UberMusic

 

UberMusic is a beautiful and highly customizable music player for Android. You can change the entire user interface by applying skins, which you can find on the market by searching for “UberMusic Skin”.
Price: $3.49
Tested on: Sony Xperia Play, Samsung Galaxy Tablet 7″
Content Rating: Everyone

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Zune-like music player on the Android OS!
• Extremely appealing minimalistic user interface!
• Fully customizable user interface and widgets!
• Displays album art and artist pictures as backgrounds in “Now Playing”
• Six different skinnable widgets!
• Many removable tabs for customizing your music how you play it!
• Utilizes Last.fm Scrobbling!
• Custom Status bar for use while using UberMusic!
• Application can disable lock screen while music is playing!

Cons

• No native podcast downloading feature.
• No equalizer.
• No lockscreen controls.
• No integration with streaming music services.

Features:

UberMusic is an incredible new music player from the developer that brought us LauncherPro, Federico Carnales! Taking an ode o the style of the Zune music player and features a completely skinnable interface, six different skinnable widgets, a custom status bar, scrobbling from Last.fm, has various removable tabs, and automatically fetches album and artist artwork.
The stock interface for UberMusic is incredible. The top portion of the application contains the basic tabs for the application: Songs, Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists, and Folders. In order to switch from tab to tab all you have to do is swipe your finger from side to side. As you change tabs the application will show your music library sorted according to the parameters of your current tab.  The interface style is minimalistic but stylish. All of the tab headings, song titles, and text throughout the main application are displayed in a large minimalistic, but stylish font.
When you navigate to the Albums tab it displays album art for each in your collection along with the album title for your viewing on the same dark gradient backdrop with the white minimalistic font throughout. When you select an Album to view the contents of the application pulls the appropriate album artwork from the Internet and displays it as the background for the song list of that album. From here you could play a song, play through the album, or shuffle the tracks.
UberMusic uses “true shuffling.” What this means is that the application keeps track of what music has already been played and prevents itself from replaying it until all of the other tracks are played. This allows you to get a better experience when selecting the shuffle feature and shows that the developer is concerned about quality features in his applications.
The “Now Playing” portion is just as refined as the rest. It follows the same minimalistic style as the rest of the application with large white icons for music controls and album information. The controls are set on a background which is composed of album art and artist images and the cover of the current album is displayed above the music controls. The effect is very “Zune-Like” and creates an excellent well refined atmosphere that makes you want to use this application for all of your music consumption. Another feature in this portion of the application worth mentioning is that the application can be displayed at any time in landscape mode. This makes UberMusic extremely useful to use while driving and also prevents you from having to switch phone orientation constantly when multi-tasking.
The rest of the tabs in the application are similar in form to that of the Albums tab. Each tab shows your library according to the standards of your current selection. If you are on the folders tab UberMusic will sort your music collection based on folders, if you are on the songs tab it will sort your library by songs, etc. One interesting thing to note is that when you sort your library by genre of music it does not default to sorting songs in groupings based by albums or artist. Instead it sorts them alphabetically by genre which provides a more thoroughly mixed music listening experience.
Featuring a “Now Playing” icon in the notification panel, the app displays the current playing track, artist name, and the album art for the current album. This provides easy access to music that is playing in the background and is very similar to the notification drop down for HTC’s music player with the exception of notification panel music controls.
Another interesting feature is the ability to use a different status bar while playing music. This custom status bar matches the same minimalistic yet stylish interface of UberMusic and may appeal to some of the more hardcore themers out there. I personally felt lost without the stock Gingerbread notification panel, so I did not continue to use this feature after the initial testing.
Under the settings menu you can enable/disable many other alternate options such as: headset controls, Scrobbling, disabling the lock screen when playing, skins, add or remove tabs, choose default tab, accent colors, and album art in “Now Playing.”  These features all allow further customization of your experience and are extremely easy to interact with, though many may require a restart of the application in order to enable.
Finally, it comes with six different widgets plus all of its widgets are completely skinnable! This is a huge win because it allows the users to personalize their experience. There are currently skins with Metro Themes, Zune Themes, and a set of transparent widgets from Federico Carnales himself! Though there are not a large amount of skins currently available on the Android Market. However, if LauncherPro is indication of how many skins are forthcoming.

UberMusic Now Playing 1

UberMusic Now Playing 2

UberMusic Now Playing 3

UberMusic Status Bar Now Playing

UberMusic Album List

UberMusic Playlist by Genre

UberMusic Song List

UberMusic Song List 2

UberMusic Album Track List 1

UberMusic Album Track List 2

UberMusic Giant Widget

UberMusic Assorted Widgets

UberMusic Settings 1

UberMusic Settings 2

Usefulness:

UberMusic is extremely useful for playing your offline music collection. This is undoubtedly the most stylish and well designed music player that I have used on Android. The minimalistic style and easy to navigate interface makes for an unparalleled user experience and more than justifies the application’s somewhat steep price tag.  That being said there is a few things that I think should be added to really allow this to dominate its competitors.
First, it should incorporate native lock screen music controls. Having been an iPhone user for a brief stint in the past it is certainly a feature I miss on most Android devices and is included in many competing applications like the HTC Music application and DoubleTwist. It does offer to turn off the lock screen while the application is running, and there are alternative applications that could create a similar experience such as WidgetLocker Lockscreen; but native lock screen controls would greatly enhance the appeal of this application to the masses.
Second, it should incorporate podcast downloading within the application. I have yet to come across a good music player that also doubled as a good podcast downloading solution. Instead I find myself using one application for podcasting and another for listening to music and then I am annoyed that my podcasts are showing in my music library, because both of the applications encourage me to keep them separate. I know myself and others would love to see an application that really understands both podcasting and music and attempts to consolidate them in to one. This addition may be beyond the practical scope of this application, and I understand if it is impossible for it to be incorporated, but if there is a way to make this application an all-in-one solution for media consumption I think a higher price tag would be justified and I think just as many users if not more would pay to use it.
Lastly, I would love to see UberMusic with Google Music integration. With so many different music services out there currently it is really difficult to use only one media player. On my Xperia Play I use Google Music, Spotify, UberMusic, Pocket Casts, and Pandora. It would be nice to be able to consolidate some of these applications in to one well designed machine. It is definitely an incredibly designed application, now I just need the ability to consolidate some of my other services with it.

Ease of Use:

The app is extremely easy to use. The minimalistic design of the application provides an extremely intuitive user interface and allows new users to easily navigate. This is a music application that would make many iPhone users jealous for its ease of use and complete customization, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a well designed and intuitive music player.

Frequently Used:

Since it was released I have been using it non-stop. I am in love with the slick user interface, skins, and customizable widgets. I even feel like the music is louder and clearer than it was before *though I am pretty sure that is just a psychological effect of the natural beauty of this application*.  I have even gone to the great lengths of purchasing WidgetLocker Lockscreen for use with this application just to give back the lock screen music controls that I miss so dearly from the stock HTC Music Player and the iPhone.

Interface:

The interface for UberMusic is the most visually appealing and intuitive user interface for a music player that I have seen to date on the Android OS. I love everything about it and it provides for a more enjoyable media consumption experience. The only other thing I think that should be included in the interface is an equalizer. This should be included because it is something which some of its competitors have and something many music enthusiasts want. With the inclusion of the features I have discussed this application would be perfectly complete and worth much more than the current $3.49 price point.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

(4.7 out of 5)
Should you Download UberMusic? Yes! This application is worth every penny of the measly $3.49 price point. I have never seen a music application so well designed and with such an appealing and minimalistic style on the Android OS before. Federico Carnales has done it again with UberMusic and I am just as impressed using it as I was the first time I used LauncherPro. It features an incredible user interface, is fully skinnable, comes with a huge selection of widgets, has many custom settings, by one of the best developers around! The only negatives with the application are its lack of lock screen controls and its lack of support for a music streaming service or podcast downloads within UberMusic.