Best mobile phone music players - listening to tracks on the go

The way we listen to music has changed so quickly it’s hard to keep up with the latest services and how they differ.

Actually buying albums and tracks remains popular, but it’s more about shopping for digital files than a physical CD. More recently, new streaming options are getting in on the act – and for the next generations of teenagers this will be the way they discover new music.

In the UK, there are several ways of putting music on your mobile phone or tablet. And lately these have also included social elements – ways to share music tastes and music discovery with friends via Twitter or Facebook.

Tom Waits CDs. Do we still buy physical music?

iTunes - Apple’s iTunes is the most well known way to listen to music on your mobile phone. You make a collection in iTunes and choose which of those to appear on your iPhone (or iPad). The most recent OS update (5.0) allows users to do this without having to physically connect their iDevice to a desktop or laptop.

Apple has also just released iTunes Match. This costs £21.99 per year. It does two things: 1) It holds all your music in iCloud so you can listen to a track anywhere by streaming it where there is a wifi connection, which means that you no longer have to download all your tracks and use up all the memory.

2) Apple will allow you to upload music to your iCloud from any source – CD, Amazon MP3 songs, even tracks you may have acquired illegally in your misspent youth, ahem, and it will ‘match’ it with a higher quality version, no questions asked.

The downside to iTunes is that it will only play on Apple-made devices. Or, so people think.

But you can get tracks from your iTunes collection onto your Android phone, too. Download an app from the Market called Double Twist. You sync the app with the computer which holds all your iTunes music, and it will copy and download them to your Android mobile.

The iTunes poorly executed social function, called Ping, hasn’t taken off. It’s restricted to your iTunes social sphere – there is no integration with Facebook and syncing it to Twitter is messy – so it’s not really very social at all. Most users switch if off pretty quickly.

Spotify - The popular streaming service, you can listen to your songs over wifi on your iPhone/Android/Blackberry – and download up to 3,333 of them for offline listening on your mobile – for £9.99 a month. Unlike the free version of Spotify, paying this also means you don’t have to listen to ads, and you are not restricted to set number of plays per track.

Syncing is really fast. Downloading 3,333 tracks can take an age – all night almost – but once it’s done it’s easy to chop and change this list, meaning you can add/remove albums or individual tracks you wish to save to your mobile for offline listening.

(If you have both iTunes and Spotify on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you may have trouble listening to Spotify songs when your device is connected to a car stereo. I’ve tried to many times, and after playing for approx three seconds, the Spotify track fades out, and a random iTunes song plays instead. Then again, that could just be me...)

Oh, and if you find some music in Spotify that you really, really love, you can buy it from iTunes via your Spotify account.

Spotify also has the best social sharing. Lots of users will post what they’re listening to on their Facebook wall – which can be annoying. The best social feature, however, is the ability to create a playlist and share it. A Spotify user looking for, say, a great 80s music collection, can ask for users’ playlists via Twitter and, once found, can simply copy it. Great.

Last FM - A slightly different offering, Last FM’s best trick is to play you music which is similar to artists you already know and love. Like Tom Waits? Last FM will play you songs from other artists is classes as similar to Waits. This is excellent for music discovery.

Soundcloud – an emerging service which combines AudioBoo-style short recordings from users, of anything from their baby’s first words to waves crashing on a beach. It has been picked up by musicians and DJs as a way of releasing new music. Soundcloud has great social functions, and any track you upload is easily embeddable into your own website.

Android phones come with a range of music players. Here’s a link to the music category in the Android Market. None are as straightforward as iTunes. Android phones work best with either Google Music or Amazon Cloud Player - both allow users to store music in the cloud and stream on mobile phones. Neither, however, are yet available in the UK.

Google Music – not yet in UK, but launched in US last autumn. Google Music has an iTunes-like feature whereby users can upload their entire collection onto Google’s servers, and sync their favourites to their Android phones and MP3 players.

Amazon Cloud Player store – not yet in UK. Amazon last year created a ‘locker’ for users to store all their purchases of content in the cloud. This includes any music bought from Amazon.

It’s very popular in the US – many users buy their music from Amazon and then add it to their iTunes collection.

Other music streaming services popular in the US and other countries, but not available in the UK are Pandora and Rdio. This is due to the tricky business of negotiating prices and revenue share with music labels country-by-country. But, they will get here eventually, probably.

The UK does have internet radio. TuneIn Radio has stations and genres from around the world. Perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon, for trawling obscure radio stations and hearing some bizarre music. TuneIn Radio comes as an app for both iPhone and Android phones.

See also: Logitech Z515 - nifty bluetooth speakers so you can play wirelessly from your mobile phone

Blackberry mobile phones - what Research in Motion (RIM) did, does and should do

Blackberry owner Research in Motion (RIM) faces an almighty, though not altogether unsurprising, challenge in 2012.

Not two years ago the Blackberry was the king of the smartphone. It was still the executive weapon of choice and the iPhone (still on 3GS, pre-4) was steadily catching up, but was more of an expensive plaything for creative ‘types’, not for the corporate world or for mums.

Android phones were still called G1’s, or something...

How times have changed. Today’s early morning news that RIM chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie had stepped down comes at a time when Blackberry’s market share is plummeting. It has fallen so far behind Apple’s iPhone and the array of Android phones, it is even perceived to be trailing Windows Phone 7 and Nokia.

Blackberry Curve mobile phone handset. Photo by Honou on Flickr

The Blackberry used to be great because:

• Business loved it. It had the best IT security, best Windows integration, and it never went down.
• Loads of kids’ dads would hand down their Blackberry phone when they got an upgrade at work. It meant a Blackberry handset - with free messaging - was the first smartphone for many teenagers in the UK.
• The Blackberry had the best email by far. Better than Android, way better than iPhones. You could argue that it still does have the best email service, certainly if you have to use Microsoft Outlook for work.

The Blackberry started becoming rubbish because:

• Business started hating it. Office workers and executives alike found a more fun mobile phone called iPhone which they could sync with their work email and use daily.
• It doesn’t have any decent apps. Apple’s App Store and Android’s Market have zillions, most of them wonderful.
• It went down. For several days last autumn. And that Really Annoyed People.

Now I don’t know whether RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins is a magician, but Blackberry can expect to continue being rubbish, unless:

• It brings out a new and fantastic operating system ASAP which has multi touch, brilliant apps, superb voice recognition, and sits alongside a family of equally stunning products such as tablets and computers which all talk to each other, all of which can access a vast ecosystem of content such as music, books, games and films.
• It never goes down again. Ever.
• And RIM does some incredibly generous deals with corporations who are making bigger eyes at Apple and Windows Phones for future partnerships.

The change in Blackberry’s fortunes was nicely captured this month by the BBC’s second series of Sherlock Holmes. The first series, which aired in August 2010, saw the eccentric but brilliant sleuth using a Blackberry as he navigated his way through the mean underbelly of London. In the second series, his mobile phone of choice is, of course, an iPhone 4. (Seeing as the series was filmed in early 2011 it wouldn’t be a 4S. And besides, there are no scenes co-starring Siri.)

In all seriousness, this is bad for the consumer. Blackberry should be providing Apple and Google with better competition. Without strong players in the mobile market, technology and innovation will slow down.

See also: What's Apple got that Microsoft Windows hasn't?

Tweetbot, a simple and better Twitter client for iPhone

Since Twitter bought the iPhone app Tweetie a long time ago and renamed it Twitter that has for many been the default option for mobile - for iPhone, iPad and Android phones.

It was simple, effective. A timeline, mentions, and direct message streams. Easy to add multiple accounts, easy to connect with other apps.

Then a few weeks ago Twitter made some big changes to its service, when it introduced richer profile pages and introduced two new fancy words to its homescreen for both website and official mobile apps - Connect and Discover.

Connect, which replaces the Mentions stream, is a round-up of your mentions plus what other users you follow, and who follow you, are doing. Instead of seeing a list of tweets which mention you, you see a mish-mash of actions from other users.

Discover is a collection of trending topics and ‘stories’ - real time news which Twitter is so useful for. Discover also contains suggestions of people to follow.

All of which is fine, and works well on the website. But on your mobile? Not so much. The simple format of all tweets, mentions and DMs was popular and the app was fast and effective in its previous functionality.

So the changes signaled a mass search party for a Twitter mobile alternative. There’s plenty out there, but a winner has emerged - Tweetbot.

Tweetbot app for iPhoneTwitter app for iPhone

Not only does Tweetbot have the simplest UI with fast, easy to use channels we all want - all tweets, mentions, DMs, it also saves a channel for Favourites and Search - but the latter two can be changed if you wish, to lists, profiles, retweets.

In short, Tweetbot is Twitter from ye olde times, fast and simple, but customizable if you do want the extras (but they’re not forced on you).

See also: Path mobile app gets more sharing features in version 2

Instapaper - saving and syncing bookmarks and favourites on your mobile phone

Once upon a time there was the web. It was made of sites which contained pages. People had to use a 'browser' to access these pages. It was disorgansied but fun. 

These days of course the same information comes to us via our mobile phones we carry in our pockets.

In the not-too-distant future we all wear them on our wrists. 

For now, while we still stuck inside the “in between” bit, a sort of purgatory between browser and apps, we shuffle between both. It can get a bit messy trying to organise and make sense of all the available information out there. You see, the web isn't yet clever enough to find you yet. You still have to find *it*,

And when you do, then what? Your mobile handset is still a bit awkward to consume information (remember, we’re in 2012 still, and constrained by atoms as well as bits.) Your tablet device, such as the iPad, is however perfect for it. Except for the fact that it won’t fit inside your pocket, unless you’re ultra geeky and wear a ScottyVest jacket.

My favourite tool when I spot something on a mobile which I want to remember and take a deep soak in later when I’m propped up on sofa/in bed/at desk is Instapaper. This is a nifty app which bookmarkets your favourite websites/pages/RSS feeds into a plain, simple reader which is perfect for a tablet.

Instapaper - saving stuff to read later

Stumbled across a great blog post (hint, hint) but about to meet your loved one for lunch? With Instapaper you can save it for when you’ve got time and fewer distractions to read it.

It already works in sync with apps such as Reeder and Twitter, and bookmarking sites such as Pinboard. It is also a private tool (unless you choose to make everything you save to Instapaper public) which is quite a noble, quaint notion in this age of social media sharing.

Once you’ve signed up, here are some easy instructions to installing the Instapaper bookmark on your mobile. On the iPhone it works better than Apple’s very own Reading List because once it has been saved to Instapaper, you don’t need wifi or 3G connection to see it.

As well as Pinboard, Instapaper accounts can be synced with other bookmarking / cloud computing tools such as Evernote. This gives you greater access over Android as well as iOS, and any internet browser.

It also works with Flipboard, Pulse, Seesmic, StumbleUpon, Tweetbot, Hitpad... and many, many more.

See also: Cloud computing - best text editors to sync your work across mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktops

What's Apple got that Microsoft hasn't?

So what is it with this company called Apple?

Why has this maker of computers and mobile phones become so, well so huge? 

Many much more qualified people have attempted to answer this - and so I won’t try and do the question an injustice.

I understand that the best marketing is about discovery. And the best brands are about status. But the current clamour for Apple? I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I can spot the difference.

Microsoft Windows storeApple store

I was at a mall in Atlanta, Georgia, recently (killing time before catching a plane home) and I came across two shops within 50 yards of one another. One, a standard Apple store which was packed, pretty much heaving with staff and customers all playing with white consumer electronic devices and spending a lot of money.

The second, a Microsoft store. No, I’d never seen one of these before either. And yet, there it was, shiny as a button, wielding an equally impressive line-up of gadgetry, with some truly impressive looking Windows Phone 7s on display. But, with less than a dozen customers inside. And roughly the same number of staff.

One mall, two shops, two companies selling pretty much the same gear. The contrast could not have been more different - one was almost deserted, the other packed to the point of being uncomfortable.

Why is this? I had a good look inside the Microsoft store and it was pretty amazing. There were giant screens with free-to-play Kinect games; row upon row of Windows 7 mobile phones to try out; a smorgasboard of laptops and desktop PCs all switched on and whirring happily away.

In the Apple store you could barely breathe; there was no machine that didn’t already have one, two or more people already on it; the staff were rushed off their feet but still there were customers waiting quite a long time to find someone to hand over their money to. It was, in short, a bad shopping experience.

See also: If you could only have one mobile handset, which would it be? (Poll)