy a USB dongle that enables it.
That's something else I was wondering about.
I googled "Android Auto" and I couldn't really understand what extra stuff it provides that an Android device can't already do using suitable apps. :unsure:
Click to expand...

Basically you use it to display/run your phone apps on car's screen. So you can have your phone Waze nav app (and any other android auto compatible app) running on your car' screen while being full voice driven.

Some are very thrilled by it, meself not so much - i'd rather have both the phone (mounted on the dash) and the car's entertainment device do different stuff while i drive.
Sure, in my country having the phone mounted on the dashboard and running an app without voice control is not forbidden. As in i'm not allowed to handheld it, but i can touch it to change route or the likes.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Stealthie said:
Will give that a look too.

My stereo doesn't have Android Auto but I can, apparently, buy a USB dongle that enables it.
That's something else I was wondering about.
I googled "Android Auto" and I couldn't really understand what extra stuff it provides that an Android device can't already do using suitable apps. :unsure:
Click to expand...
The intention is to minimize driver distraction 🤪.
It's essentially a UI that runs on your car system and shows selected (that is, AA enabled) content from your phone (or, possibly, your android car system). You get larger, simpler icons, less of them on one screen, and less to no hierarchical menus. So in that sense, it doesn't provide more, it provides less. The intention is to prevent you from watching YT commercials while trying to scroll down to the 3rd hierarchical level of your email program to find a link you remembered being there four weeks ago...
kRNy8h7.jpg
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
TBH,
Ashnak said:
The intention is to minimize driver distraction 🤪.
It's essentially a UI that runs on your car system and shows selected (that is, AA enabled) content from your phone (or, possibly, your android car system). You get larger, simpler icons, less of them on one screen, and less to no hierarchical menus. So in that sense, it doesn't provide more, it provides less. The intention is to prevent you from watching YT commercials while trying to scroll down to the 3rd hierarchical level of your email program to find a link you remembered being there four weeks ago...
kRNy8h7.jpg
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification.

For a while, recently, I didn't have a functional stereo in my car so I just used my phone, beaming sound to a bluetooth speaker.
I was, briefly, streaming music rather than just using an app' to listen to the radio.
It took, literally, about 10 minutes for me to get sick of adverts, and not be able to safely skip them, before I just abandoned the idea and just used the radio function.

OTOH, normally I try to avoid using my phone completely when I'm driving.
My missus and my friends know to just text me and I'll get back to them as soon as possible.
If my phone rings and then I get a text I'll know it's important so I'll stop and read the text and/or call back.

Honestly, I'd really only consider connecting my phone to a car stereo to enable data (so I could use nav apps or locate POIs etc) and wouldn't want to use it to take calls at all! :confused:
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Stealthie said:
For a while, recently, I didn't have a functional stereo in my car so I just used my phone, beaming sound to a bluetooth speaker.
Click to expand...
That's what I usually do, too - except that I don't own a car. But I'm working for a company in the car OEM sector, and occasionally I got to travel (up to five times a week) to a different office, using a rental or one of our test cars. First thing I do usually is then to link my phone to the respective car's system via Bluetooth. As a minimum, I can get to play my music (either stored on the phone or streamed) this way. I got a flat rate for streaming for my phone, though (cheapest rate, which is sufficient - a few gigs of high speed data, then throttled to IIRC 64 kb/s), but I rarely got into the throttling.
The in-car nav in those rentals is usually good enough to get me to the office, and sometimes even good enough to get me around blocked traffic. Otherwise, I need to fire up the Google navigation.
 

Mr T

Mr T
With my company car they went for the cheapest option (no built in navigation) so the main purpose of Android Auto for me is getting Google Maps on the display. If your display already has navigation enabled it may not be such a deal breaker as you can do most other things (like playing music) over Bluetooth instead.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom