Testdrive: G1 music apps

Posted on | January 23, 2009 | 1 Comment

it’s been almost a week since I first started testing the G1, and so far my initial impression hasn’t really changed that much. like many of my fellow testers I’m disappointed by many aspects of both hardware and software. while the former would make me wait for a successor (I guess the G2 can’t be away too far), the latter will probably improve once the next major update of Android (codenamed “cupcake”) is released. but instead of ranting on about the G1’s pro’s and con’s (I’ll save that for next week), I wanted to focus this post on a particular area of apps, namely music-related apps.

the fact that the G1 wasn’t supposed to be a music-phone from start is easily proved by manufacturer HTC’s horrible decision to abuse the USB-port for connecting the included headphones (= you’re not able to use your own, supposedly better-quality headphones). in terms of software there’s also plenty of reasons to moan: out-of-the-box there’s no support for streaming-music/video, no support of mp3-downloads through http in the browser, very limited support for local music playback (compared to the iPhone), no podcasting-client, no synching of your music library on the desktop. still not convinced that the G1 won’t be a good choice for music-lovers?

on the other hand this means plenty of opportunity for app-developers. so without further ado, here are my favorite music-apps, all available through the Android Market…

aLastFM Player –  before Last.fm shut down their iPhone-app for most foreign markets (Austria included) due to licensing issues, it was one of my favorite ways to listen to music mobile. with a stable 3G- or WiFi-connection, Last.fm basically makes loading your iPod/iPhone/phone with new music obsolete. with the G1 and aLastFM Player, you can now listen to personalized radio on the go again … of course, the app isn’t officially supported by Last.fm, which might break it in the future.

while  there are several other Last.fm-apps available (f.e. Last.FM Android Edition), aLastFM Player was the only I found worth trying (others crashed all the time or didn’t even connect to streams).

Update: as of today Last.fm is offering an official client as well! I can’t find it on the Market yet (besides on the web-interface, but you can’t download there), but anyway, I’m afraid the official client will include the same geographic restrictions as the iPhone-version. I’ll check back later…

imeeem – another music-recommendation service, imeem stepped into the game themselves and released an official Android-app. stable, nice-looking UI (compared to aLastFM Player, that is), but overall I think Last.fm’s library is much better. still, worth trying!

StreamFurios – a basic streaming client for mp3-radio-streams (Shoutcast/Icecast support). StreamFurios offers a – not very comprehensive – radio-directory, but can also search the Shoutcast-directory and directly open m3u/pls-streams through the browser. Nothing fancy, but works as advertised.

Shazam – most iPhone-users probably know music-recognation service Shazam by now. it’s simple: if you’re listening to a tune you don’t know, just pull out your G1 and fire up Shazam. after recording and fingerprinting a few seconds of music, Shazam’s library can tell you artist & title of the song in question – at least if your taste in music is not too far from mainstream. Hint: the G1 version of Shazam requires to set G1’s language to ‘English’, otherwise it won’t work at all.

DoggCatcher – quite well-made podcasting-client, which only lacks a podcast-directory (d’oh!) – but thanks to the G1’s copy & paste functionality, importing RSS-feeds works just fine. also, DoggCatcher supports downloading of new episodes over-the-air, something that Apple only recently added to the iPhone (and still somewhat restricted in filesize).

other than those, I wasn’t able to find much useful stuff yet. some apps sound interesting, but didn’t work really well for me (f.e. aPlayer should support 3gp-fileformats, but didn’t work for streaming playback) – a general problem with Market-applications. if I missed some good music-apps, feel free to leave a comment!

 

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