Legit alternatives to PowerAmp?

Long story short, Android 8.1 breaks notification functionality within PowerAmp and the developer hasn’t made an update in years. Their forums borderline mirror the Valve Half-Life 3 forums. If there is an update coming, it's more than a year late and it's probably going to be another alpha/beta.

I’m looking for a fairly lightweight alternative that allows me to universally sort my library and doesn’t feel too cheap or clumsy. I’ve tried VLC, but its sorting functionality is basic at best. Ditto with Google’s own music app. I want to sort albums by date so they play the whole catalog in order.
Some others with solid functionality like Neutron, Foobar, Phonograph just look and feel cheap. About ½ of the others I’ve downloaded are just clones of one another with a bunch of ads.

Anyone have any solid recommendations that offer the ability to remove ads (I don’t mind paying) and offer good sorting options? I already have a solid video player (MX), so I really only care about audio functionality.

What's wrong with trying out the beta? I actually tried a bunch of other players that all seem to work fine but always end up with PowerAmp despite its little flaws.

ChronoReverse said:

What's wrong with trying out the beta? I actually tried a bunch of other players that all seem to work fine but always end up with PowerAmp despite its little flaws.

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The beta version that is currently available has the same broken 8.1 notification issues. The developer claims that his next release will fix the issue, but he's already more than a year late with it. For all I know it might not be out until 2019.

Black Player EX.

Domingo said:

The beta version that is currently available has the same broken 8.1 notification issues. The developer claims that his next release will fix the issue, but he's already more than a year late with it. For all I know it might not be out until 2019.

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Oh, didn't realize that. I'm curious, what is the issue?

Have you looked at Aimp Android? If you have ever used on pc you'll be familar with it. Albeit its not as rich with options of the pc version but it does what it does pretty good.

ChronoReverse said:

Oh, didn't realize that. I'm curious, what is the issue?

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The notification shade is totally white and none of the functions (like play/pause/skip/etc.) work. The program itself still works, although I use the notification shade constantly throughout the day.

Black Player is interesting. It seems like it offers mostly what I want, although the program doesn't seem to remember anything I want it to remember. For instance, when want to typically see a list of artists. When I tap one of those, I want to see a list of their albums in order...with the album art showing. Black Player CAN do both things, but it doesn't remember either of them by default. Whenever I open it, it goes back to showing a song list. Whenever I swap over to artists, it shows their song list rather than albums. Maybe the paid version can, but the free one doesn't.

To be frank, I'm actually looking for something that clones the music player from the iPhone. That's how it handles things. PowerAmp can be made to work identically, which is mainly why I like it.

After downloading and trying like 50 apps, jetAudio is probably the only one that does what I'd like. I have to admit that I hate the icon for it, though. As dumb as that sounds, it does matter to me. I want icons to look like what they do.

Anyone have experience with the "pro" version of that app? It's only a couple bucks, but I don't want to throw my money away either.

Domingo said:

The notification shade is totally white and none of the functions (like play/pause/skip/etc.) work. The program itself still works, although I use the notification shade constantly throughout the day.

Black Player is interesting. It seems like it offers mostly what I want, although the program doesn't seem to remember anything I want it to remember. For instance, when want to typically see a list of artists. When I tap one of those, I want to see a list of their albums in order...with the album art showing. Black Player CAN do both things, but it doesn't remember either of them by default. Whenever I open it, it goes back to showing a song list. Whenever I swap over to artists, it shows their song list rather than albums. Maybe the paid version can, but the free one doesn't.

To be frank, I'm actually looking for something that clones the music player from the iPhone. That's how it handles things. PowerAmp can be made to work identically, which is mainly why I like it.

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For artist you can choose which tab it shows by default. I've set mine so that when I tap artist name it shows the albums tab by default. I've removed the bio tab since I have no need for it. I have the paid version though so I'm not sure if it's possible to customise in the free version.

So, when I tap artist, this pops up:


Here's the setting for it:

Mortplayer?