MixZing bills itself as "the must-have Android app!" I'm a sucker for aggressive marketing, so of course I went ahead and installed it. After playing around with it, I must admit it's a nice player. I don't know if it's the ultimate player for Android, but I plan on reviewing a few more similar applications in this space, and then I'll let you know what I think.
In the meantime, you're welcome to join me in a blow-by-blow tour of MixZing, including its "better than Genius" music recommendation engine. Here we go!
The player
Since MixZing is a music player, it would make sense to look at the "player" part first. Above, you can see it with no advertising. Note that the New Music button is disabled; now let's see what happens when you keep listening to your song:
The buttons reduce in height to accommodate a fairly chunky "GET FREE JAVA GAMES" ad. At least the color scheme matches, but that is some really obtrusive advertising. It does go away if you buy the application for US$6.99, but that's pretty expensive as far as apps go. Also, mixzing has had time to find recommendations so the New Music button is now enabled, and we'll soon be checking it out.
Library
There's nothing major to show in the library department. It's pretty much what you'd expect -- you can browse by song, album, artist, genre, etc.
Equalizer
One interesting feature is the full-fledged equalizer. The equalizer is obviously implemented in software, and MixZing displays a very responsible warning about increased resource consumption. I like the suggestion to keep as many sliders at 0 as possible -- it makes me feel that I understand the equalizer better.
And this is what the equalizer itself looks like. Again, it's comprehensive. There are several presets, such as Mid Boost, Treble Boost, Bass Boost ... you get the picture. But you can also play with the sliders manually, of course, and set your own preset. The More button lets you control the number of bands in the equalizer (3, 5 or 10) and set the gain range for the equalizer (3, 6, or 12db). You can also set a "smooth" mode where dragging one slider impacts others. It's definitely thorough. But you know what's weird? After doing all of this work to get the exact sound I'm looking for, I found no way to save the settings! Argh!
Here's another, closer look at the presets. Note how you can apply your equalizer settings to all songs, this album, or the current song (that's the Apply to drop-down at the top).
Recommendation engine
"Smarter than iTunes Genius," they say. OK, let's check it out then... This is what the Preview screen looks like. Again with the intrusive banner, but let's forget the banner and look at the slider. I get a 30-second snippet of the song. The recommendation itself is OK (Feist was recommended after I listened to Ingrid Michaelson -- sorry for the hipster music), but come on, 30 seconds?
Here's another look at the preview screen, this time with artist information. I'm not sure where they pull the artist info from, but the write-up seems solid and interesting [that one's from Rolling Stone -Ed]. These write-ups are also available for songs in your own music library. Also worthy of note is the fact that it pulls album art for your existing library from the Web; it's not just for recommendations.
Here's the list of recommendations. Again, the recommendation engine does feel solid, but I really dislike having to listen to 30-second previews. To me, that spoils the whole thing. I wouldn't mind if it let me listen to a song just once (because it is a preview after all), but 30 second snippets are no way to judge whether I'd like to buy a song.
Apropos of buying songs, now would be a good time to mention that MixZing's store doesn't work yet! It's currently in beta, which means you can't currently buy songs. I'm hoping that by the time it goes online, you'll be able to listen to full-length tracks before you decide to buy.
Settings
One area where MixZing excels is settings. There are tons and tons of settings -- far more than in the average Android application. Here are some of the settings you can find:
- Enable or disable the lock screen widget
- Toggle recommendations (so you can use it just as a player, with no recommendations)
- "Auto like" -- if you finish listening to a song, that means you like it
- Download album art -- always, or only on Wi-Fi, or only on Wi-Fi and when you have over 50% or 25% of battery power remaining
- Enable or disable swiping gestures
- Facebook integration and Last.fm scrobbling
- Pause when headphones are disconnected
The list goes on and on. There's a ton of settings here. It might be confusing for some users, but personally, I like the amount of control this gives me.
One last setting I wanted to show you is the Surprise Factor, which controls how "surprising" the recommendations are. You can set it to None, Low, Medium, or High. "None" is a bit cocky -- it's the default, and it's like saying "you will never be surprised by our recommendations -- you will like them, guaranteed". Still, it's fine-grained control all the way with MixZing.
Bottom line
Personally, I will not be buying MixZing. Since I have an unlimited plan, I feel that Grooveshark Premium is a better option for me. If MixZing offered full-length tracks, I would consider it a viable alternative (the recommendation engine does seem good). Still, the interface has a lot going for it, even if it's not always elegant.
Hands-on: MixZing is a music player and recommendation engine for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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