Best Free Music Player and Organizer for Android

Android. The Operating System that is flexible, can do everything, can do social networking, can do media, music... wait a minute. That "music" app on my desktop is supposed to be my music player, and organizer? What kind of junk is this? On my high-end Android?

Let's face it: the stock Android music player, if you're not on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, can, well, play music. That's about where it ends. It does the typical stuff, sort by artist, song name, create playlists, whatever. The stock music player on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is Google Play Music, and it's better than the previous stock player - and you can download it on Android 2.2 FroYo or later (see the Google Play Music review). It still has its limits, though. While some companies have added a skin to Android's music player on their device, it usually doesn't add all too much. Hey, I'm on a Samsung Galaxy Player, which is basically an Android mp3 player. And I've got basically that stock Android 2.3 Gingerbread music player, just with the Samsung skin. Fine for basic playback, but what do you do if you want something more than "shuffle"?

That's where Android's magic shines - you can use whatever app you want to play music, and, if the developer did it correctly, you won't even notice that you're not using the default app. Here are the best music players and organizers for Android.

These are the music players I reviewed:

• MixZing
• WinAmp
• Cloudskipper Music Player
• Songbird
• TTPod
• Google Play Music
• musiXmatch
• RealPlayer

My first choice, at the moment, is MixZing. It has a good amount of features, but is still easy to use, as long as you don't mind intrusive advertising.

While the app's design doesn't have much in terms of eye candy, but it is made simple. And, if you don't understand something, there's always help nearby. The songs, artists, albums and genres sections are as expected. Also, when you choose an artist or a genre, you can choose what to see - albums, songs, or artists. Playlist management is decent, and there's an auto-playlist: recently added. There is also a file browser built in to find your media. The one big thing that's missing is search functionality.

You can also do quite a few things with your songs. You can set a song as your phone's ringtone, but most importantly, you can manage your library from this app - you can edit a song's tags and delete songs. You can also get all sorts of information - a biography or the artist and song lyrics, as well as wikipedia, youtube, and google results.

The equalizer in this app is one of the best I've seen - you can set how smooth it should be, and also apply the equalizer settings to certain songs and certain albums.

Recommendations are something that only this app has. When you listen to a song, it finds songs from your library that you might also like together with that song. If you have it configured properly, it will even pay attention to if you skip to the next track or listen to the whole song, and customize your recommendations based on that. In my experience, this works best for pop music, but MixZing says it is continually updating their library. Anyone coming from iOS and who liked the Genius playlists should check this out.

As with most music players on Android, it replaces you lock screen while music is playing - but the lock screen player isn't the best, especially on bigger phones. The main advantage is that it will turn on the screen when the music changes.

There are also many settings, from customizing the app, to recommendations and music controls.

The app doesn't run in the background when it's not needed, but when music is playing, it takes up about 20MB RAM, which is OK.

Advertising is a big problem in this app - some of the advertising is extremely intrusive.

Overall, it's a very good app that, aside from a couple of omissions, has a good set of features, and that is easy to use.

Winamp is the next program. This app doesn't offer as much as MixZing, but it still has a good amount of functionality, and is also very easy to use.

The artists, songs, albums, and genres sections work as expected. Scrolling gets a little laggy on older devices in the albums section whe there's a lot of album art. Playlist management isn't the best, it's easier to add songs to the "queue", basically the now playing list, and save that as a playlist. There are also a couple of auto-playlists: recently added, recently played, and top played.

You can also sync Winamp on Android with the desktop version of WinAmp.

SHOUTcast is a feature unique to WinAmp - it's an online radio, with over 47 000 stations available (a believeable number if you check it out. You also have access to Spinner mp3 downloads and the "Full CD Listening Party" music streaming service.

The equalizer and lyrics are not available in the free version. There's artist and album information, but it isn't well done - MixZing does a way better job.

The lock screen player's design is better than MixZing's, but it only sits on top of your phone's lock screen. In other words, you have to go through two lock screens, even if you don't have a passcode set.

One big features is that this works with Android voice commands - for example, in voice commands, you can say "Listen to 'Have a nice day'", and if you have everything configured properly, it will go into WinAmp and play it.

When you play music in the background, it needs 30MB of RAM, but it doesn't run in the background when it's not needed. Just make sure you use the "exit" option in the menu when you don't want it running in the background anymore.

This app also doesn't use any advertising, so for those of you with small screens, WinAmp is ideal.

Overall, WinAmp also has a good set of features. Even if you have another music player you still prefer, it's still worth downloading WinAmp for the SHOUTcast feature and the voice commands feature.

After that we have Cloudskipper. It also has a good set of features, and has a beautifully designed interface. The developer has said that it's been left behind and deteriorating, but it's still pretty good.

The artists, albums, songs and genres sections work as expected. The main exception is that when you choose a genre, you get a list of songs, instead of a choice between songs, albums or artists. However, everything is designed very nicely and elegantly. There is also a podcast player, but not a downloader.

There is an equalizer, which does seem to be having a couple of problems. But, when it's working, it sounds amazing. There's also a reverb effect, a virtualizer, and a bass booster. The only problem is that it makes the music lag on older devices - making it useless on those devices.

The lock screen player, as you could expect from this app, is very nicely designed, and can even be set as your permanent lock screen, although there are a couple of problems with that.

The app doesn't run in the background when it's not needed, and takes up a decent 12MB RAM when playing music in the background.

The app doesn't use any adds either - ideal for people with small screens.

Overal, this app doesn't have any features that make it stand out. However, if you don't need advanced functionality, but like something that is very pleasing to the eye, this is for you. The equalizer is also very good, as long as your device can support it without lagging.

Next up is Songbird. This is an app that is very integrated into social media - and that's its main strength.

It has several functions in relation to an artist's feed - you can see news from the artists in your library, and post concert pictures and fan art to an artist's feed. There's also a "trending artists" section and "recommended artists" sections. The only problem is that too many of these features don't work at all, and there are some features that just really make you scratch your head. For example, you can see an artist's "top fans". Please don't ask me what that is.

The artists, songs, albums, and genres sections work as expected. One handy feature is the play button on every item, which will play it, but leave you where you are. Probably the biggest disadvantage in these sections is that when you play something, it will always return to playing it with shuffle off, even if you had shuffle on before. On older devices scrolling can get a little laggy when there's a lot of album art. There's also a podcast player (but no downloader), and a video player. The video player doesn't have any extra codecs, though.

There is no equalizer in the free version... and they're extremely keen on selling that. There's an easier option than giving in to that, though - MixZing and Cloudskipper both have really good equalizers.

There's also lockscreen player, but there's nothing revolutionary here.

There aren't many settings either, except that they try to sell you the equalizer again.

For those of you on tablets, this app has a couple of nice optimizations for tablets. It's not a complete tablet design, but it's a lot better than what many other apps offer on tablets.

Songbird only takes up 6-7MB of memory when playing music in the background, except it runs its media playback service every time the device boots, running when it's not needed.

Overall, it's a decent media player. The music browsing is done very well, on the other hand, its main strength, artist information and the other stuff, doesn't work well and has enough problems.

TTPod Music Player is next. Probably the first thing you'll notice about this app is its non-native look. And the fact that it uses Japanese. Or Chinese. But more on that later.

This app is skinnable, so you can download different skins to give the app just the look you like. Some of them are very well designed, but there are already a couple of small language problems here.

TTPod has a well-documented language problem. There's either Japanese or Chinese all over the app. Recommendations and some other online things are all in Japanese, and are useless if you don't speak it.

The albums, artists, songs and genres sections work mostly as expected. There is no album art anywhere - and the scrolling is odd - sometimes laggy, sometimes smooth. Playlists are displayed as sections here. Multi-select is available for adding songs to a playlist. There's also a recently added playlist, and a "My favourites" playlist.

You can set a song as a ringtone, or as a notification tone - something unique to TTPod. You can also add a song to the My favourites playlist. You can also edit tags and delete songs.

The app always gets the album art from the internet, which is often incorrect, even if have your own album art. There are also synchronized lyrics, but they are always the explicit version of the lyrics.

The equalizer is very good, with 10 bands, with reverb, bass boost, virtualizer and channel balance. The lock screen player depends on your theme, but a lot of them are beautifully designed.

There aren't that many settings (there used to be many more). The shake feature is probably the biggest thing here - shake to go to the next track.

The memory footprint is between 14 and 17MB, which is decent. There aren't any problems with it running in the background when it's not needed. On the other hand, there is way too much lag within the app, especially on the music controls.

Overall, TTPod has so much potential, I could easily put it in the #1 spot... if it just didn't have all the language and lagging problems...

After that, we have Google Play Music. This is actually a service for buying music, and is part of Google's Play system. This app is basically meant to tie in with the Google Play Music service, and it doubles as a music player. Starting with Android 4.1, it's bundled with Android.

As can be expected from Google, it has the "Android 4 look", and is actually very nice, fluid, and full of eye candy. And when I say fluid, I mean even on older devices.

The albums, artists, songs, and genres sections work as expected. The playlist functionality doesn't have anything new, either, with a "last added" playlist, and the "thumbs up" playlist.

You can "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" a song. Thumbs up adds it to the "thumbs up" playlist, and I'm not sure what "thumbs down" does.

The app only takes up a nice and small 6-7MB RAM when playing music in the background, and doesn't run when not needed.

One big disappointment: No settings. That's right, you can't change any settings in this app.

Coming from Google, I was expecting more from Google, but aside from that, it's a decent app.

Next up is musiXmatch. This app's main feature is the lyrics.

The albums, tracks, and artists sections work mostly as expected - the genres section is missing here. You also can't play all of an artist's songs by choosing that artist. The interface is slightly confusing at first, but it's not too hard to get used to. Playlists are straightforward, but there are no auto-playlists.

The now playing screen is also slightly confusing, but again, you can get used to it quickly. The lyrics are displayed here. Nothing is saved on your device, though - if you want to see lyrics, you have to be online. The lyrics aren't synchronized, which will bother some, but I prefer it is like this. Lyrics are pretty accurate. You can also find more information here - like the artist's discography and other songs from that artist - let's just say there's loads of information here.

There's also MusicID, which listen to a song and identify it.

The settings are decent. One feature you can find here is that it can notify you if you're playing music in another app and it finds the lyrics. Note that this means a service is constantly running in the background.

Even if you have that setting turned off, it still sometimes runs in the background when it's not supposed to. When playing music in the background, it uses an acceptable 20MB RAM.

If you like finding lyrics, this app is ideal - and is worth a download, even if you want to use another music player instead. The artist information is also interesting. On the other hand, the other functionality is missing a bit.

RealPlayer has been a well-known, if not controversial media player on desktops. Now, it has been developed for Android.

The songs, artists, and albums sections work as expected, except for the lag, and the lack of the genres section. Playlist management isn't the best, either.

RealPlayer is probably the only app that has a 1-5 star rating system... except that you can't do much with that rating.

The now playing screen isn't that different, other than that it looks like the iOS now playing screen, but doesn't work the same way. If you're from iOS, this might confuse you at first.

There is a lock screen player, but you can't turn it off, if you don't like it.

There is also a videos section, which is nothing new, and photos section, which is downright horrible.

All in all, Realplayer has too many problems, and doesn't make up in terms of functionality, either.

MyMusicOn is an old app - it used to be a lyrics program, but there was a legal issue, and so now, there are no lyrics in this app. In terms of music playing, it doesn't do much - it's basically just a list of songs.

Astro Player Free is just a trial of the full app - after the trial period expires, you can't use it any more.

More apps to be reviewed:

• Meridian
• Cubed
• TuneWiki
• VLC
• DeaDBeeF
• Fusion
• DoubleTwist

You might want to check out these articles too:

• Best Free Music Player and Organizer
• Best Free Android Apps
• Best Free iPad Apps
• Best Free iPhone Apps

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor trainman261. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here.

best free music player, top free music player, Android, smart phones, mobile device, music organizer