SongOwl Music Player Reviews

by Dude0u812

Surprised. Finally set this up and tapping on a song doesn’t play it. Maybe I’m missing something, but if I need to lookup an online instruction manual to figure out how to start a song in a music player, it’s already dead in the water.

Also, I have a bunch of random garbage I purchased (mostly free from Starbucks) years ago and I don’t want to see anything but the songs I sync from computer. However, even after turning off the “cloud” toggle, these cloud purchases still show up.

by Nathen1989

As a long time CS music user, I was interested in Song Owl as the developed claimed it was, in a way, CS next gen. After a week of use, I couldn’t tell what the advantages of SongOwlMusicPlayer were. I listen to playlists, not albums and most of those are Smart to begin with, so sorting and browsing isn’t relevant to me, which is what SongOwlMusicPlayer seems to be designed for, sorting and browsing - actually listening being an afterthought. At least CS music allows you to change star ratings from the Now Playing view, a feature not present in Song Owl.
FYI, if you use Miximum, by the same developer, you will lose the ability to specify CS as your default player after changing it to Song Owl, even if you delete Song Owl.
Overall, I don’t know what Song Owl was / is supposed to do that his other apps weren’t doing. I’m disappointed that I paid money for it, as the developer’s other apps are functional and well written.

by Blackmail1807

I listen to my music almost exclusively through Smart Playlists, and unfortunately SongOwl is useless for them due to a bug: as soon as I enable any sorting (e.g. by album) in such a playlist, it shows almost the entire library instead of just what’s in the original playlist. Just by looking at the number of songs in the playlist, it somehow depends on how I sort. Miximum doesn’t have this issue.

As an example, I have a playlist of the last 200 songs I’ve added to my library. When I group it by album, it suddenly contains 6304 songs. By artist, 6036. By album artist, 6021. By composer, 1817. By genre, 4236. Clearly, dark magic is at work.

by Amighty

I’ve used CS music player for years and this is basically a polished bug-free version of the same thing. A lot of great features and it looks great - Personally I love having access to all the metadata and play count info for my music. Unfortunately there is still no way to see or manage your up next/now playing list. It seems to be a limitation of iOS, but it makes it a little bit incomplete nonetheless.

by NSteele

This is a great Music app replacement. Simple, clean, intuitive, flexible.

I’ve found only two things I wish it could do:

1) Deal with multi-artist compilation albums properly. I.e, for such albums, create a virtual artist labeled ‘Various’ that then fits into the album sort at the top of an alpha sort. JRiver and others take this approach and it works well.

2) Be able to Group Multidisc albums using the Disc# field, so the discs are clearly delineated when viewing an album grouping

3. Provide an in app ‘Contact Support’ link so issues/questions/feature requests don’t have to be left in a public review like this.

Other than that, awesome!!

by Carlamatic

as a longtime Cs/Cesium user, i pulled the trigger on SongOwl without hesitation. and i LIKE it! still no chance for viewing or changing the queue, but that’s on Apple and their ridiculous rules.

this is a simple, intuitive app and i feel like it’s a good path forward. that said, there are a couple features i might like to see. it would be nice if, in addition to the long press, one could get info on a track with a right swipe to expose the i button. it would also be nice if there was a way to advance to the next track when on the get info screen, rather than having to close the screen then long press on the next track.

it would also be nice if i could set SongOwl to reopen at the last view. as it is, if it has to relaunch SongOwlMusicPlayer it defaults to the Library view. i have my music organised in playlists, so it would be nice if i could set it to open in the playlist view. if that makes sense?

anyway, thanks for another fantastic music player! i’m looking forward to seeing where SongOwl and Cs go from here!

by Platform001

Please please please include in the next update the ability to pick up in the middle of a song even if you don’t use SongOwlMusicPlayer for several hours at a time. It is super frustrating to have to go back and relaunch and hunt to where I was listening to before, especially during longer songs in live albums. This also goes for the Cs Music app.

by JeffBDVS

If you spend about a half an hour getting a feel for what SongOwlMusicPlayer can do, you’ll be impressed. I guarantee it.

App delivers a very clever way to sort through your music library and your playlists to get you to the music you want to hear quickly. And the paths you take to get there are saved and can be custom-named.

I have a path that takes me from a genre to a list of artists to a list of their songs grouped by album.

Want to see when the last time was that you played a track by Bon Jovi? Group songs by artist, sort them alphabetically, find Bon Jovi, and sort their songs by last played date. Most recent will be at the top. Reverse the sort order and you’ll probably find a Bon Jovi track you forgot was in your library at the top of the list.

Using Sound Owl together with this dev’s outstanding Miximum app, a poor old Windows user like me may finally be able to ditch iTunes for PC to manage my Apple Music library.

Five stars, absolutely.

by Bobbycall

I have tried a number of music apps and this is the best. Much less crashes. I only wish I could delete songs directly from a playlist.

by Dvtone

No-frills music player. Smooth UX. The ease of use of the "paths" feature takes the cake. Lightweight, unencumbered by bloated features found in many music players. The only thing missing is a dark mode.

by Dhfjbgfbejjd

I like being able to group and sort songs. I use the Paths feature for viewing music differently, such as seeing all my favorite albums in one Path and seeing loved songs in another.

by Cmpnb73

Finally!!! After years of waiting, SongOwl reintroduces a way to sort my library and playlists by random albums. As with another reviewer, I’ve been using Cs Music for some time and really like it. Random album has me sold as my new primary music app. Thanks, Mike!

by Herodotus2

songowl is natural evolution of Cs Music Player. both of which are massive improvements over apple’s horrendous music app. apple needs to take some UI design lessons from Mike!

i’ve been a beta tester for Cs for years and for songowl and there is nothing better out there!

by Notafakehuffine

Loved C’s and am really loving SongOwlMusicPlayer as well. Far better than Music.

Curious about the ability to reverse sort order. Year/Alphabetical as ascending vs descending. Not a deal breaker, still love and will use SongOwlMusicPlayer .....just curious if it’s in there and I don’t know how to do it.

by Rancor85

The ability to sort within my playlists by Artist makes it so I can essentially make many smaller music libraries. This is so helpful I struggle to put it in words. Thank you for SongOwlMusicPlayer!

by Chaboard

Cs Music player has long been my most used and cherished app on my phone and now the author has released a new app, Song Owl.

This has the sleekest, most elegant and functional interface of any music player I’ve seen on the platform- I have a new most cherished app!

by N1NJAZ1LLA

Apple broke Apple Music with iOS 14. SongOwlMusicPlayer fixes that! On iOS 13 I was able to shuffle songs from specific artists (including songs they were featured in). We are unable to do that on iOS 14. SongOwlMusicPlayer just saved Apple Music for me! Thank you so much! I would love a toggle for the Artwork-Themed player. I would love it to be just black like on iOS 13. Other than that I love SongOwlMusicPlayer! Great job!

by Thecadenbaker

did exactly what i needed it to do. i was recently listening to my chill mix provided by apple music, and i didn't realize that the “Love” feature doesn’t actually add the songs to a smart playlist unless that song is already in your library. my chill mix updated soon after, and i thought i lost the songs forever… SongOwlMusicPlayer showed me every song and i e be more pleased! amazing work!

by Steve 76849

I really like the way it looks and acts after it’s set up to my preferences. Since my library is somewhat disorganized, due to the way iTunes has separated my albums, this is helping me get them separated properly because of the way it shows album artwork and lets me see which albums some of the disorganized is supposed to be. Great job and I looking forward to the future with this. Also have Cs and love it but probably won’t open much anymore since this is available 😁

by Pholly

Being able to customize the sorting of my music to this level is great and something I’ve wanted Apple to do for a long time, I just wish I would have bought this sooner. I wasn’t sure I’d need this after using CS Music Player for so long but now this is my go to app for music, unless I need lyrics.