The top 17 Android music players

The Play Store offers tons and tons of music apps. Since there are so many, it can be challenging to find the best Android apps to suit your needs. To help you sort through the choices, we compiled a roundup of the best music players around, whether you’re looking for something that can play audiophile-quality tracks or prefer to stream. Heck, there are even a few free apps in the mix for all of you penny-pinchers out there. So if you’ve been on the hunt for a quality music player to suit your needs, you’ve come to the right place.

Audiophile players

Neutron Music Player

Neutron Music Player may not look as appealing as many of the options in this list, but it’s one of the most audiophile-grade apps around. Its platform-independent in-house 32/64-bit audio engine is how you can get the most out of your DAC, with an audio engine that excels at playing hi-res audio straight to the DAC, cutting out the middleman (the OS).

Neutron Music Player is great for hi-res audio, and it comes packed with features, like support for all audio codecs, a parametric equalizer, bit-perfect playback, and every other feature you’d expect from an audiophile-grade music app. Even though the UI looks a bit dated and poorly laid out, the tech behind the app makes this release shine.

USB Audio Player PRO

This audio player courts audiophiles. It supports USB audio DACs and HiRes audio chips, with support for any resolution and sample rate. An MQA Core Decoder is built-in, and it can unfold the MQA stream from 44.1/48kHz to 88.2/96 kHz if you’re the sort that prefers to stream instead of playing local files. Local file support is also superb, with native support for 32-bit/768kHz.

This wouldn’t be a high-quality player without wide file type support. This music player supports WAV, FLAC, OGG, MP3, MQA, DSD, SACD ISO, AIFF, AAC, M4a, APE, CUE, and WV. It also supports UPnP/DLNA if you prefer to stream files from your home servers.

Onkyo HF Player

Poweramp is a powerful music player. Still, if you’re an audiophile looking for a wide array of support, even for DSD playback, Onkyo HF Player should be on your radar. You also get hi-res audio support with FLAC files and WAV, so you may want to use a DAC with this app to get the most out of it.

The UI is clean and easily navigated, with a touch-adjustable linear-phase FIR equalizer, which offers 16,384 discrete bands to really dial in your preferred sound. Best of all, the app is free to try. If you like what you see, you can unlock it in its entirety for $3, which is an excellent price for the features you get.

HiBy Music

If you’re looking to play lossless hi-fi audio, HiBy Music is a solid contender that offers a wide range of support for multiple codecs. DSD (DSF, DFF, DST), ISO, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, M4A, AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis are supported. You can also play ISO images. The app offers direct USB audio output, which is great if you use a USB DAC. There’s also a built-in 10-band EQ.

Design-wise, the app is intuitive enough to navigate easily. However, some things are left unexplained on the Play Store listing, like what the $10 IAP is for. It’s for a subscription to MQA, a high-res streaming option. Otherwise, HiBy Music is free to use, making it an excellent choice for all of you audiophiles out there.

Streaming players

Spotify: Music and Podcasts

Spotify is pretty much the defacto music streaming service across platforms, and that’s because of its playlists. Spotify builds playlists from your interests that are often remarkable. Since everyone can create playlists, they are easily shared. You can also train the AI with prebuilt lists from friends if you’re new to the service but want to hit the ground running.

Since Spotify is pretty much everywhere, you’ll rarely have an issue where you can’t access your music. The streaming may not offer audiophile quality, because of compressed streams on Spotify, but the tech is advancing fast. This means Spotify could replace some of the high-end players. Plus, you get access to tons of podcasts if you prefer to chill to some discussion when using Spotify.

YouTube Music

If you’re more into the core Google ecosystem, you probably use YouTube Music or have heard of it. It wasn’t the best replacement for Play Music, but now that the app has had time to improve things, it’s a fine choice for those looking to stream their tunes in a familiar YouTube interface.

Much like Spotify, auto-generated playlists are available, tuned to your interests, which is where music streaming apps shine. They learn as you listen to better recommend and alert you of exciting music, which is worlds better than crawling through online stores looking for what’s new.

Local players

Poweramp Music Player

Poweramp is as powerful as its name suggests. Along with playing many local music file types, it lets you import HTTP streams from sites like Digitally Imported. It offers Android Auto, Chromecast, and Google Assistant support to bridge the hole left by Play Music’s departure.

Bass heads can adjust the bass and treble from a user-friendly equalizer interface, and there’s Direct Volume Control (DVC) for extended dynamic range and deeper bass. If you want to listen to music loudly from your phone, select the Speaker (Loud) setting in the equalizer to increase the gain and get loud results.

It’s easy to find the menu item you’re looking for, whether you’re fielding playlists, streams, or all songs. If you’re putting on a party (even if it’s a party of one), you can choose from several animated visualizations that appear over the interface or take over your screen as an ambient display.

Poweramp is a robust app, with more features buried in the Settings. The app is free to try for 15 days, so you can thumb through everything it does before committing for $5.

foobar2000

On Windows, foobar2000 is a mainstay. It’s a freeware music player that holds up to the great, like Winamp. foobar2000 made the move to Android in 2016. While the Android version might not be celebrated as much as the PC app, it’s an excellent interpretation, especially if you enjoy minimal designs.

Gapless playback is supported out of the box, along with various file types, such as MP3, MP4, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, and Musepack. The app also supports UPnP media servers if you’d rather stream than store local files.

jetAudio HD Music Player

Team Jet’s jetAudio HD has been around for a while, dating back to 2012. It’s a robust app that offers tons of codec support along with a solid 20-band equalizer. You can also edit your tags within the app to clean up the info in your library.

Bass boost is built-in, 32 equalizer presets are included to get you going, and you can use visualizations to spice up your phone or tablet when jamming to the tunes. Plus, the UI is intuitive, which is more than can be said for many music apps. All around, jetAudio HD is a great option if you require a feature-packed music player.

While the listed app is the premium version that retails for $3.99, a free version is available if you’d like to take the app for a spin to see if it’s up to snuff to handle your FLAC library.

VLC for Android

Traditionalists love VLC for Android for its reliable simplicity and tons of utility. Those looking for something design-forward won’t find much here. It’s a bare-bones, no guff kind-of music-playing experience. On the plus side, you can include video in your music playback.

VLC for Android is a full audio player with support for a ton of video and audio file types, including MKV, MP4, FLAC, and OGG. Media junkies can access internet streams, DVD ISOs, and disk shares. There’s also support for multi-track audio and subtitles. One minor caveat is that the app’s gesture control is sensitive.

AIMP

If you’re keen on playlists and all that matters in your music life is the order in which you listen to songs, try out AIMP. This app’s primary focus is quick access to the lists you rely on to get you through the day. And though playlists exist on every other music player app featured here, the playlists you make in AIMP are embedded into the hamburger menu for super quick access.

Dig into the settings, and you’ll find options for theming, gesture control, and the criteria displayed in the file name during playback. And if what you love to do is listen to those playlists while driving, AIMP has Android Auto support.

Free players

Simple Music Player

There’s a reason K.I.S.S. stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” Keeping it simple reduces the chances of complications. And in the case of Simple Music Player, keeping it simple means focusing on local music playback.

Simple Music Player gives you all the features you need from a beefier music player, including playlists, an equalizer with a handful of presets, color customization, and a playback widget. There’s also a handy search button for fetching what you’re looking for, and any new audio you download is added to the queue.

Simple Music Player has no ads, and of the apps featured here, it asks for the fewest permissions. But there is no Google Cast integration, so you’ll need another method to send music to a nearby smart speaker.

Oto Music

If you’re looking for something that’s genuinely free, Oto Music should be on your radar. This full-featured music player offers gapless playback, fade in/out, synched lyrics, a sleep time, a built-in equalizer, and a choice of five widgets. The whole thing clocks in at under 5MB for the entire app. It’s small, easy to use, and supports a wide range of music codecs.

The best part is that you get all of this for free. The app contains in-app purchases, but these are optional and only exist for donating to the developer and nothing else. Plus, the app is a looker, sporting light and dark themes, with tons of animations to keep navigation looking slick. So whether you require Android Auto support, Chromecast support, or enjoy free apps, Oto Music is a top option that easily competes with the paid apps in this list.

Music Player Go

If you like the idea of using a local music player that’s keen on open source, Music Player Go proudly waves the flag. The app is powered by Kotlin, and because the developer consistently updates it, Music Player Go plays nice with Android 10 and 11’s scoped storage. You can grab Music Player Go from F-Droid, the open source Android app store, or sideload it directly from GitHub.

Music Player Go hails all the music-playing abilities you need in a local playback app, including simple queue management, a favorites list, and precise volume control separate from the device controls. There’s also edge-to-edge support, dark and light themes in various color schemes, and the ability to hide albums and folders with songs and sounds you’d preferably not include in your shuffle.

Players for themers

Pulsar Music Player

Pulsar Music Player is the sister app to Omnia Music Player, but its focus is on aesthetics. Choose Pulsar if you’re looking for a capable music player that lets you match its color scheme to the rest of your interface. The Pulsar interface is the same Material Design look as Omnia, but with a ton of dark and light color presets to choose from, provided you pay the .99 for Pulsar Pro or subscribe through Google Play Pass. You can customize each theme, selecting colors for up to six interface elements.

Pulsar has a couple of other standard music playback features, including smart playlists and lyrics display, as well as essential Google Cast and Android Auto support. Unlocking the app also gets you a five-band equalizer controller, nine presets, a bass booster, and a reverb option.

Phonograph Music Player

Those into classic Material Design rather than Material You will love Phonograph Music Player. The developer even brags in the Play Store description that all Material Design guidelines have been followed, and who can argue against a dedicated dev? This makes for an intuitive UI that’s pleasing to look at, allowing album art to shine with dynamic colors. You don’t lose any customizability with the focus on Material Design, so you can theme to your heart’s content if the dynamic colors don’t float your boat.

Phonograph Music Player is free to use, with a few extra features locked behind a pro purchase, which is $3.49 through an in-app purchase. So whether you’re looking for something free or paid, you’re covered. If you want the pro version without paying, you can compile the pro version yourself for free.

Musicolet

Musicolet puts a little more effort into interface styling, though it can seem a bit busy at times, and it’s not as customizable as other apps here. If what you like is easy-to-make queues, Musicolet sings like the sound of its name. They’re easy to create. For those with massive music libraries, there’s a batch editor for editing tags and album art. You can choose how to peruse those files with linear or hierarchical browsing.

For playback, Musicolet has it all: embedded lyrics, gapless playback, sleep timers, and shortcuts for your favorite album or playlists. There’s Android Auto support here, light and dark themes, and a backup and restore feature.

Source: Musicolet

Uncover the best player for your needs

Now that you’ve had a chance to check out our hand-picked selection of music apps on Android, hopefully, you found a player that fits the way you listen to music. To really take advantage of these players, especially if you’re an audiophile, a pair of the best wireless headphones is just what you need to allow your newfound music-playing app to shine.