Dance around your phone or tablet with Keir Thomas' examination of five apps that offer free access to music
Unlike the evil Apple empire, Google doesn't implicitly link tablets and phones to its Google Play music and video services. Sure, you'll find the Google Play music and video apps preinstalled on devices, but you can also use other services if you wish (or just rip your own audio and movies). The choice, really, is yours. This is Android's greatest strength.
Below, we look at five apps that let you listen to music in some fashion - whether that's downloading direct to your device, or streaming, or both. As always the apps were tested on a phone and tablet running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, and all are free of charge within the Google Play store.
Rather strangely, many apps we encountered were essentially clones of each other, often leading to apps that were identical in look and function. We simply don't know whether these were rip-offs -legal or illegal - but the goal of most was obvious: to serve ads and make money. Finding the 'original' app the others copied was akin to finding the original vampire in order to end the curse - practically impossible, with many apps simply lying and stating that they are the 'official' version. Ripoffs like this are not pretty but, well, that's the Google Play app store in a nutshell. With freedom comes chaos!
Which also brings up the question of legality: basically, we're testing the functionality of these apps, and whether they to do what they claim to do. As you read on you'll note that we are unsure as to where many these apps are sourcing this 'free' music from, and thus we wouldn't like to comment upon the legality of their operation. Whether you use them, then, is totally up to you.
Free Music Download
Maybe we're old cynics but as soon as we saw this app's description in Google Play ("Free Music Download lets you download free mp3 music copyleft [sic]") - we knew that it'd lead us to tracks by major artists too. Sure enough, using the search function uncovered pretty much every song from the UK Top 10.
In fact, in most cases several results were returned. Finding any of the promised copyleft tracks is difficult because, unlike similar apps. Free Music Download doesn't have any kind of category headings. The only way to find stuff is to use the search field.
Is the offering of tracks by major artists legal? Who knows? Our best guess is that the app searches various audio websites, such as SoundCloud. We hear that some apps like this simply search YouTube and strip away the video, serving the audio found there. Sometimes tracks are released entirely legitimately on such services by way of promotion. Sometimes they're uploaded by the site's users (and deleted quickly afterwards by site admins). However, as it stands, Free Music Download offers you, as an end user, no way of knowing about legalities because you're not informed of the provenance of each track. It's up to you whether you're happy with that.
Tapping any track in the list of results then attempts to load its lyrics - a procedure that we found failed at each and every attempt. Still, this is hardly a make-or-break feature. At the bottom of the screen is a play button, alongside a Download and Share button. Playing will download the song and play it as it does so. Clicking Download simply downloads the track. In either case, the song will end up in a Free Music Download folder within the Music folder on your device, where it can be played by pretty much any music app that's able to access the file system.
By clicking the Download tab you can view the progress of downloads. Many failed in our tests but all that meant was again tapping the Search tab and choosing a different entry within the list of results. Inevitably on our second try the track would download. The download list is borderline useless, however, and only shows download progress. There's no way of viewing all the tracks you've downloaded, for example. The only way to do that is to use a file browsing app to view the Music folder.
Perhaps surprisingly, that's about all there is to the app. We get the impression the developer didn't get much beyond the early chapters of Android Programming for Dummies, and created the app mostly as a cash cow to serve adverts - full screen versions of which appear after virtually every operation, such as switching between Search and Download tabs. Still, this seems a fair price for what you get and, additionally, simplicity isn't necessarily bad in the world of apps. Ultimately, Free Music Download does exactly what it says on the label.
As with many music download apps on Android, Free Music Download appears to be a clone of some unknown original app. Apps that are identical in look and functionality include Music Paradise, Mp3 Music Download Free, Download Free Music and 10s if not 100s of others.
GTunes Music Download
This is yet another app that's not going to win its creator any design or innovation awards, and that also appears to have been cloned a thousand times (to the extent of other apps even stealing the name; the version we reviewed was from 'freddendoza'), GTunes is at least a little bit more sophisticated than some. Again, it lets you search for, and download, music tracks in the form of MP3s. This time there's no pretence about copyleft, but the app description in Google Play is clever enough to keep things concise, and thus suitably blurred when it comes to detail: GTunes lets you get hold of your favourite music. Unfortunately, how this is achieved is simply not mentioned.
The app opens to offer Search, Download, Library, Setting, Share and Rate icons. It's exactly the same on both phone and tablet, the latter of which is treated as a large phone, and with the end result that everything looks ugly and portrait orientation is enforced. However, the app is otherwise functional.
Tapping the search button loads a full-screen ad, despite the fact you haven't actually done anything yet, and subsequently a search field appears. You're prompted to type the song, artist and/or album name within a single search field. Alongside this field you can select I, II or III from a dropdown menu. We have no idea what this means. Our best guess is that it switches between searching for song, artist and album title, as the input field suggests, but the results seemed random in our tests. Perhaps it switches music search engines?
Once you click the search button an impressively long list of results typically appears. Selecting any entry in the list causes a menu to pop up showing Play Now and Download options. The former option downloads and displays lyrics along with a small track or artist thumbnail image. Sometimes lyrics appeared correctly and sometimes not at all. An Album button seemingly lets you switch between lyrics and a listing of other tracks on the same album, although this didn't work in our tests.
Perhaps surprisingly, when you opt to play a track, all you get is a play button that turns into a pause button once tapped to begin playing the song. There's no option to repeat the track, or cue through it, although this does appear when you opt to playback already downloaded tracks.
Another strange feature is that all tracks are placed in the SMDMusic folder on your device. We've no idea what SMD stands for, or why the track isn't simply placed in the Music folder. This could be a pain if your favourite music playback app only looks in the latter folder, though, as it would require some manual shifting around of files.
Sometimes the app got it entertainingly wrong in our tests. Searching for It's A Sin by the Pet Shop Boys started playback of What Have I Done To Deserve This, while the thumbnail image was of three blokes we simply didn't recognise.
This aside, and also ignoring the somewhat heavy handed attitude to displaying adverts, there's little doubt that GTunes provides access to a serious amount of music.
Musica
If your data plan is sufficient to support streaming, or your Android device is always within range of wi-fi, then Musica might be your silver bullet for finding music. How this is achieved is (once again) simply not explained, but Musica's ability to find artists, songs and even entire albums is simply unmatched by other apps in this comparison.
The app opens to a search field, plus Top Broadcasts and Stations lists. Top Broadcasts are collections of tracks put together by other users, although it isn't clear how - we couldn't find an option to create our own Broadcast, for example. All Broadcasts are themed around concepts or musical styles. To listen in you have to 'join', which shows the track listing and history of tracks that've already been played. Alas, tapping these does nothing - they're for information only. A clue as to the origins of Top Broadcasts is found if you tap the Follow link while listening, whereupon a Grooveshark login appears. Is the app (or at least this part of it) just an interface for the Grooveshark music streaming website? We suspect as much.
The Stations link is far more generic - you choose between Rock, Indie, Electronica, Rap and so on - and as soon as you tap you're treated to music in that genre. You can opt to skip tracks if they're not to your tastes, and tapping the track information button at the bottom enlarges the playlist display, which shows tracks that have been played or skipped.
However, it's the Search function that most people will use. This lets you search for artists, songs or albums. Results are shown under Songs and Albums headings, and as you might expect tapping entries listed under either allows you to listen to the track/album immediately or add it to your playlist (either as the next track to be played, or to the bottom of the playlist, which is a nice touch). Although the album feature is not quite perfect - we found some songs got listed twice or even three times in album listings, meaning you can't simply add all the tracks without encountering frustration - the ability to call up just about any album for instant listening on demand - and for free - is not to be sniffed at.
While listening to individual tracks it's also possible to tap an I Like This Song button. It's not clear what this does but, based on similar apps, we'd guess it helps Musica learn your tastes. However, there doesn’t appear to be any feature within Musica to use this information to generate playlists. Curious.
Tapping the menu button also lets you switch quickly between Broadcast and Station lists, and also adds in a Popular option, by which you can access tracks that are proving popular with others. As you might expect, this is very similar to the Top 10, although with an international feel.
Musica isn’t the tidiest of apps and its interface feels too basic for the suave service it's offering. Adverts are always visible too, and as with so many apps a tablet is essentially treated like a large phone. However, these are really minor complaints for an app that we suspect provides instant access to virtually every pop song you've ever heard - provided you can spare the bandwidth.
Listen To Music
This app has a peculiar problem that we've not come across before: its user interface is in Spanish. Although offered on the UK Google Play store, complete with an English-language description, it seems nobody has bothered translating the actual app.
The partner app of www.ritmomp3.com, even after visiting the website we couldn't even workout whether Listen To Music is European or Latin American in origin (our hunch is the latter). Perhaps surprisingly, this doesn't really matter providing you apply a little common sense, and perhaps a little Google Translate too.
The app opens to a list of Top Canciones (Top Songs). Some of these tunes are South American in origin but many are the same old western artists that you know so well, although perhaps with a US bias - so a little more Country music in there than you might be used to. Tapping any track starts it playing instantly, and playback can be controlled using the icons at the bottom of the screen. Music is streamed rather than downloaded, and notably there's no lyrics or artist/song artwork. Tapping the menu button lets you switch to Top Artistas (yes, you translated correctly), G£neros (category listings), and Mis Favoritors (again, you guessed right). You can favourite tunes by tapping the star icon at the left of the transport controls at the bottom of the screen. Your favourites lists essentially acts as a personal playlist of tunes.
As usual in apps like this, of most interest is the search field at the top of the screen. Here you can type artist or song names and the results are just like in other apps reviewed here - and nearly always impressively long too. It didn't really work when searching for albums, however, which is a bit of a let down.
Adverts are present at the bottom of the screen at all times, and full-screen adverts frequently appear (although don't stop the music playing). These are perhaps acceptable considering the wealth of music you're getting access to.
However, that's about all we can say about this app. It's pretty simple in execution and use, which is why the Spanish-language interface isn't really that big an issue at the end of the day. It works fine on tablets - although, again, it treats them as large phones.
As with the other apps here we've no real idea where Listen To Music's content is being sourced from, but if you're after that elusive track and none of the other apps satisfy then it's certainly worth installing and trying.
Top Musica
The statistical likelihood of having two Spanish-language apps in our group test is low, but Top Musica is yet another app originating (probably) in South America. It appears to be a spin-off of the gomusic. fm website. Like Listen To Music, reviewed above, it provides streaming access to both western (ie Katy Perry, Coldplay etc.) and Latin pop (Romeo Santos. Ricardo Arjona etc.), although this time the app has significantly more helpful organisation that aids searching and exploring.
The app opens to circular badges representing mainstream pop music types: Country, Kpop, Metal, Rap, Punk, and so on. Some labels are in Spanish but you'd have to be pretty dumb not to be able to work out what they are: Christiana, for example, or Electrbnica.
Selecting any of these badges then shows a range of artists badges, complete with images to aid selection. Once you select an artist you're shown a track listing and can sort this alphabetically, by the most popular titles, or even by album. Selecting Michael Jackson and sorting by most popular showed 70 tracks in total - perhaps a small excerpt of his output, although one that contained virtually every song of his we could think of off the top of our heads. Selecting Coldplay and switching to album view showed every one of their LPs as available, complete with full track listings.
Selecting a song plays it immediately, and brings forth with transport controls and a thumbnail of the artist - and there's also an option to add it to a playlist. Clicking the musical note icon switches to showing lyrics for the song currently playing, while clicking the track listing button returns you, naturally enough, to the earlier track listing.
'Despite starting out with scepticism, Top Musica won us over with a simple yet effective interface and true access to just about any artist, song or album you might want - provided you're under the age of 25. Full-screen adverts appear occasionally, but nowhere near as frequently as other apps reviewed here, and there are banner adverts on the screen at all times.