Private music collections aren’t the norm these days because of music streaming. However, many people still enjoy the benefits of a personal music collection. You can have higher quality music, it works offline, and it doesn’t come with a monthly cost. Fortunately, there are plenty of options when it comes to jamming out to your favorite tunes. Here are our top picks for the best music player apps for Android.
The best music player apps for Android
AIMP
Price: Free
AIMP is a fairly powerful mobile music app. It supports common music file types, including mainstays like FLAC, MP3, MP4, and others. You also get a host of customization options, theming, and other fun stuff like that. The app has a simple UI and we had no problems getting around and listening to music. It keeps it simple with a decent Material Design interface.
We also appreciated its outstanding equalizer, HTTP live streaming, and volume normalization. It’s definitely a step up from most basic music player apps. There is also a desktop version in case you want to kill two birds with a single app. The only downside is potential compatibility issues with MIUI and EMUI devices.
BlackPlayer EX
Price: Free / $3.59
BlackPlayer is a simple, but elegant music player that puts very little between you and your music. It operates on a tab structure and you can customize the tabs to use only the ones that you actually want. On top of that, it has an equalizer, widgets, scrobbling, an ID3 tag editor, no ads, themes, and support for most commonly used music files.
It’s delightfully simple and a fantastic option for fans of minimalism. The free version is a little bare-bones with the paid version providing far more features. Thankfully, the pro version isn’t expensive. As of our July 2019 update, the free version of BlackPlayer seems to be missing in action. We’ll check back in a few months to see if it comes back.
DoubleTwist Music Player
Price: Free / $5.99-$8.99
DoubleTwist Music Player had its ups and downs over the years. It’s currently on an upswing, though, and it’s a good overall music player. The free version has a strong offering, including almost all of the basics. You get playlists, support for most popular audio codecs (including FLAC and ALAC), a simple UI, Chromecast support, and Android Auto support.
There is an optional add-on for Apple AirPlay support ($5.99) and a premium version ($8.99) that adds AirPlay support along with a 10-band equalizer, a SuperSound feature, themes, and some other stuff. In addition, the free version lets you listen to radio stations in your area so there is a music streaming element as well. There are even some features for podcast listeners, such as the ability to skip silences in the premium version. It’s a tad pricey, but it’s good overall.
MediaMonkey
Price: Free / $2.49
MediaMonkey is a bit of a dark horse in the music player apps business. It has a ton of features, including organizational features for things like audiobooks, podcasts, and the ability to sort songs by things like composer (instead of just artist). It also has basic stuff like an equalizer.
What makes MediaMonkey a truly unique music player is the ability to sync your music library from your computer to your phone (and back) over WiFi. It’s a bit complicated setup, but it’s virtually a one-of-a-kind feature. Plus, it can sync with the desktop version over a cable almost identically to iTunes so it’s one of the best ways to manage larger local libraries across devices.
Musicolet
Price: Free
Musicolet is a no-BS music player app. It has a lot of desirable features, including many that you don’t often associate with music player apps. That includes a truly offline experience, a lightweight UI, and a small APK size. Additionally, the app features multiple queues (another rarity), an equalizer, a tag editor, support for embedded lyrics, widgets, folder browsing, and more.
Its no-nonsense approach is refreshing. This is a great option for people who just want a music player that plays music without a ton of extra stuff. It’s also completely free with no in-app purchases and, because of its lack of Internet access, no advertising.
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Neutron Player
Price: Free trial / $7.99
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Neutron Music Player is another music app that isn’t nearly as popular as it probably should be. It features a 32/64-bit audio rendering engine that is (according to the developers) independent of the Android OS. The idea is that it helps music sound better.
It also has a lot of other features, including support for more unique file types (FLAC, MPC, etc), a built-in equalizer, and a host of other audiophile-specific features. It’s a bit expensive and the UI is definitely not the best on the list. However, everything else about it is good.
Oto Music
Price: Free / Optional donation
Oto Music is a solid, minimal music player. You get an attractive, easy-to-use player with decent navigation and support for things like Chromecast and Android Auto. Additionally, the app comes with five widgets, gapless playback, a light and dark theme, tag editing, and support for normal and synced lyrics. You get all of that in an app package of about 5MB. There is even a Discord in case you want to speak to the developer.
Everything in the app is free, but you can support the developer with optional donations ranging from $0.99 to $14.99 if you want to. It looks good, it works well, and there’s nothing really wrong with it. This is a rock-solid option in this space.
Phonograph
Price: Free / $3.49
Phonograph is one of the few good open-source music player apps. It bills itself as being simple. lightweight, and easy to use. In most cases, it succeeds. It features a classic, simple Material Design UI. It’s quick to move through as needed. You can also change the theme if you want, but the theme editor isn’t especially powerful. Along with that, you’ll get Last.FM integration, a tag editor, playlist features, a home screen widget, and some other navigation features.
It’s very simple and a great option for those who just want to listen to their music without anything getting in the way. This app is also available with no in-app purchases with Google Play Pass.
PlayerPro Music Player
Price: Free / $4.99
PlayerPro Music Player is another lesser-known music app that should be getting a little more traffic. It features a good-looking interface that makes everything easy to use along with skins that you can download and install for more customization. You’ll also get support for playing video, a rare ten-band equalizer, Android Auto and Chromecast support, various audio effects, widgets, and some fun little features like the ability to shake the phone to get it to change tracks. It even supports Hi-Fi music (up to 32-bit, 384kHz). You can demo the app for free before forking out the $4.99.
Plexamp
Price: Free / $4.99 per month / $39.99 per year
Plexamp is probably your best bet for playing music not stored on your phone, but also not streaming like Spotify. You set up your Plex server at home and then use this app to stream music from your computer to your phone. The app has a minimal, good-looking UI and you can do things like downloading your songs to your phone temporarily for offline use.
The app also includes true gapless playback, loudness leveling, soft transitions, an EQ, a preamp, and some other nice touches for the audiophile crowd. Plex does charge $4.99 per month to use the app since it does have to bounce off of Plex servers to work. However, it’s still cheaper than a music streaming service and that covers the cost for regular Plex (video content) as well as Plexamp.
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Poweramp Music Player
Price: Free / $3.99
Poweramp has long been one of the go-to music player app choices for a lot of Android users. It has a sleek interface with themes that you can download from the Google Play Store. The interface can be too clever for its own good sometimes. It’s otherwise fast, efficient, and powerful and there are themes available if you want to that route. The app also includes many playback features, including gapless playback, crossfade, and it has support for several types of playlists along with Android Auto support.
You’ll also find widgets, tag editing, and more customization settings. You can even download lyrics if you need to. It’s a powerful player that seems to strike the right chord with almost everyone.
Pulsar Music Player
Price: Free / $2.99
Pulsar is definitely one of the best music player apps available right now. The features include beautifully done Material Design, tag editing, gapless playback, smart playlists, a sleep timer, and Last.fm scrobbling. Pulsar also has Chromecast support and some of the best Android Auto support we’ve seen of any app on the list. It’s not as feature-heavy as some of the paid options, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad.
It’s a great option for those looking for something minimal, lightweight, and good-looking. The pro version is inexpensive and only adds a few more features. Neither the free nor premium version has advertising. The same developer also does Omnia Music Player (Google Play link), a highly touted and good music player as well.
Rocket Music Player
Price: Free / $3.49
Rocket Music Player is another good-looking and highly functional music player for Android. It comes with the basics along with a 10-band EQ, embedded lyrics support, tag editing, Chromecast support, and Android Auto support. It actually has some outstanding Android Auto support and works with Google Assistant really well.
Additionally, it has some niche features that we liked such as podcast bookmarks in case you have to leave and come back. There are parts of the app that look a little older, like the notification player and settings menu, but everything else looks and feels quite good. The premium version removes ads, but even the ads aren’t that bad if you want to stick to the free version.
Stellio
Price: Free / $4.99-$14.99
Stellio is a surprisingly good music player. It supports the usual stuff like playlists, various views, and even various themes. You can also look up lyrics online and they become available offline from that point forward. Some other features include above-average audio codec support, widgets, a bunch of customization settings, and some extras like crossfade and a tag editor.
The basic $4.99 premium version removes ads and adds some themes. There are also additional themes you can purchase for $1.99 each or just get the $14.99 premium version where you get everything. The choice is yours and the themes are actually good.
YouTube Music
Price: Free / $9.99+ per month
YouTube Music is technically a music streaming service, but you can use it as a local music player as well. The app should ask you if you want to look at music on your device when you launch it. The UI is average at best and most of its features revolve around its streaming platform. However, much like Google Play Music, you can actually upload up to 100,000 of your own songs to YouTube Music and stream directly from there.
That’s a boon for folks who have larger collections and also use phones with limited storage or no SD card slot. It’s far from perfect and it’s definitely not as good of a local music player as others on the list. However, with the 100,000 songs, this competes well with something like Plexamp where you can listen to your local tunes without needing the files directly on your phone.
Bonus: USB Audio Player Pro
Price: $7.99 + $1.99-$3.99
USB Audio Player Pro is the king of its own niche. It works perfectly fine as an audio player for just about anybody. It comes with UPnP support, little extras like gapless playback, a 10-band EQ, and an attractive, functional UI. However, where this one really sings is for the audiophile crowd. The app supports up to 32-bit, 394kHz audio natively with support for FLAC, MQA, DSD, SACD, and a ton of other audio codecs.
Additionally, it specifically works well with USB DACs as well as HiRes DACs like the one in LG phones. That’s a good thing because most other music players don’t do that very well. You can even stream music (via TIDAL, Qobuz, and Shoutcast) through this app in order to take advantage of your hardware.
It’s a bit expensive and those without special DACs definitely don’t need anything like this, but it’s the best for those who do use such hardware. Onkyo HF Player (Google Play link) is also pretty good in this space, but we think UAPP is a little better.
If we missed any of the best music player apps for Android, tell us about them in the comments. This is an update of a previously written article, so check the comments for some suggestions from our readers! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.
