Best Android Music Player Apps

We've come a long way from cassette tapes, and now it's time to face the music — pun fully intended — CDs are beginning to phase out as well. Most (if not all) new cars aren't even made with CD players anymore, which gives us the perfect opportunity to recommend some awesome music player apps to you. If you're looking for something extremely simple, something a little more advanced but not too crazy, or flow-blown customizable with an extensive list of features, there's something on here for everyone.

Google's Android OS is known for its near-limitless flexibility, and that extends to the wealth of music apps available for the platform. You can stick with Google Play Music for traditional functionality and cloud streaming, or download custom players such as Poweramp or n7player for deep levels of customization and sound control. Even Apple has something to offer Android music lovers. Whether you're a casual listener or have thousands of songs to organize, here are our picks for the best music players on Android.

MediaMonkey

If you've got a large music collection, MediaMonkey is the place to park it. With extensive features like listening history, sleep timer, player widgets, and more, you won't be disappointed. Not only that, but you can also edit the properties of your music files, so if you're used to doing some tweaking, you can do it all within the MediaMonkey app. Just like your more popular music players, MediaMonkey recognizes album art and genre. You can create playlists, queue music, search your full library, and maybe the best part: easily set your favorite song to be your ringtone. You can say goodbye to the fuss of individual ringtone apps where you end up not even finding the clip you want, because you can do it all right through MediaMonkey.

PlayerPro Music Player

While PlayerPro comes with a small fee ($5), it's completely worth it with all of the available customizations. Choose from a bunch of different skins, alter the interface to fit your specific likes, and organize your media by list or grid. You'll also be able to alter volume, bass, and virtualizer for the most personalized experience possible.

But that's not all PlayerPro has to offer. PlayerPro is Google Voice compatible, has options for a sleep timer and fade out, and customizable double tap and shake commands, plus more. The features and customizations of PlayerPro makes it a fantastic option for anyone who likes a completely unique music experience. And with the aforementioned capabilities of mixing up the bass and virtualizer, PlayerPro delivers it all.

JetAudio Music Player

jetAudio is a long time favorite of Android users because it has enough features to be better than most, but still simple enough for everyone to use. This one features a variety of audio enhancements that come as plugins so you can tweak your music experience a little more than usual. On top of that, it comes with an equalizer (complete with 32 presets), simple effects like bass boost, a tag editor, widgets, and even MIDI playback. The free and paid versions are virtually identical with the paid version adding themes and removing advertising.

BlackPlayer

The lesser-known BlackPlayer is a slick, minimalist app with a clean, configurable interface that packs decent features under the hood. Swipe controls let you easily navigate the library's various views (track, album, artist, genre) as well as playback. Vertical swipes to bring you to next or previous tracks. On the audio end, BlackPlayer includes a 5 band equalizer, as well as a variety of audio effects such as a bass booster and virtualizer, and gapless playback and crossfade on devices that support it. BlackPlayer also comes with three widgets, an ID3 tag editor, and support for FLAC and embedded lyrics.

n7player

n7player is an app that tries to do something a little different and succeeds. Instead of having lists of music sorted in various ways, n7player creates a giant collage style list of your music which you can scroll through and listen to. It also comes with a 10-band equalizer, volume normalization, a tag editor, scrobbling, and plenty of other features. A lot of this is definitely form over function so those looking for more powerful music management may need to look elsewhere. However, if you want something that looks awesome, this works.

doubleTwist

With support for music, podcasts and radio, DoubleTwist is the audio player that does it all. The app's Magic Radio feature provides a customized mix of songs based on your existing library, and you can use doubleTwist to instantly sync iTunes or Windows Media Player playlists from your PC to your phone via USB. This handy app is as stylish as it is functional, with a refreshed design, artist bios and photos that accompany your favorite tracks. DoubleTwist can stream your tunes to your Xbox 360, PS3, Sonos speakers and other devices.

PlayerPro Music Player

PlayerPro Music Player is another lesser popular 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. It also includes support for playing video, a five band equalizer, various audio effects, widgets, and some fun little features like the ability to shake the phone to get it to change tracks. It’s fun to use and looks good.

Pulsar Music Player

Pulsar is probably the best completely free music player out there right now. It comes with a design that is heavily inspired by Material Design along with many of the basic features like tag editing, gapless playback, smart playlists, a sleep timer, and Last.fm scrobbling. Puslar also has Chromecast support, which is awesome. It’s not as feature heavy as some of the paid options, but that can be either good or bad depending on what kind of music experience you’re looking for. It’s not bad if your wallet is a little light and there are themes to add a bit of customization.

VLC

Looking for something a little more low-key, just to play a few of your favorite mp3s? More simple and minimalistic, VLC will give you an easy way to listen to more than just those mp3s. If your personal collection is in a wide array of formats, chances are that VLC will be able to play them all, at no cost to you. And, while it may be a different topic for a different article, VLC will also play your movies too, which makes it a great, central place to house all your digital media. Another awesome thing about VLC is that it's consumer-friendly. The developers didn't have to assure users that VLC valued their privacy, but they did, and proved it with the open source code. So if you're concerned about your privacy and are in search of some apps that are more geared towards protecting yours, then VLC is a great option for media viewing.

Amazon Music

Amazon Music allows you to play locally stored music, create and edit playlists, and stream music to your car or home stereo via Bluetooth. The real selling points, though, are the market integration and cloud locker streaming. Users can search for and purchase new music, and then stream or download tracks and album straight into your device to enjoy at your leisure. With a $99 annual Amazon Prime subscription, users also gain access to a massive library of music that they can stream and download at will ad-free, along with the other perks of Amazon Prime.