It hadn’t been long that I felt the need to have a music player app for my iPhone and iPad. For a lot of reasons, Apple’s built-in Music app just didn’t sit with me. Although it supports everything that demands proper music playback, it lacks a lot of useful features. If you think the same, this curated list of the best music player apps for iPhone and iPad is for you.
1. VOX – MP3 & FLAC Music Player
VOX ranks number one for iPhone and Mac, and for all the right reasons! It supports all standard formats, including FLAC, APE, WAV, ALAC, MP3, WMA, OGG, etc. The all-in-one audio player for iPhone and iPad also gives you access to your iTunes music library, SoundCloud, and Spotify. Besides this, you can also listen to online radio with over 30,000 stations at the tap of your finger.
Some of the desirable features include support for gapless playback, CarPlay, and Sonos. It also lets you manage music and easy transfer through the gesture-based interface and forced touch support.
You can subscribe to the app’s premium version for additional features like unlimited cloud storage, AirPlay streaming, offline music streaming, and more.
USP: Supports Apple Watch
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $4.99)
2. Flacbox – FLAC Player Equalizer
The music player comes bestowed with a professional audio equalizer and bass booster and supports almost every audio file of any format. You can sync your music library with connected accounts, and also connect an external SD card reader or flash drive. However, it would help if you kept in mind that it provides seamless support for SD card readers with SanDisk iXpand, PowerDrive technology only.
The Flacbox app supports Google Chromecast, AirPlay, CarPlay, SONOS via AirPlay2. Some add-on features include a sleep timer, shuffle and repeat mode, album covers, advanced search, background mode, etc. What I loved about this app is its excellent EQ! It makes any halfway decent earphones sound much better.
USP: Supports all cloud accounts.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $9.99)
3. Cs: Music Player
The paid music player for iPhone and iPad supports all hi-res audio formats. It offers a friendly interface that allows you to find your favorite song quickly. The player features friendly controls and is adorned with beautiful design aesthetics. It allows you to group and sort playlist tracks, view track details and rearrange tabs.
Also, it auto-syncs flawlessly with your Apple music library. While the app offers an ad-free experience, you can further personalize it by changing the theme and other display settings. However, before installing, be sure that your device has the latest iOS.
The only thing I didn’t like about this app was the delay. Whenever I skipped or paused the music, it took a few seconds to process the request. However, I loved the UI. It feels like a contemporary take on iPhone’s default Music app.
USP: View track details, metadata, & tagged lyrics
Price: $1.99 (In-app Purchases starting $0.99)
4. jetAudio – MP3 Music Player
jetAudio is no new name in the music industry. It has excellent and friendly sound effects and visualization plugins, including crystallizer, AM3D audio enhancer, Bongiovi DPS, etc. Besides supporting all major digital audio file formats, it supports FLAC, OGG, MPC, TTA, WV, APE, and OPUS formats only in folder browser mode.
While you can install the app for free and use it, you can get an ad-free experience with a few additional features with the premium version. This includes 20 bands graphic equalizer, extra themes, accent color, and album art size & background.
Since the application has so many features, at times, it feels cluttered. The UI could have been a little better. But overall, it is the best free music player app for iPhone and iPad. As part of the free version, you get fascinating features like pitch shifter, crossfading, display lyrics, fade-in/out, sleep timer, etc.
USP: Preset 16 equalizers provide an unbiased listening experience.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $2.99)
5. FLAC Player+
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is an audio format like MP3. However, the difference is, the quality of audio doesn’t lose its blend even when compressed. Acknowledging this, it supports FLAC, ALAC, and RAW audio codecs and plays your favorite song just the way you’d play any MP3 file.
The app is free to use (with ads) and comes with features like Wi-Fi transfer, iCloud, iTunes file sharing, support for 24-bit and 32-bit audio, import songs from Google Drive, etc. I found it easy to use, and the fact that it is available for free makes it a great catch!
USP: Designed to play FLAC files.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $0.99)
6.MPX – Equalizer & Bass Booster
Whether you are a music lover, music producer, podcast addict, or DJ, MPX is a befitting app for you. It acts as a complete music player and packs excellent features, from volume booster, crossfade, intuitive presets to band equalizer.
It also boasts a high-performance real-time audio visualizer that’ll help you see, breathe, and immerse yourself into the beats.
Best of all is its simple-to-use, fully customizable user interface. A galore of app themes help you match the player to your style and mood.
And even though it’s a relatively new app, it manages to pack a big, heavy punch.
USP: Completely customizable
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $4.99)
7. foobar2000
The music player for iPhone and iPad supports all major formats, including Vorbis, Opus, Musepack, etc. It offers gapless playback and supports replay gain, which means it auto-adjusts volume with song change. While the feature may bother a few, for others, it is a huge plus. You can also download music from UPnP media servers.
Besides these, the app offers you the option to customize it using distinct themes. The major upgrade was also done in Dec 2020 by adding ARM neon optimization to enhance your device’s battery life. Download it already!
USP: The no-nonsense music player app.
Price: Free
8. Music Player – Player for lossless music
The app offers a superior music experience and supports all major music formats, including mp3, m4a, wav, WMA, WV, ape, ogg, flac, aiff, aac, au, etc.
It has been carefully developed under the supervision of experts. Hence, it ensures a flawless experience for you through high-end application stability. Also, it comes with a file manager that’s compatible with popular archive formats with an intuitive interface and iTunes integration.
Few other notable features include a spectrum analyzer, user-friendly navigation, gesture control for brightness, auto-recovery, etc. However, it sometimes cuts a song short and jumps to the next one. Hopefully, this will be solved in the next update.
USP: Created under the leadership of professional musicians.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases starting $1.99)
9. Jams On Toast – Music Player
You’d surely fall in love with the simplistic approach with which the app is created. It offers you a seamless way to listen to music without any distraction. With its dedicated features and creative design elements, you can surely relish the best music listening experience.
I was particularly impressed with its ‘Read My Mind’ feature. It allows you to cue the next album by merely scrolling to it. The app also lets you arrange your favorite music and the playlist by genre or a random preference that best fits you.
Finally, I found the ‘leave a tip’ section, which doesn’t ask for money on the grounds of any other feature, instead keeps it on your will to appreciate their work.
USP: Easy to use and syncs with iTunes, iTunes Match, and iCloud Music Library
Price: Free (Leave a Tip $1.99)
10. New Monaural
As the name suggests, the app creates exceptional monaural playback functionality to enhance your listening experience with natural sound. However, if you don’t want this, you do have the option of listening to music like any other music player. The app supports English and Japanese language.
It comes with an LR concordance rate feature that tells the rate at which sounds are played in the left and right ear. This helps you control the noise level and is especially helpful to people who are short of hearing in one ear. You can also check analytics submitted by other users to validate the data further.
USP: Special playback function.
Price: Free
Wrapping up…
Tapping to our favorite song’s rhythm is the best motivation we can have while working, at the gym, or simply relaxing on the couch. I hope you liked the listed music player apps for iPhone and iPad.
Which one will you prefer for your ‘Me’ time? Or have you already experienced one of them? Share your feedback with me. I would be delighted to include it here.
Read more:
- Best music apps for Apple Watch
- Best iPhone and iPad apps to learn music
- Best music editor apps for iPhone and iPad
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