Albums: Music Library Player 4+

Love the Focus of Albums

This app is like I’m back in the record store thumbing through the albums, looking at the covers, reading liner notes and then, back at home, I’m listening to the *entire* record . . . not a playlist, not some algorithm telling me what I want to hear next or off an album in my Library. I haven’t had as much fun with an app in ages — and I’ve already subscribed to support the developer. The UI is a tad rough and a bit clunky in parts — the reason for 4 and not 5 stars. Some actions are just not readily evident — long taps some places, not others, that sort of thing. Maybe when I get used to them my rating becomes 5 stars. What I really love: the collection of album covers, so I can visually browse albums and choose what I want to play ... just like I did at the record store or at home. There’s some smart intelligence built in, too, like how many times I’ve listened to an album, tags so I can organize beyond A-Z and Z-A, old favorites, new discoveries (added last 10 days, 30 days ...), anniversaries (of an album’s release). Data is provided by Discogs and MusicBrainz. All that’s missing are links to Wikipedia pages (for the ultimate in today’s “liner notes”). I’ve tried many replacement apps for Apple’s music player and none have stuck. This one just might. Big high five to developer Adam.

The Almost-Perfect Music App

I love this app, from the well-designed UI to the way you can personalize everything to the way you want. $20~ a year is a very fair price to pay for Premium as well. It’s so nice to be able to have an app that keeps the album experience firmly in mind, yet feature-rich at the same time.

That being said, I have a few little gripes/suggestions for improvement. First, parsing out the settings to each relative section of the app is extremely confusing; it would be much simpler, in my opinion, to take all the settings for the app and place them under one settings section. Second—and maybe this is me just figuring out how to use the app (there are so many cool nifty features!) but I’d like to be able to press the shuffle button and be able to play a single randomly selected album instead of a queue.

Regardless of these little things, I cannot recommend the app enough. It’s so nice to keep my music on my phone and tablet in a way that promotes listening and exploration.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for the review! I really appreciate you taking the time to leave it. I have a note on my to-do list called “The Great Settings Consolidation, so your first piece of feedback is on my radar :). As for shuffling and playing just one song, the best way to accomplish that would be to do the Shuffle Albums action then enable the Sleep Timer to end playback after the current album.

—Adam

Useful for anyone, best for aficionados

Like Apple Music itself, this app has layers that take a while, and a desire, to discover and master. It isn’t difficult but you’ll need to be intentional. If that frustrates you, this probably isn’t your app.
In an effortless algorithmic Pandora world, Apple Music offers a treasure of approaches to learn, retain, enjoy and share your world of music. The ALBUMS app brings bird’s eye organization the Apple Music app lacks.
As many of us drifted into the single track $.99 focus of Apple Music we lost two things. First we lost the importance of albums as a whole creation. Second, like the great scene in Almost Famous with the albums under the bed, we’ve lost the ability to even remember what we have in our vast digital collections. ALBUMS restores both.
ALBUMS can be a bit quirky but I’ve rated it 5 stars in gratitude for the great work of the developer with the confidence he will continue to improve the taming of our digital music mess.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for the thoughtful review! I’m so glad you’ve taken the time to really dig into the app.

Feel free to reach out to adam@albumstheapp.com if you ever want to report any of those quirks ;)