We have released the ListenBrainz app for Android! Track your music listening habits and connect with other music lovers around the world, with this exciting new app.
The integration of BrainzPlayer, a powerful music player that can handle songs stored on a user’s device, is one of the app’s most impressive features. Listen to all of your favourite music in one place, without having to switch between different apps or services.
But the app’s functionality doesn’t stop there. ListenBrainz integrates with the Spotify Android SDK, allowing you to stream your favorite songs directly from the popular music streaming service. This provides a seamless listening experience, no matter where music is stored.
Year in Music is another exciting feature. Get a detailed breakdown of your music listening habits over the course of a year. Track what songs have been played the most, what artists have been listened to the most, and even what days and times you and your friends listen to music. Gain insight into your listening habits, and discover new music picked out just for you.
The ListenBrainz app is still new, and we are constantly working to improve it. We are eager to hear feedback from you about what features you would like to see added, what improvements could be made, and any issues you may encounter while using the app. You can send your feedback to us via our forums, IRC, Twitter, or email.
During the recent summit, we discussed the future of our mobile apps. We believe that the MusicBrainz app serves a particular user base which is highly interested in scrolling through their collections, using the barcode scanner, searching for entities and viewing this data with a native mobile experience. The tagger in the android app is not accurate and doesn’t carry forward the expectations brought in from using Picard on the Desktop. Hence, we have decided to retire the tagger from the MusicBrainz app.
Recently, we have added the BrainzPlayer to the app, Spotify support and functionalities to review and submit listens to ListenBrainz. While the features are really good, they don’t align with the MusicBrainz app and confuse the two separate user bases, that of MusicBrainz and ListenBrainz.
Given that we have limited contributors working on our mobile apps, we have decided to separate the two mobile apps with their respective features. MusicBrainz App will be stripped of these excessive features, while also removing the tagger and continue to be available on the Play store as a minimalistic app.
Our major focus will move to the ListenBrainz app which will continue to have regular updates and features made while existing on the Play store as a separate app.
We are excited and happy with this announcement. Hope you agree with our decision. Thank you!
I am Ashutosh Aswal (IRC nick yellowhatpro), pursuing my bachelor’s from Punjab Engineering College Chandigarh, India. As a Google Summer of Code’22 contributor, I worked for MetaBrainz, on the MusicBrainz Android app and added a music playback feature to the app, which we call BrainzPlayer.
During the GSoC period, I was mentored by Akshat Tiwari (akshaaatt). Through this post, I will be summarizing my journey throughout the summer with MetaBrainz.
Let’s begin!! ( •̀ ω •́ )✧
Project Description
The project’s target was to introduce BrainzPlayer, a local music playback feature, into the MusicBrainz Android app. After this feature integration, users can play locally saved music directly from the app.
We started with setting up the Music Service, Exoplayer, and the related Media APIs, which allow playback to be possible on the device, even when the app is in the background.
After this, we defined the Media Source, which accesses our local storage to search the media items and make them accessible within the app.
After accomplishing this, we worked on the notifications feature, which shows the metadata of the currently playing media item, and lets us control the playback, like seek, play, pause, etc., directly from the notification panel without opening the app.
Notification Panel
Now we worked on a service connector class that contains the functions to deal with the playback commands within the app.
After this, our app was ready to play songs. Now was the time to add some cool UI.
The UI is written in Jetpack Compose, Android’s latest toolkit for building awesome UI. Using Compose we worked on the Player Screen, which contains the playback features.
Now that we have the music playback feature, we worked on different entities: song, album, artist, and playlist.
To achieve this, we introduced a local database within the app. We introduced the various entities, including the required data and logic layer.
We wrote multiple database queries and added repositories for the entities in the data layer. Then we worked on the logic part and created functions that took in account the data layer and would show the result in the UI.
After working on the data and logic layer, we focused on creating the UI for the different entities. Each entity has its screen, from where the user can play songs. For this, we coordinated with aerozol, and I would thank him for coming up with beautiful designs and our BrainzPlayer logo. Then finally, with the designs in hand, we could execute them in compose.
By the end of the program, we were able to add some animations, and find out bugs and fix them.
Finally, the BrainzPlayer feature is merged with the master branch, so we can expect it to go into production soon. \^o^/
Preview of the upcoming feature:
BrainzPlayer
Acknowledgement:
I want to thank my mentor, akshaaatt, for his immense support and guidance. Under his mentorship, I could learn, experiment, and improve my code quality over the time.
I am also indebted to the MetaBrainz team for their kind and supportive behavior, which made the journey incredible and unforgettable, and makes me motivated to work with them even beyond.
That’s it from my side. Thank you for having me !! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o
2021 has been a great year for the MusicBrainz Android App. The app has received updates regularly throughout the year!
Now that we are very close to 10,000+ users on the Playstore, it is evident that the app caters to the needs of a number of users, which is wonderful!
We have plans to introduce new features, involving those of ListenBrainz and CritiqueBrainz in the app. We are confident that the app serves its purpose of introducing everyone to the MetaBrainz world very soundly.
The app now features both a light and dark mode for the users!
During the end of the year, we have made some remarkable technical updates to the codebase by introducing Fastlane to the app. This eases the process for the developers and allows us to make a release with the click of a button. This means now we can have a production release every month, day, or hour.
Although going strong and steady, the MusicBrainz developers would love more contributors to join in and share their knowledge with us, while we dive deep into the world of music.
I am Akshat Tiwari (akshaaatt on IRC), an undergraduate student from Delhi Technological University, India.
It has been an exhilarating experience for me, right from submitting a proposal for GSoC to becoming a part of a fantastic community.
The Google Summer of Code 2021 Edition finally comes to an end after the 3-Month long journey. I will be detailing the journey of working towards my summer of code project today. This blog is a summary of all the work done.
The MusicBrainz Mobile App developers have been working at full capacity, improving the user experience, incorporating more features and functionalities, while making sure the core purpose of the app remains as promised.
Since its inception in 2010, the MusicBrainz Official App has come a long way. The App currently is highly maintained and has been actively open for contributions. A systematic approach is being followed and updates are being made on a regular basis.
The most important revamp which has been worked on for the past few months is the Tagger feature available in the MusicBrainz Android App.
Functionalities like fetching the local album arts, searching through all your local music files at one go, retrieving the cover art from the server, and heading to the recording directly are some of the key highlights of the upcoming Tagger.
Picard has finally made an official entry to the MusicBrainz App where users can now send their releases to the original Picard desktop app with the click of a button. This has been worked on in collaboration with the Picard team and proper documentation on its usage will be shared soon.
The completely new addition of Listen and Critique showcases the functionalities of ListenBrainz and CritiqueBrainz websites natively from the app. Currently, these will be available as advanced features on the app.
A well-prepared Onboarding and About section will take you through every important detail on the app and make sure you are aware of all the functionalities in the best and optimized way possible.
Proper documentation of every feature is being prepared. The App is finally out in Production, do head to the stores and give it a try!
We are really excited to make the MusicBrainz App as user-friendly as possible for you, while we take care of all the wonder behind it!
MetaBrainz Blog 