Music Player that makes full use of ID tags?

[approachingbasic]

Hey all, I've been using my Motorola Droid since Xmas and have tried several music players available in the Android Market. While they all have some good features, I'm puzzled why they don't tend to use ID tags more.

On my PC, I use Media Monkey to accurately tag all of my files with good information about the music file, including album art and lyrics. Yet, Droid music applications all want to download new art instead of the art that's already embedded in file. If they offer lyrics, they seek them out online somewhere rather simply reading the lyrics that I've already tagged to the file. The programs rarely allow me to view data I have in my tagged files, and if the player read tag information, it's typically only partial.

To me the ID tag has pretty much everything you need already, but the players usually just ignore those tags, and tried to download all this stuff all over again, wasting time and storage space. On PCs, there's plenty of music players that will do all that I've outlined. Hell, Windows Media Player is more advanced than the Droid music players I've used.

I would love to hear an explanation for this shortcoming or alternative players I haven't heard of.

 

[Flomaster]

try Btunes
bTunes Music Player beta v0.855 Application for Android | Multimedia
use the barcode scanner on your droid

-=Jason=-

 

[approachingbasic]

I've been using bTunes. It has some nice features,

But you didn't read my post. bTunes is actually one of the worst of the players in just ignoring my pre-loaded album art. Art won't display unless I enable the "Download Art" feature. The point is I don't want to download art. I shouldn't have to. It's already fricking there if your damn player would just read my ID3 tag.

So, again, why don't the players make more use of the ID tags.

 

[approachingbasic]

Answering my own question somewhat, I've stumbled across Astro Player Beta. It has some problems it does display tagged art and lyrics. It's limited in how it organizes music (playlists only), and its user interface is cumbersome. It does have a voice search like bTunes, which is nice. I wish I could just grab features from all of these different players to get to what I want.

 

[lbenes]

Hey all, I've been using my Motorola Droid since Xmas and have tried several music players available in the Android Market. While they all have some good features, I'm puzzled why they don't tend to use ID tags more.

I would love to hear an explanation for this shortcoming or alternative players I haven't heard of.

The problem is Android does not natively read the ID3v2 SYLT or USLT and store them in its media database. This is why most players do such a poor job of taking advantage of the information in your ID3 tags. This poor support has been around since android 1.5 and it's time for that to change! So, I put in a new feature request that would give Android support for reading USLT in the ID3 tag. This will allow the native and 3rd party music players to display lyrics, like the iOS and Windows Mobile players can.
If you want this feature in Android, please star the request below, and post your comments.

Issue 32547 - android - Add ID3v2 Lyrics Support to Media Database - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting

 

[CopyrightX]

@ lbenes thanks for adding issue 32547. I starred the issue but as of today, only users with commit privileges are allowed to comment on the issue:

Restricted
Only users with Commit permission may comment.

The issue is still open, with the last comment in May 2013, so I wonder if anyone has worked around this problem yet. I too would like to find a media player that presents embedded lyrics to the user.