Posts tagged music apps

Beta Test This: Rdio, Social Music Service

Okay beta testers, it’s time to check out another Android application.  This time it’s for a social music service called Rdio (pronounced r-dee-o).  If you haven’t heard of the service, that’s alright.  Neither did we until this week.  Looking at their website, we learn that Rdio plans to help change the way we discover and share music as well as the way in which we access it.  Rdio offers unlimited, on-demand access to five million songs  from players like EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.  For a monthly subscription fee, users can listen to as many songs as they want, anytime and anywhere.


Rdio also provides awesome tools in personalized recommendations for new music based on your music tastes and listening behavior.  It’s also possible to create on-demand radio stations based around favorite artists, replicate your iTunes library, and collaborate on a shared playlist. All kinds of cool stuff from some of the minds behind imeem, Skype, and 20th Century Fox.

Currently, Rdio is an invitation-only paid preview program.  There are two flavors available to choose from: Web and mobile access (including syncing music) for $9.99/month or web-only access for $4.99/month. Thankfully, Rdio was gracious enough to provide TechCrunch with 2,000 beta invites.  If you’re running Android 1.6 or higher, you are advised to click the link to sign up!

NOTE: Beta Test This: Rdio, Social Music Service originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

AndroidGuys is looking for summer interns! Check out bit.ly/AGinterns

You May Also Enjoy…



NARM Releases Android Application

Scan to download NARM


The National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) has released their first Android application today to provide constant news updates as they pertain to the entertainment industry. Launched ahead of the 2010 Convention and Music Business Crash Course, the free application lets users link to daily industry news and research on the go.

The app provides deeper access into the latest conventions with schedules, bios, photos videos, and more. Look for NARM in the Android Market effective immediately. You can also scan the barcode to the right with your Android handset!

Might We Suggest…

  • Share With the Class! Free Apps Worth Paying For
    Welcome back to AndroidGuys’ new series, Share With the Class!  To kick things off, we asked you what your favorite productivity apps were.  Some of you mentioned titles like Gmote, SwiFTP Server, Ast…



Share With the Class! Free Apps Worth Paying For

Welcome back to AndroidGuys’ new series, Share With the Class!  To kick things off, we asked you what your favorite productivity apps were.  Some of you mentioned titles like Gmote, SwiFTP Server, Astrid, and ListBuddy.  It was interesting to hear how people use many different apps in many different days.  This time around we wanted to know what free apps you would be willing to pay for.

Here’s what some of you had to say:

Scan to download Dialer One

I have more than 500 contacts.  Scrolling through them is much easier with Dialer One. T9 functionality makes it simple while driving.  The author updates the app several times a week, based on user requests.  You can start the app by long press on search button.  It supports many languages in the phone book; all my contacts are in Cyrillic.  Developed by the same author who made aContacts, also a popular dialer for Android. – Arseniy Finberg


Wireless tether (for root users) is dead simple to use. A lot easier to use than any of the Blackberry or Nokia solutions. It should have come pre-installed on the phone in the first place.  Its something that I use every single day on my phone. It eliminates the need for me to have a separate SIM card in my netbook and thus a second plan/account. This app focuses on doing one thing and does it very well.  – Brandon Roberts

I’d definitely be willing to throw a few dollars to the developer of Linda File Manager.  It’s a free ad-supported file manager that is fast, solid, and not system intensive.  Fills a huge void, without the large footprint of other file managers.  It’s got ads, which can always be annoying, but it’s performance more than makes up for that.  I’d gladly pay for an ad-free version. – Justin Jelinek

I like listening to podcasts. The thing is I hate to sit and wait (mainly forget) to update them before I leave in the morning. Now with Google Listen it doesn’t matter if I forget because all my favorite podcasts are accessible on my Android phone. All I have to do is hit “my listen items” and the cure to bad radio is anywhere I go. – Adam Marquart

The free app I would pay for is last.fm. It’s a nice front end to the online radio of the same name. You get a nice widget to play your recommended radio from. You also get a full app to change stations, add new artists and listen to music. The app also adds any artists played on your device to your library. – James Pearce

I think the best thing that smart phones are capable of doing is catching radio streams.  The best I found for Android is A Online Radio.  Even though the station selections are a bit limited compared to the big guys (AOL, Yahoo) I have lucked out and found about six of my local stations that I listen to.  Being able to tune in radio stations where you get bad FM reception has prevented many a boring workday.

Scan to download A Online Radio

This is the reason why I think I would easily pay about the $5.99 range for a multi-channel stream app or 99¢ for individual stations.  Along with some of your local stations A Online Radio also supports Shoutcast and Icecast streams, so if you are handy enough you can create you own station to stream your mp3 collection.  – Brian H. Harris

I have two apps that are free that I would definitely pay for. The first is Twicca. I’ve tried just about every Twitter client there is for Android and I just keep coming back to this one. The interface is simple, the app is fast, and I love that a huge list of options for each tweet are just a tap away. My second app is Astro File Manager. I don’t know what I would do without a file manager for any device with a file system. That’s definitely worth paying for. - Jason Crabtree

Your Turn!

So now it’s time to hear what free apps you are using that you might consider paying for.  Is it one of the above?  Why do you like it so much?  Come on, share with the class!

Might We Suggest…

  • FixIt!: Android Users: Misers?
    New figures published few days ago from AdMob told us few things about ourselves. They told us that we are males, aged between 25 and 34 and we prefer not to pay for apps…

    I will guess that there…



AndroidGals: Pandora is Music to More Than Just My Ears

As many of you already know, there are tons of music applications for Android.  For me though, Pandora is the stole my heart early on. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pandora, it’s a streaming music service that learns what its users preferences are.  Like a song?  Give it a thumbs up and you’ll hear it again soon.  Don’t care for that last track?  Thumbs down ensures you never have to hear it again.  In the middle, the skip button, simply lets you bypass the song this time.

I have always had a love for all genres of music.  There was a time when I would make “Angel’s Music Mix 98″ on a CD.  You know did too.  Before the birth of CD’s it was tape recorded songs on blank cassette tapes.  How awesome was it to make your own mix of artists and genres in one place?  There were downsides to doing these yourself though – it’s very time consuming and CD’s get scratched and lost.  Skip ahead a few years and along comes Pandora!

My first true moment of using Pandora was a few months back when I painted my kitchen “Bicycle Yellow”.  With my husband in bed, I was up until about 6:30 in the morning.  Pandora helped me pass the time by playing all my favorite artists and tracks.  When my mood changed from fun to tired or frustrated, I could change the “station” to a different genre or artist.  As I neared the end, I began to feel accomplished and successful so I switched back to my Colbie Caillat station to “rock out”.

Today, I use Pandora in my car with an auxiliary adapter, when I run at the gym, and even when I’m just lying in bed trying to slow my mind down.  It’s safe to say that Pandora is a short list of favorite apps on my Motorola  Cliq. The more I use it, the better my stations get.  It molds itself to my favorites and opens my ears up to new music and artists every time I run it.

I’m pretty new to Android myself so I’d like to hear what music apps you guys are using.  Are there other steaming music applications I should check out?  Leave a comment below and I will be happy to look into it!

The AndroidGals series of posts are written by, but not necessarily for, female Android users.  We’ll be bringing you reviews, perspective, and opinion from the girlie point of view.

Might We Suggest…

  • Juicy Development Bring ‘Talk Radio’ to Android
    Juicy Development LLC has released an Android version of their Talk Radio application. Using GPS and a proprietary algorithm, the app identifies where and when a user’s favorite shows are available….



Aspiro Brings Their Streaming Music Service to Android

Aspiro, a big player in Northern European mobile entertainment, has announced their desktop and mobile streaming music service is now available for Android handsets.  As part of a partnership launched in 2009, the service provides live streaming of a music catalog over 160,000 albums deep.  In addition to local companies, music labels include Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner. 

The software allows for your standard fare of searching,  creating playlists, adding favorites and discovery. Similar to other services like Spotify and Slacker Radio, tracks can also be cached for offline listening.

It’s not immediately known which countries the free application is available for however, Aspiro is based out of Sweden.  We also found that they have a presence in Norway, Finland, Denmark, the US, and other countries.  Keep an eye out for this one in your respective Android Market.

Other Great AndroidGuys Posts



Moozone.com Announces Android App

Moozone, an online music storage service, has announced the release of their Android application. Moozone for Android gives its users the ability to upload, manage and/or stream their music collection from their handset.   Unlike your traditional cloud storage/music apps, Moozone makes it possible to save playlists in a “Save Box” for offline playing.  In a similar move, Slacker Radio recently made an announcement that they’ll be offering caching as well. 
What Moozone does have over its competition is the ability to upload music directly from your Android phones to the cloud storage.  This is perfect for those of  you new to Moozone and looking for a way to backup your existing library. This works over both WiFi as well as 3G connection.  Users are given 2GB of free storage when they sign up for the service.  If you’d like more storage, you can take advantage of their “pay once, use it forever” model by purchasing space at around $1 per gigabyte.

The free application can be downloaded in the Android Market today!  For added convenience, you can scan the barcode below with your Android handset!

Other Great AndroidGuys Posts



Clear Channel’s iheartradio App Now Available

We mentioned earlier this month that Clear Channel’s iheartradio application would be available for Android in December.  True to their word, the popular music app is now in the Android Market.  With nearly 400 stations to tune into, the free title is a welcome addition to many Android users.  We asked our twitter followers back in the summer to name an app that they’d like to see make the jump to Android and iheartradio was a common response.

Features for iheartradio for Android:

  • More than 350 of America’s favorite stations
  • Artist-hosted stations from Christina Aguilera, Eagles and Weezer featuring their stories and favorite music
  • Frequently updated traffic reports available for several major markets including New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco and Houston
  • Now set a station to play automatically when you launch the App
  • Tag songs for purchase in iTunes
  • Lyrics, album art and more!

Search for iheartradio in the Android Market (under Multimedia) and download it for free.  You can also grab it by clicking this link!





Popular Posts That You Might Enjoy!





Related Posts with Thumbnails