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.

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 ;)

The Almost-Perfect Music App

I still stand by what I said in my first review, that this is by far the best music app I’ve used. I love the random album feature, and it just feels like the app gets consistently more reliable with each update.

If I could recommend three things for future updates though:
(1): an easy way to just play one single, randomly-chosen album; like a button that just says “play one album”. Or more than one of you choose. I just know that at work I usually only have time for one album and I get indecisive, haha.
(2): “weighted” random album selection: as cool as it is to have albums reshuffled when you pull down, I think it would be extra neat to have this random selection weighted more towards albums that have limited or no play counts, giving you an easy way to explore more of your library.
(3): a unified settings tab instead of separate settings depending on what page you’re on. If I recall, the dev commented on my last review saying it was going to happen at some point, and I believe them. :)

I don’t want these recommendations to take away from how good this app is though; even if none of these things were implemented, I would still give it five stars. Great job! Thank you!

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