Good Phone Media Players?

[bingus_baby]

First and foremost, this is for iOS in particular, but feel free to share for Android as well!

But lately, I'm growing tired of my chronically online habits! And I'm slowly wanting to grow a bit more offline, and a good media player would help with that since I already have a stockpile of .mp3 files and a growing stack of CDs! Any suggestions? I'm thinking of the built-in Apple Music, but syncing my phone always is a hassle, though it might be the best option. I tried a couple free media platers back in the day, but they're always clunky, ridden with ads, and overall a pain. I know, "If you were an Android user..." But I have an iPhone and would like to keep it until the thing up and dies one day. I've also thought about a dedicated MP3 player, but I'm hesitant since it would be nice to have it all in one place on my phone. But maybe one day when I have the money!!

Any thoughts? Anyone in the same boat?

[Inkerlink]

I've never tried it on iOS, but VLC media player has always been a good go-to for me when it comes to media playback:
https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id650377962

It says it has in-app purchases but doesn't mention ads so hopefully it's ad-free.

[bingus_baby]

I've never tried it on iOS, but VLC media player has always been a good go-to for me when it comes to media playback:
https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id650377962

It says it has in-app purchases but doesn't mention ads so hopefully it's ad-free.

Checked the app-store page and it says the in-app purchases are just to tip the developers, so that's cool! I'll definitely give it a go and see how things work out!

[Melooon]

Agreed! I use VLC for videos on my iPad and phone! For music I just use the default Music app and sync music over with iTunes, but that takes a certain level of dedication to using the iTunes way of doing things.

For android a great option is Poweramp, its a really good music player and you can get cool skins for it!

Power Amp with the Marshall skin I used to use!

[kandeez]

I can't vouch for this method but friends of mine have done this and it worked quite well. Try out the spotify local files. You upload directly from your computer and with a bit of settings they'll be available on your phone. The one thing I am iffy about is if you need a subscription or not to make it work because everyone who's done it already used spotify quite regularly.
Another way I can think of making it work is look into using the files feature on your phone. Just email yourself a file and then open it up on your phone and save to files. There might be a way to then transfer it to your apple music library but I'm not 100% about that. The only downside to using files is you'll probably need to open and play each song individually which is a total hassle if you're trying to listen seamlessly.

[sig]

I used Musicolet on my previous (Android) phone, it worked pretty well for me. I used VLC before that, I remember switch to the other after a bit but I don't remember why 

[bingus_baby]

Downloaded the VLC app this morning and I gotta say!!!!! It's really great!!!! Exactly what I needed, and easy to add files from my computer.

And for the local files, I was using that before, but got tired of it. I wanted the album art and to cue up songs, which VLC delivers on! And I also want to get away from Spotify a little bit, since it feels like it's slowly pivoting towards a "social media" angle, with some new features. (Plus, taking away the heart button was the nail in the coffin.) I'll still use it of course, since I feasibly can't download/buy every song and it's a great way to discover new stuff, but I'm tired of the looming presence of huge companies wanting to harvest me for data. It's not just music players, that was just the focus of this post, across the board I'm trying to move to better programs and habits!

[inbtwn]

i don't use iOS anymore, but back when I did I used Decoupled to sync music to my phone. the nice thing about it is that unlike all other iOS music apps you don't have to use iTunes to sync with it. instead you can spin up a web server from your phone and drag and drop your files into that instead. it's not perfect but it's pretty dang good! 

[YoungsterJ4y]

Surprised nobody's mentioned Blackplayer for Android :O it's very simple, no frills, lots of sorting and stats options if you're into that too. I love it, I use the free version and have no problems.

[sunnyp4rk]

When I was in high school, when my iPod broke, I used Pulsar for a short time to play music on my phone. I really liked it at the time, but I haven't used it in years. Was at least better than the default music player on Android.