SongOwl Music Player 4+

My instant favorite music app

I started testing this app in beta several weeks ago, and it very quickly became my all-time favorite music player. Thanks to its customizable navigation tools, I can finally do a bunch of things I've always wanted: group a playlist by album, see all songs by an artist in one list, sort just my classical music by composer, and lots more. On top of that, the user interface is really solid and comfortable, and it's gorgeous to look at (the artwork color scheme matching in Now Playing is lovely and subtle).

Before SongOwl, I'd been happily using Cs Music, a fine app from the same developer, and it was a great improvement over the built in music app. But SongOwl pushes the envelope a lot further, and I could never go back. Take a little time to get used to the new navigation possibilities and you might just love it too.

Really clever app

If you spend about a half an hour getting a feel for what this app can do, you’ll be impressed. I guarantee it.

App delivers a very clever way to sort through your music library and your playlists to get you to the music you want to hear quickly. And the paths you take to get there are saved and can be custom-named.

I have a path that takes me from a genre to a list of artists to a list of their songs grouped by album.

Want to see when the last time was that you played a track by Bon Jovi? Group songs by artist, sort them alphabetically, find Bon Jovi, and sort their songs by last played date. Most recent will be at the top. Reverse the sort order and you’ll probably find a Bon Jovi track you forgot was in your library at the top of the list.

Using Sound Owl together with this dev’s outstanding Miximum app, a poor old Windows user like me may finally be able to ditch iTunes for PC to manage my Apple Music library.

Five stars, absolutely.

Not as amazing as it was hyped up to be.

As a long time CS music user, I was interested in Song Owl as the developed claimed it was, in a way, CS next gen. After a week of use, I couldn’t tell what the advantages of the app were. I listen to playlists, not albums and most of those are Smart to begin with, so sorting and browsing isn’t relevant to me, which is what this app seems to be designed for, sorting and browsing - actually listening being an afterthought. At least CS music allows you to change star ratings from the Now Playing view, a feature not present in Song Owl.
FYI, if you use Miximum, by the same developer, you will lose the ability to specify CS as your default player after changing it to Song Owl, even if you delete Song Owl.
Overall, I don’t know what Song Owl was / is supposed to do that his other apps weren’t doing. I’m disappointed that I paid money for it, as the developer’s other apps are functional and well written.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear it’s not a great match, but that’s partially why SongOwl is a separate app and didn’t become the new Cs direction.

FYI in Miximum you can use “csmusic://“ in the player url scheme option to continue launching Cs 👍