Friday, November 25, 2011

Audiogalaxy music app for Android

I have a digital collection of more than 4000 songs in my computer. Occasionally I want to listen to them, but I don't want to do that sitting at my computer all the time. I want to play from my Android phone wherever I am. Here how Audiogalaxy does it for me.

First I install Audiogalaxy on my computer, and the app on my Android phone. On my computer, the Audiogalaxy "helper" searches my hard disk drives and categorizes each and every song into Album, Artist, and Genre. It even locates the album covers for me! Now, with Audiogalaxy running as a background job* on the computer, I can launch Audiogalaxy on my mobile phone wherever I am, as long as I am connected to the internet.

On my mobile, as I select each song, it appears in a playlist. The songs are streamed to my phone and played continuously. There is a "genie" feature which will suggest and append similar songs to my selection. When my selection runs out, the genie takes over. It is like listening to a favourite radio station! I can choose the songs to suit my listening mood, and I can let the genie take over and stream similar songs for me the whole day long.

Apple would prefer you to purchase your songs from iTunes and manage your songs in the internet cloud. Google, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, and many others are also trying to tap into the consumer pockets. At about $1 per song, I would have to pay $4000 to have the same collection. I think Audiogalaxy is fantastic if you already have a huge music library.

*Note: On the computer, Audiogalaxy must be running in the background and the computer must not be in standby or hibernation for the app to work on the phone. Otherwise, a message will tell you your Audiogalaxy helper is not running.

No comments: