Albums - album focused player 4+

Love the Focus of Albums

This app is like I’m back in the record store thumbing through the albums, looking at the covers, reading liner notes and then, back at home, I’m listening to the *entire* record . . . not a playlist, not some algorithm telling me what I want to hear next or off an album in my Library. I haven’t had as much fun with an app in ages — and I’ve already subscribed to support the developer. The UI is a tad rough and a bit clunky in parts — the reason for 4 and not 5 stars. Some actions are just not readily evident — long taps some places, not others, that sort of thing. Maybe when I get used to them my rating becomes 5 stars. What I really love: the collection of album covers, so I can visually browse albums and choose what I want to play ... just like I did at the record store or at home. There’s some smart intelligence built in, too, like how many times I’ve listened to an album, tags so I can organize beyond A-Z and Z-A, old favorites, new discoveries (added last 10 days, 30 days ...), anniversaries (of an album’s release). Data is provided by Discogs and MusicBrainz. All that’s missing are links to Wikipedia pages (for the ultimate in today’s “liner notes”). I’ve tried many replacement apps for Apple’s music player and none have stuck. This one just might. Big high five to developer Adam.

Useful for anyone, best for aficionados

Like Apple Music itself, this app has layers that take a while, and a desire, to discover and master. It isn’t difficult but you’ll need to be intentional. If that frustrates you, this probably isn’t your app.
In an effortless algorithmic Pandora world, Apple Music offers a treasure of approaches to learn, retain, enjoy and share your world of music. The ALBUMS app brings bird’s eye organization the Apple Music app lacks.
As many of us drifted into the single track $.99 focus of Apple Music we lost two things. First we lost the importance of albums as a whole creation. Second, like the great scene in Almost Famous with the albums under the bed, we’ve lost the ability to even remember what we have in our vast digital collections. ALBUMS restores both.
ALBUMS can be a bit quirky but I’ve rated it 5 stars in gratitude for the great work of the developer with the confidence he will continue to improve the taming of our digital music mess.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for the thoughtful review! I’m so glad you’ve taken the time to really dig into the app.

Feel free to reach out to adam@albumstheapp.com if you ever want to report any of those quirks ;)

There only needs to be one fix so far still

When you’re listening to an album when you tap on it to listen to it the player gets stuck on the screen and when you swipe the album up to get rid of it when it goes down, it just comes right back up again it would be nice if you could tap on the album by something after he went into the album, so then you can get the player to go in the tap on the album to get it to come back again or some other way of doing it because it is very buggy currently when I go into an album, the player stays there there’s no way to get rid of it and it stays there and even if I swipe it down sometimes it will go down there but not always sometimes it’ll come right back up but there’s a lot of times that’s been happening it’s been happening 90% of the time needs a fix

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the review! I haven’t heard any other reports of the behavior you’re describing, but I’d love to get more details so I can look into a fix. Do you think you could send a screen recording of the issue to adam@albumstheapp.com?