Music gives energy, love, and passion. I will say that it is part of things that make life worth living for many of us. It is the greatest creation of man, music plays a crucial role in every society. I am more than 20 years old, and I am curious if there is any culture in the world that does not like using it, either for pleasure, entertainment or education.

From rock, blues, reggae, jazz, RnB to apala and many other genres. Music continues to shape lives and human perceptions. It is not strange, that the art is receiving great attention from the medical science world. Doctors believe that music can help people recover from health challenges like dyslexia, trauma, dementia, and depression.

Motivrunning -CCO-

Music is another form of therapy, I meditate with it, there are nights that I find it hard to sleep without listening to cool music.
This generation is lucky, we don't have to rob the bank to own music player, neither do we have to go to CD (Compact Disc) shops often. We have the entire music world in small mobile and portable devices. Kudos to developers who keep working hard to improve users experience, with respect to music app development.

I love music, better music players make the difference.

When I found Vinyl open source music player app, I knew that I have found something that is worth it. Well, it works like every other player but with a unique twist.

Vinyl Music Player- What's Special About It?

It is lightweight mobile app which is crash-free at the moment, it plays all music format, quite agnostic. Beyond selection and organization of playlists, I am able to add a photo to tracks, this allows me to dedicate songs to family and friends. I can edit music details for easy search, this app is a light year ahead of system (pre-installed) music player on any android device. So let's meet my favorite music player.

What Happen When I Open Vinyl?

Well, after the first launch of the app, subsequently, the home page looks like the image above, goodies are loaded in there. If you're using it for the first time, the intro page welcomes the users into Vinyl's world, then comes information about how to use the app.
The app home page contains menu at the top-left corner and search button at the top. I can slide from songs to albums, genres, and playlists.

Playlists: it analyses all my activities since I have been using the app. For instance, last added, not recently played, top tracks, favorites, last added and FM recordings. I am fascinated by the fact that I can easily spot songs that don't get played for a long time. Many of us are guilty of keeping songs that we don't often listen to; isn't that another way we waste memory space?

By clicking on vertical three (3) dots on Not recently played, Vinyl can help me pack them into a single folder. Guess what? I can decide what to do with them, keep them or delete everything. If I want, I can back them up on cloud or external drive, then delete all to free space on my phone. I only need to click on 'save as file' then go to file manager to manage them.

Tag editor: I have been in a situation where I search for a song, it was hard to find it in music player. I had to go back to the file manager. This kind of thing is stressful. Below is the image of how I used the tag editor.

Mind you, this feature must be paid for if you are using Shuttle music player. It is absolutely FREE in Vinyl music player!!!

Imagine that I need lyrics of the song in order to get better at singing it, by listening and reading its lyrics simultaneously.
It is hard to continue to navigate between music app and browser, there are times that I mistakenly closed the webpage that contained certain lyrics. Searching for it is a waste of time and internet data bundle.

With tag editor, I can name song, album, artist, genre, music production year, track number and save lyrics under each song. For me, this is a fantastic feature.

Set artist image: I will go to current song that I am playing, click on vertical three (3) dots on it, then click on 'go to artist' at the top-right corner of my screen. I will click on three (3) dots that gives several options, then click on 'set artist image.' Users can use any image of their choice. Like I said earlier, it allows me to add good memory to songs and vice versa. Perhaps, if I have added my lover's picture to a love song, I can remove it after heartbreak, and add a photo of another person as soon as I find new love. Better still, reset artist image to default.

Sleep timer: what makes it unique is the flexibility of this feature. While other similar apps restrict users to 15, 30, 45 and 1 hour sleep time, I can set my sleep time to any minutes between 0 and 120. The sleep timer is good for electric energy conservation, I don't want my phone to keep playing music throughout the night. Once I sleep off, it should go off too.

Settings: library categories allow me to determine if I want songs, albums, artist genres, and playlist in my library. When I deselect any of these, it will not appear in my Vinyl homepage anymore. I can choose between dark, light and black theme, so everything under color and notification is about tweaking appearance. On audio setting, I can manipulate 'Replay game source mode' and 'Replay gain preamp' they have a noticeable effect on audio quality.

What's More?

Instead of paying attention to every application functionality and features, I focused mainly on features that are unique to Vinyl, those that cannot be found in other music player apps. Nevertheless, there are other features like Equaliser, Play Queue, Share Button, Set As Ringtone, Delete, Details, Add to Playlist, Shuffle, Grid Size, and Sort Order.

Conclusion

The application is built on the foundation of familiar music applications, this is easy to interact with, it is lightweight and * user-friendly*. For over a month, I am yet to experience crash. The intro page is cool and straightforward, the menu is not clustered as well. I checked 'about' page and I am really impressed that contributions were duly acknowledged, with links to contributors' profiles. Without mincing words, this is a music app that will make you uninstall others. However, I have a few observations.

Recommendation

• developers should increase the number of equalizers

• they should add more theme to improve app appearance

• if possible, include animation on the screen while the music is playing, little things matters, especially to girls.

Version

This app is new and developers contribute to its development regularly

Links

Source Codes
https://github.com/AdrienPoupa/VinylMusicPlayer
Developers' Website
https://adrien.poupa.fr
Download Link
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.poupa.vinylmusicplayer/
My Github Profile
https://github.com/autofreak
Series: Nil