mufin player

Summary

As you can imagine I’m always thrilled to stumble across an innovative app that’s really worth reviewing—even if it means doing my tenth review of an image gallery or launcher app. I’m into useful apps and because there are always new arrivals that might make previous versions obsolete I like to check out what’s hot off the press.

Today’s app mufin player seems offer a whole new music player experience, so let’s that a closer look…
 

Test device: HTC Desire HD
Android version: 2.2
Root: No
Modifications (CPU changes, etc.): None

App details:
Usable as of: Android 2.1
Apps2SD: Yes
Authorizations required: Memory / network communication / calls

It took a few moments for me to catch on in how far mufin player offers an innovative new way to enjoy music.
The app displays your music on an interactive sound map. Tap on tracks (displayed as stars/dots) in order to play them.

After a while I realized that tracks can be categorized according to the following criteria:

Agressive
Sad
Happy
Calm

Sometimes these categories overlap, for instance sad and aggressive, even if that might sound a bit paradox. You can select music according to your mood, which went down and worked out very well for me, that is to say that the way my MP3 music collection was categorized made perfect sense to me.

In order to create a “spontaneous” playlist you can set similar tracks to whatever’s currently playing to come up next. It is, of course, also possible to simply play all the songs off one album. What this means is that you can decide, while a song is playing what you’re going to listen to next. Playlists are displayed as star signs on the map—awesome!

mufin player can be used as a standard music player, i.e. MP3s can be displayed according to title, album, or artist.

A further feature is the online drive for your music collection. You get 1 GB for free and can buy more. Once you’ve started the app you can play songs from the device or the online drive.

Bottom line:
Once you’ve gotten what the app is capable of – and I must admit that it took me a while to get there - mufin player does provide a whole new music listening experience. What you’re getting is an innovative idea, a well-functioning player, and 1 GB free online memory: that deserves an excellent rating!
 

In order to use mufin player on your Android you have to install Player for Windows onto your computer. Then you have to have the MP3s on your phone analyzed in order for mufin player to play them. Uploading MP3s to your online drive can only be down via the Windows Player—I couldn’t find any other options in the Browser Player.

Once you’ve installed the Windows Player you can hook your smart phone up to your computer and have it sift through your MP3s. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but you can check the mufin player homepage for more information.

The fact that you have to install the player on your computer and have your MP3s analyzed is not great as it takes up time. I found this to be annoying, especially considering that I wasn’t able to do any of it without instructions as the sync-program isn’t self explanatory.

There isn’t much information in regards to the analysis. I found the following description on the homepage:

Based on a sound analysis, mufin player automatically creates a playlist with tracks that go well with your starting song. Create and save your playlists for your next party, your next jog or simply to chill.

Once your songs have been analyzed and installed on your online hard drive you can select whether mufin player should play tracks from your phone or from your online memory.

As already mentioned, tracks are displayed on a sort of astronomical map. The four categories are assigned to the four corners of the sky:

Agressive (top)
Sad (left)
Happy (right)
Calm (bottom)

Scroll through your own sound universe via pinch and zoom. When you click on a dot/star the track title and name of the artist are displayed. Click again and the song begins to play.

There’s a button for the similar tracks feature located at the bottom right of the display, and on the left there’s a button that plays all the tracks by the same artist. The cover button on the top left lets you play all the songs off an album. The songs are then displayed as star signs and played in that order.

In order to simply make use of the player click on the button at the bottom on the very left. Four tabs will appear allowing you to select your MP3s according to title, album, artist, and search.

A lot of the settings are only applicable to users with pro accounts (you can tell because they’re marked with a star). Standard account users have the following settings options:

Change user account
Empty memory
Update cover
Start settings (choose if music should be accessed from the device itself or from the mufin drive)

Bottom line:
Once you’ve figured out how everything functions mufin player for Android is easy enough to use. We’re deducting points because the mufin player doesn’t function unless you install the player for Windows on your computer.

 

mufin player for Android ran very smoothly on the HTC Desire HD, but there were some issues when we tested it on the Nexus One. The app might not run as well on weaker devices.

mufin player can be downloaded for free in the App Center and the Google Market.