Are open-source music players good enough to replace stock music players and non-open source music players?

Introduction

Open-source projects are mostly considered to be inferior to non-opensource projects. This is because the mentality of most people is that open-source projects are not well funded which is partly correct. That's why Utopian is a great platform because open-source projects can now be properly funded like I stated in one of my blog posts.
Furthermore, open-source projects most times are created by developers who are just trying out ideas and don't invest time in making these projects really good.
In this post, I'll be talking about three (3) open-source music players I know and use and I will be comparing them with my device's stock music player and other music players. To correctly compare these softwares, I'll be reviewing their features individually.
The music players I will reviewing and comparing with my stock music players are

• Retro music player
• AB music player
• Jockey music-player

Have a good time reading!

Post Body

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Music has been existing for a long time almost as old as the earth. A lot of people have described music as a force that can heal and bring comfort to the heart of listeners. It is not a surprise that as the world evolved, music evolved alongside and also the way we can access these musical pieces evolved too. From huge sound decks to beatboxes, to walkmans to iPods and now everyone basically prefers listening to music directly from their mobile phones and to do this they need to have a music player on their phones.
There aren't a lot of people who are critical about the music players they use and don't care how it looks like, or the functionalities it's got, so far it just plays the track and they are okay but, I do. In fact, the level to which I play music in a day is directly proportional to the music player I'm using. That's totally weird, right?

Since I became knowledgeable about open source projects, I took time to sort out open source software alternatives to the software I originally use and music players were my first target. After some days of searching, I found out three open-source music players I totally liked. The best among the three in my opinion though is the Retro music player.

Retro music player

Project repository: https://github.com/h4h13/RetroMusicPlayer

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Retro music player is an open source music player. There a lot of things I love about this player but first is the user interface (UI) which is really customizable.
It's a hybrid blend of ios music player.

Now let's get to the full review and comparison of this music software against my device stock music player. My device is a Xiaomi Redmi note 5 pro and the stock music player is called "Mi Music".

Mi music which is my stock android player doesn't have a lot of features, hence, my review and comparison with Retro music player will be seen as unfair but, that's the point anyway. To show that open-source music players can do a lot better than stock music players.

Here are the features I can find on Mi music

• sleep timer
• equalizer
• playlists
• online music

These features are common features on almost every music player that exists. The only feature that might not be common is online music which helps me search and play music directly from the internet.

Now that we've seen the features of Mi music. let's see the features of Retro music player.

Features retro music player

Like I stated earlier, the UI of Retro music is the major reason I utilize the software. This was the major focus of the developer and it's no wonder why almost all the features are related to UI.

Themes

It is not common to see themes on a music player talk more an open source project. On Retro music player, users have the option to change the app's general theme and making it look awesome. The theme options are few but are just right. The themes are, clearly white, kinda dark, just black and color. I'm a huge fan of night modes or black interface, so you can guess the theme I'm currently using. Yes! you are right. I utilize the "just black" theme which makes the texts and icons vivid. This would be really great for end-users using devices that have AMOLED screens.
Aside from selecting a theme, users can choose between accent colors and or create their own accent colors.
This is a really great future and sometimes I feel the software was developed for just me.

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Home

This player has a ‘Home’ section which shows you all your playlists, recently played/added songs and the tracks which you have played the most. You can access this section from the sidebar. It is a really neat feature

Now playing styles/themes

This is another feature that's related to UI.

The Now Playing screen is one of the most important screens in any music player. It has to look good. Retro Music Player checks that box, too. It has some great styles which help users to fulfill their theming needs. To be precise, there are six(6) different styles and all of them look amazing in my opinion.

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Corner edges like Pixel 2 XL

Curved screens on mobile phones are now a big thing this year and most devices that have been manufactured and released came with curved screens. The developer of Retro music player being considerate made this feature so that end users who don't have devices with curved screens can experience it. This feature may be undervalued since it's just a curved screen illusion, I love it though. Before I bought my new mobile device which of course has a curved screen, I utilized a phone that wasn't curved in any way and this feature came in handy.

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Artist/Album art and Tag editor

This feature is very important to me. Most times when I download songs off the internet the track details are all messed up. Only the track title and artist name is accurate but this is jumbled together. Other pieces of information about the track like the album, track number and year is missing and I like this information to be correct. That's when the tag editor comes in handy.
Aside from track information being inaccurate album art is mostly the logo of the website where I download the track from and I'll ideally want to see the original album or artist art being display and I could do this manually and it's simple to do.

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Gapless playback

Gapless playback is a feature that is seldom found in music players. I guess it's because it isn't really much of a big deal. Personally, I could care less if gapless playback exists in a music player or not, but, that is just my opinion and it may be a lot for some users. That being said, I utilize the feature anyway.

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Option to set track as notification or ringtone

Setting device ringtones haven't been any easier. I happen to change ringtones a lot courtesy of Retro music player. Sometimes, I just play a track and it sounds so good and I just quickly set it as my device ringtone. This happens a lot more times than not because this works smoothly once permissions are all set up.
This is a great feature for me.

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Last.fm integration

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I've seen this feature on a few music players and sincerely I really don't know what it is, but while writing this blog, I checked it out on Wikipedia and it turns out to be a really useful feature although not to me. I doubt I'll ever use it.

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Lock Screen Controls

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With this, users can easily play, pause, or fast forward/rewind from the lock screen itself. No need to do these actions from a boring notification with small buttons to press. This screen too looks amazing the way it is.

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Conclusion

The review and comparison of Retro music player and Mi music which is my default or stock music player showed that Retro player is several times better. Although this comparison was unfair, my point is proven which is, Open source music players are quite better than stock music players or non-open-source music players. In this review I used Mi music, in the next post on this series where I'll be reviewing AB music player, I'll get a good music player that is not open source to do the comparison.
Retro Music Player is one of the best which you can find in the Play Store right now. It includes some great features which you need to try out yourself. However, a feature I like isn't available which is "lyrics" and I hope the developer finds time to include this feature on the software. Another thing that might be an issue is that there are paid features in the software meaning some features won't work without being unlocked by paying. I utilize the paid version hence I don't know the features that are unavailable in the free version. I'll investigate and briefly talk about it in the next post of this series.

Thanks for reading!

Resources

The content was created from my knowledge of this project. Images were gotten from google search and are accurately sourced.

Series Backlinks

This is the first post in this series.