PreCentral member DanPLC has hit gold with his Music Player (Remix). Remix is one of the Favorite Homebrew Apps and the most popular with over 200,000 downloads. Remix patches dozens of missing features into the Palm Pre webOS Music Player including a slider, elapsed time, font and background colors, wallpaper, bookmarks, lyrics, resume play, and on-the-fly-playlists. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Music Player (Remix) is that Dan has been working alone, part-time, for only two months.
Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes will show you how to install Remix and other Homebrew Applicaitons in a matter of minutes.
The Palm Pre has a list of great features. Unfortunately few of them are in the Music Player. In 2003, the Palm Treo 600 came bundled with Pocket Tunes 2.1. pTunes featured on the fly playlists, "skins," a "progress bar," bookmarks, and could even resume playing a long rock track where you left off. Sadly the Pre has not been able to meet Palm's own 2003 standards...
...until now!
Now Playing
The heart of any music player is the Now Playing screen. Music Player (Remix) updates the Pre's basic Music Player with a host of great features including bookmarks, lyrics, "Flylists,", and more.
Flylist - Add a track to an on-the-fly-playlist. See "Flylists" below.
Bookmark - Bookmark your place in a track. See "Bookmarks" below.
Lyrics - Tap to search LyricWiki.org's million songs. See "Lyrics" below.
Slider - Tap and hold the slider to drag forward or back.
Elapsed Time - See the elapsed and remaining time in the track.
Pause - You can also tap any title bar to pause or play.
Artist Playlist - Flick up or down on the album art to bring up your list of the artist's songs.
Flylists
Flylists are on-the-fly-playlists that you make on your Pre. From the Now Playing screen or any song list screen you can tap the Flylist button to add a song to a Flylist. You can make a Flylist anytime!
Notice the space wallpaper in this example!
Flylist button - On the Now Playing Screen or any playlist, just tap the Flylist button to add the track to a Flylist.
Play a Flylist - Tap "Flylist" from the main menu and chose your Flylist.
Bookmarks
Bookmarks save your place so that you can resume playing at same spot. Bookmarks are especially important when listening to long tracks, podcasts, books, or other long files.
Bookmark Menu - Lets you Save, View and Delete Bookmarks!
Resume Play - A special bookmark is set when you exit. On restart, tap the Resume Play button on the Main Menu to go back where you left off in the track. It even remembers the where you were in your playlist
Lyrics
Ever wonder what the words really are? Do you like to sing along? Then you will love the new Lyrics feature. Palm blocks access to the lyrics stored in your mp3 files so Remix looks up your song in the massive LyricWiki database!
Notice the dark sky background.
Lyrics - Tap Lyrics to search nearly a million songs lyrics at LyricWiki.org!
Stay Tuned!
There are just too many features in Music Player (Remix) to fit into one article and Dan just keeps on adding more. Stay tuned for the second part of this review with details on new options, playlist features, the Alphabet Selector, fonts, background colors, wallpapers, and the new landscape mode.
Craig Lincoln, aka Milominderbinder, is a moderator on the PreCentral forums and the developer of the Palm Pre Tips and Tricks. Craig's recent articles include Music Player (Remix), There's a Patch for That (Part 1), Part 2, and Part 3, and Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes.
PS If you need help, please post your request in the forums such as webOS Quick Install, Preware, or Patches
Comments
Again, please post requests for help or questions in the forums:
Questions or help with Music Player (Remix)
How to install Homebrew Apps with Preware
How to install apps with webOS Quick Install
- Craig
Definitely one of the better apps out there in its simplicity and in filling some gaps in the built-in functionality. Palm ought to throw this guy a few bucks and incorporate his improvements.
+1
I upgraded this with FileCoaster and was delightfully amazed how easy it was. IMO, this is the best! Great work, DanPLC!!
Love the music player remix, it really shines and I consider it a 'must have' application on webOS. It really shames the stock music app - no on the fly playlist support? not being able to seek through a track? These are basic features for any music player. It's pretty sad that while the Pre competes with Apple as one of it's main competitors if you don't know about homebrew (which most users will not) you're stuck with often - barely functional versions of stock applications.
Best homebrew app for the Pre.
Shame on you Palm you can take your music player back.
Best homebrew app for Pre. Good stuff!
awesome app!!! & much appreciated. Palm should absolutely be ashamed & they should be contacting the MPrmx author & offering $$$. Don't overlook the fact that only part time efforts were needed for this great app. Palm, no excuses.
man if it wasn't for this app, i would have had to quit pre by now. unbelievable app. so many thanks for all that you do man. hope it hits the app catalog official. i will pay for this.
again its a shame how terrible the built in music player was. like above poster said, if pre is iphone's competition, then it falls sooooo short in this regard.
man up palm and fix these things.
Best homebrew app for Pre. Good stuff!
In addition to this wonderful Music Remix App, if Palm would just incorporate even half of the available "patches", which have proven to be quite stable, they could make the Pre a force to be reckoned with.
Also by using existing work already done, they can apply their resources to other endeavors... such as Visual Voicemail... or Video Recording...
The homebrew community is IMHO the best there is. They have taken this relatively "open" platform and shown just how versatile it can be.
Palm should take the initiative to recognize these great feats, offer them a little money for their hard work (in lieu of the money they are saving from doing it themselves), and get these sadly missing features in to a main release so that everyone can enjoy them... not just the adventurous homebrew users.
There is such potential for this WebOS, but Palm's window is rapidly closing and (truth be told) until they fix some of these issues, they are offering an incomplete product that will not maintain the interest of the masses when other options are available.
Great work Homebrew Devs! We appreciate it and hope Palm will recognize that they can do great things by including a community dedicated to it's success!
Warning to EU Users:
"NOTE: This latest version appears to be incompatible with European Pres running webOS 1.1.3. If you're running this version of webOS, please hold off on upgrading to this version of the app until further notice."
soon to be fixed: http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/199607-music-player-remix-70....
Thanks for giving people the heads up. For those European users who did upgrade, a link has been posted in the homebrew forum thread pointing to the previous version (0.11.1).
In the next day or so, a new revision (0.12.1) will be released which will make the app compatible with both U.S. (webOS 1.2.x) and European devices (webOS 1.1.3).
Version 0.12.1 has been posted. The incompatibility with European Pres has been resolved.
An updated version (0.12.1) has been posted. The incompatibility with European Pres has been resolved.
now only if they can somehow sync up w/ double twist
If you can sync up Double Twist with the standard Music Player, then you should have no issue doing the same with Music Player Remix.
Remix is based off of the standard version, just with added(missing) features.
I absolutely love this app. This has everything the Pre was missing in the built-in music player. Thanks for all the hard work.
This may be the reason for me to try my first homebrew!
Does anyone know if there is any posibility this app will play wma files?
I would pay for this app (or donate) if it did.
The app can only play the audio codes that the device supports. So no unfortunately WMA is currently out. I would hope that one day Palm adds this ability, along with some other of the more popular formats.
Quote:
"Perhaps the most amazing thing about Music Player (Remix) is that Dan has been working alone, part-time, for only two months."
What is being overlooked here is that Remix is just a copy of Music player with some modifications. So Dan didn't write a music player application, he copied Palm's, added some features, and redistributed it. (This is a copyright issue since I doubt Palm has licensed him to do so)
If the author had to write a complete player from scratch with all these features, it would have been a much more significant undertaking.
Don't get me wrong, I think he adds some important features. I couldn't use my Pre for audiobooks without the progress slider and bookmarks. But this really is more just a big patch to music player than it is a new application.
I agree it started off that way (as merely a patch for the original music player). I first started this project not to create a new app, but to learn webOS development and to make slight improvements in the built-in app.
However since then the project has really expanded leaps and bounds. If you look in the current code, you'll see that it's much more than a set of simple patches now. There has been a lot of code added/updated/redesigned.
As far as the copyright issue, I have spoken with Palm and they've given their blessing to this project. The representative I spoke to actually uses the app on his device. Now that says something, doesn't it? :)
Wow. Nevermind the copyright issue then, if Palm gave written permission. Just another example that shows that Palm is a way different company, than, say, Apple.
By the way, thanks for the contribution with remix, I'm not trying belittle the enhancements you've added (and by patch, I didn't mean to imply the amount was small, just changes to palm's code, as opposed to a complete rewrite)
Congratulations on the popularity of your work, you've definitely made life better for a lot of pre owners.
I didn't take any offense. You made a valid point. I was just pointing out that the current iteration of Music Player (Remix) is more than a series of patches. Little by little, the app is becoming a brand new entity.
The article doesn't miss that, nor did Dan in his descriptions of the app:
"Remix patches dozens of missing features into the Palm Pre webOS Music Player"
It clearly say that the added functionality is patched in. Not written from the ground up. I still think his additions are the reason I actually can use the Pre as a music player. It was the first app to give me a reason to donate (even above tethering). and works perfectly. this is the one time I can agree with the masses as the say "Come on PALM!"
nb
Thanks Dan for making the Pre that much more useful.
destinal,
I stand by my article. In the third sentence I clearly state:
"Remix patches dozens of missing features into the Palm Pre webOS Music Player..."
I even go a step beyond by giving a link in that sentence to the "There's a patch for that" article in case anyone does not understand the term "patch."
Dan also states: "Most of the application is derived from Palm's built-in "Music Player" app."
I am not saying that the Pre' basic Music Player is amazing. It's not. As I stated, it is not even up to par with music players provided by Palm six years ago. What is amazing is that one guy working alone has added 25 key features we were desperately missing.
- Craig
very nice app, admittedly. Would love to see the volume knob on the pre be used like a rocker to advance tracks :)
Dan has done some fantastic work with this!
To add to his credit, he has helped me (and a lot of others) in the developer forums! (Dude, where do you find the time???)
Thanks for all the great work Dan!
I think helping out is always good. I know I've been helped several times by people on here and on the Palm Developer forums.
Easily the best homebrew app. I hid my pre music player. I agree, Palm should just pay Dan and replace the stock player with the remix. Nicely done.
best homebrew app imho. I have donated and would again. Excellent job!!
I waiting on this app to be official added to the app catalog, I hope you leave it FREE...GREAT APP, since this app was added I havent used the Built-in player since...GREAT JOB!
Best app by a long shot. I use the music player a lot. Long drives on buisness trips. The original player was usable, but not adequate for the 1000 songs I have on the device. The only issue I ever have is when I have multiple applications going, it tends to lag and drag my Pre to almost a halt. A fresh restart fixes it, but it can be anoying at times.
my favorite app by a huge margin! perfect upgrade to palms music player!
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