Posts Tagged
music
A while back I did a roundup of Multimedia App for Android Tablets. You may have noticed that missing from that list were music apps, but fear not; I have not forgotten about music apps — as a matter of fact I love music. There are so many great music apps for Android tablets that instead of lumping them in with other multimedia apps, we decided to dedicate a roundup strictly to them. Here, we’re going to look at streaming, discovery, syncing, and even playing apps that work very well on your Nexus 7, 10 or other Android tablet.
In the modern digital age, media is king. Whether it’s music blaring out of speakers, photos being styled and shared, movies and TV shows on demand, or the online video craze – we are all consuming entertainment at a mind-boggling rate, on an ever-growing number of devices.
iTunes is one of the most popular platform for organizing and collecting media, and for good reasons – it gets the job done, and it is backed by a goliath of an online store. It does have its limitations, though. If you want to stream media from your iTunes library, you’re going to need an iOS device. I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, here, that’s not going to suit you.
An alternative streaming system worth considering is Plex. Once you’ve set up a Plex media server on your Windows, OSX, or Linux computer, you can stream content to nearly any smart mobile device via Plex’s app. Unfortunately, there are times when streaming doesn’t cut it, either because you are restricted by a data cap, or because wi-fi isn’t available. For this kind of problem, Plex offers a syncing service (part of the PlexPass subscription), which, when combined with its beta Plex for PlexPass Android app, allows you to download media to your Android device, with ease.
Or, at least, that is the claim – but can media management really be that simple? Time for a test…
Last week we gave you some advice on how to keep your data, email, contacts and calendar perfectly synced between your Android phone or tablet and an iOS device. Although these are essential elements to synchronize between your devices, replicating media from your iPad or iPhone to your Android device — and vice-versa — can also prove very useful.
Indeed, whether you run out of battery, lose your phone or prefer to use a larger screen, you shouldn’t have to worry about manually transferring your content to every single device you have. To make this chore seamless and transparent for you, we’ve selected a handful of apps and tools that will automate the process.
With the rise of the Internet, most people have turned to online music solutions, causing many radio stations to lose a significant amount of their audience. In addition to downloading songs on iTunes, on-demand streaming services, such as Spotify, Deezer and Grooveshark, have grown very popular by letting you listen to virtually any track on your mobile phone, provided you pay a monthly subscription.
While these services are very convenient, radios are essentially different in the sense that they play a specific genre without allowing you to make your own playlist. Pandora has tried to recapture this analogue radio concept of letting you pick the genre but not the songs, as it automatically generates playlists based on an artist, genre or composer you select. Songza takes the concept even further: instead of asking you to pick a genre or an artist first, it analyzes context and suggests playlists accordingly.
The wonderful thing about playing guitar is that you don’t need sheet music — or even know how to read sheet music — in order to learn your favorite songs. Tablature’s clear one-to-one translation to the strings and finger positions democratizes the instrument that has dominated popular music for much of the past century.
Even better, hundreds of thousands of other guitarists worldwide write and share their interpretations online, providing vast repositories of tabs that give you a head start on just about any published song — popular or obscure.
If you want to tap into this hive mind on your phone or tablet, you could make do with a web browser or text editor…or you could grab an app like GuitarTapp Pro.
“Music” is quite the cluttered category these days on mobile devices – there are the old school music players, radio apps, editing apps and then some creation apps. On the gaming front, the competition is pretty light with a few variations of Guitar Hero style gameplay and not much else. I’m not into the whole guitar-chord-busting genre, but one game that brought back memories of my childhood piano lessons is Smule’s Magic Piano.
If the developer’s name sounds somewhat familiar, you’ve probably heard of their Ocarina app on iPhone a few years back that caused quite a stir with its unique approach to creating music by blowing into the iPhone’s microphone. After a spate of ground breaking and successful apps on iOS and the excellent Songify on Android, they finally decided to bring Magic Piano over to Android. Having craved to see something like the Ocarina on Android, I decided to give Magic Piano a go and here’s what I came back thinking.
SongPop is a fun game that challenges your music knowledge by asking you to guess the name or artist of the song that’s currently playing. This game offers great features and makes it easy to play with your friends. It is fast-paced, challenging, and it doesn’t get repetitive – no two rounds are the same. So let’s see, how fast can you identify that song?
“Radio” to the majority of us seems like an old technology. Nowadays most people only listen to the FM radio occasionally in the car to drain away the mindless hours. And for the younger generation, it is only ever listened to as a last resource after TV, music players and countless other entertainment options.
Admittedly, I don’t listen to the radio as much as I should. Radio shows have a lot to offer, and some of them have really enticed and intrigued me in the past, making me wonder about the world and society as we know them. That’s why I looked for a encouragement to use it more. So I decided to get Nexus 7 to help me and fortunately, I came across TuneIn Radio, a brilliant Android radio app!
JAZZ: Trump’s Journey is a fantastic adventure game that has one of the most amazing soundtracks I have ever encountered on an Android game. As an avid lover of jazz music, I find it to be an enormously pleasurable experience. It is specifically designed for jazz music fans, or more importantly, anyone who wants to learn more about the genre. Either way, the tracks presented in the game are prefect renditions of traditional jazz.
What’s even more exciting about JAZZ is that it’s an historical parallel to the life of the late, great Louis Armstrong. Throughout the game, you follow Trump, a jazz trumpet player. Join him as you embark on your quest to form a musical group, handle a love affair, and battle the extreme injustice that fills the streets of New Orleans.
I’m a movie and TV show fanatic. I could sit on my couch all day long and watch one show after another. In fact, I do that whenever I get a chance. For a couch potato, the problem these days isn’t the availability of content, on the contrary, there’s an abundance of scripted and original material. The problem arises when I try to find a new show or movie to watch. Discoverability is so broken, that valuable time is wasted searching for new content. Recommendations are confined to lists, which are very Web 1.0 and don’t take into account my personal taste and interests.
Enter GetGlue who have been hard at work for a few years now, trying to recommend entertainment based on what users already like and dislike. After doing a commendable job with their web and iOS apps, GetGlue brought their expertise in suggestions and check-ins to Android users.
