CloudBeats: Cloud Music Player Reviews

this app has greatly expanded in both functionality and scope since its early days when it only supported OneDrive (then known as SkyDrive). The developer (Roman, IIRC) soon added the other well-known Cloud repositories to CloudBeats , along with variable speed playback and other features needed for audiobook/podcast playback, among others. All without requesting an extra cent through IAPs or new versions, as seems common with developers now. That being said, the maturity of iPhone and the saturated market make lifetime app licenses seem like a shortsighted idea that have likely contributed to the cesspool of abandonware. I’d much rather pay a patronage than have the developer discontinue an app because it ceased to be personally or economically viable.

With that out of the way, I have one enhancement suggestion and I’m not sure if it’s viable. There’s an option for local cloud but can this be used or repurposed to use an SMB login to a local router and link to a folder of attached storage or its media server?

— CloudBeats finally works again, and it is playing my music no matter where I am.

— CloudBeats is still completely broken. Still get track loading error. Still can’t play a single song from my library which had worked fine until several weeks ago when it broke. Developer says a fix will come ASAP, but none of the updates have solved the problem. I paid for CloudBeats, so I would appreciate either a fix or my money back.

— The latest update has completely broken CloudBeats . Every song produces a “track loading error - try again.” Well, if you you try again nothing happens - it won’t play any songs in my library. It’s useless for playing music from my My Cloud Home which is why I paid for it in the first place.

I couldn't be happier with CloudBeats. I have a giant library of MP3s that were such a pain to import into my music library and sync with iTunes every time I wanted to add or remove any, and CloudBeats elegantly replaces that entire process. Now you sign into a Google Drive account after installing CloudBeats , then just throw the MP3s into Drive and tell Cloud Beats which folder they're in, and BOOM! All your music is now immediately available.

Data usage can be an issue if you're not on a wireless network, but you can prepare some tracks to be available offline if you know when you're going to be out and about. Coupled with the option to only play offline tracks, this makes it much easier to avoid excessive data usage.

The reviews asking for the ability to skip around within a track to make podcasts more accessible are pretty valid though. From what I can tell, the only way to do that is to have the phone unlocked and CloudBeats open, which is probably not how you'll be listening to a podcast.

Overall, I could not recommend CloudBeats highly enough. If you want more options for listening to a personal music library that isn't stored on iTunes, you can't do much better than Cloud Beats.

I paid for this program and have my songs on my phone via Dropbox. Now your app isn’t starting at all it is forcing me into the “box” sign in and I cannot escape it and go back to the main screen... X or cancel doesn't work and I’m pi**ed.. whatever plug in the “box”is I only use dropbox so what kind of error is that please fix it I am very disappointed I will have to probably delete and lose my music. Not cool I paid..

Update: you guys are evil and mean, you guys created a bug so I would have to sign up for a “box” account that stays stuck on the “box” sign in ...
your screen will freeze if you accidentally click to setup the “BOX” cloud service, and you will have to sign up for a box account or it will claim there is an error and you cannot access any of CloudBeats !!! sneaking rotten!!! I paid money and don’t deserve that even though its free to sign up.. your obviously both in cahoots for money over my hour of frustration. Rotten rotten rotten other than that CloudBeats was 5 stars until your obviously ruining functionality now

I’ve been using this app for almost 2 years now and I totally love it. I have a ton of music I’ve converted from my vinyl and CDs over the past decade and I have it stored on Dropbox. This amazing app enables me to create custom mixes that stream my collection beautifully.

I had weird issue a while back with songs playing at half speed on an older iPad. After an email to the good folks at this app they not only had the solution for me with a quick reply, the solution they offered brought to my attention a feature which enables you to alter the speed of a song. Which is great if you’re trying to learn a guitar solo, understand some unintelligible lyrics or simply speed up an audio book.

I only wish it had a cross-fade feature so when I play a mix of songs they would seamlessly and subtly fade in and out of other. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it already exists - all I know is that this app does the one thing I need/want it to do - stream my collection from Dropbox.

Just download it already! You can thank me and this app later.

Rock on!
HMK

I bought this based on all of the positive reviews and needing a solution to play music hosted in my OneDrive folder. The interface is simple which is a positive, nothing tricky to figure out. But this is not simple in the way of giving power in an easy to navigate interface; it’s just basic. You can browse for artist, album or song. No genre, no bpm, nothing else. It has a radio function that basically just lets you “turn it on”; no ability to “change station” or select a style by choosing a starting song. I’m okay with totally random and 90% of time, that’s how listen ; “ shuffle all”. But I’d like some ability to tailor. But there is a problem with CloudBeats randomly shutting down after a couple of songs. Aside from the random crash, I would be delighted to pay $.99 for the access it gives; but for $6.99, I expect way more.

I’ve had the Pro version of CloudBeats for the past month and have used it daily since downloading and paying for full use rights. The interface is fairly simple/straightforward and connecting the player to a cloud storage account is seamless. I would suggest a few things that would make this a five start app:

1. Put 15-second, 30-second, and one minute skip options on the player interface - both in app and on the lock screen. I listen to old Howard Stern shoes and the scrubbing to various sections of a shoe isn’t always easy to do, especially whilst driving.

2. Institute additional track editing functionality in CloudBeats . I understand that perhaps this is a limitation because the metadata rests with the files in the cloud drive. However, it’s a pain to edit tracks, albums, etc. in “iTunes”, move those edited files into the cloud drive, and then hope the this app player recognizes the changes made for sorting purposes.

This is the initial feedback that has immediately come to mind after using it consistently. It’s a great app but with some polishing, it could get even better.

Have had CloudBeats for a few years now, and it provides basically exactly what I want for an app like this: a simple interface to selectively download albums from my Dropbox to play offline on my phone.

Unfortunately, CloudBeats is just plain buggy. Several times now I've downloaded a new album only to have all the albums I already had downloaded for offline play deleted. I've had albums only partially download despite CloudBeats saying they're ready for offline play, so I can't actually listen to them offline. Updates occasionally wipe my downloaded albums. Other minor but annoying little bugs are frequent.

It's frustrating because the basic functionality of CloudBeats is just what I want. But it's just too buggy to rely on, so I often end up manually managing music through my computer anyway, which defeats the point.

I’ve been using CloudBeats for 5+ years or so, and I believe it’s the best cloud-based music player that I’ve ever heard; which is also easy to program via its friendly User Interface (UI). The software is constantly maintained on a regular basis which helps to keep in-pace with the newer technologies. I personally use several cloud storage systems (MS OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive etc ...) And it’s a seamless connection with no lagging (of course, it all depends on your connection’s bandwith). Also, the footprint of CloudBeats ’s occupancy’s space is very minimal. I highly recommend CloudBeats to all users who have a cloud-based storage system(s).

This is a really fantastic app. I have it signed in to my Dropbox, where I keep my music, and OneDrive, where I keep my audiobooks. I use the major streaming services like anyone else but in general prefer to own my music, so CloudBeats has been a real gift. Just a couple bugs here and there related to the on-the-fly playlist continuity (playback sometimes stops for no evident reason), but this is nothing too big and it mostly works super well for the purpose. Thanks so much to the developer for making my entire gigantic MP3 collection as accessible to me as the streaming services!

this app is the best app for playing FLAC files from my Google Drive. I literally use CloudBeats everyday. A few things I’d like to see cleaned up: Sometimes tracks cutoff before the track is over and the next track will start prematurely. Also, sometimes when playing longer tracks, the next track will get stuck when starting or start with static. Minor things. I’ll test with this latest update! Also, track times sometimes don’t display when playing. Again, even with these things it’s a 5star app all the way.

Solid music playing app. Works best if you use a music tagging program to tag your files with metadata (title, artist, cover art, etc) for CloudBeats to use to sort your music into genre’s, by artist, whatever.

Had trouble with CloudBeats being able to synch all files on a google Drive, better function on Dropbox.

Main problem: takes way too long to cue up a track. If you play an album start to finish its fine, but if you want to bounce around and play random songs, CloudBeats takes 20-30 seconds to cue up each track. Very choppy. If CloudBeats were updated to play tracks quickly it would be much better. Need to be able to pick a track, tap “play” and have the track play instantly. Not happening here.

I use CloudBeats to stream music from my Synology NAS using WebDAV and it works pretty well (better than other apps I’ve tried).

Pros: List scrolling and caching is good and snappy. It actually works (I’ve tried some apps that don’t work or seem to choke). The interface is not a disaster (again, comparing to the competition here).

Issues: The initial sync is incredibly slow and Chromecast does NOT work on WebDAV connections. I also wish the album list could be shown as a list or smaller icons rather than the massive icons that are currently there and make it difficult to scroll through and quickly find something.

It needs skip-back and skip-forward buttons. I do love CloudBeats, using it mostly for long-form recordings like lectures. That's why it needs jump-back and jump-forward controls, like all the podcast players have. It may not be an issu for music, but try to roll back 30 sec in a 2-hour lecture file, while out jogging, and you'll quickly see the utility of this hoped-for feature addition. I love that it eliminates the need to use horrible iTunes to get audio files into your phone, but the playback features could use some love.

I use CloudBeats all the time. As a composer/producer I need to be able to listen to lots of my and my clients’ music all the time. this app is perfect for me. I can make playlists, go into any of my DropBox folders and just sit back and listen to any collection I like at any time. I used the free version for a while, but had to upgrade when I wanted to listen to some larger collections of more than 20 tracks. If I had one request, is that you make a version for Apple TV.

Anyway, my subject line says it all. Thanks for making CloudBeats!

I went ahead and bought CloudBeats because I got tired of what Apple Music does to my music (replacing my mixes with their mixes.) What I liked about CloudBeats is the ability to have gapless playback, which is hard to find...but, the gapless on CloudBeats has issues. When I play some of my gapless albums, the gap is still there (even though they play gapless on my iPod) - and other gapless albums will play gapless, but they cut off the prior song about a millisecond too soon - so it kind of ‘skips’ into the next song, rather than a smooth gapless transition. If these issues can be fixed, I will give this a 5 star - but as it is, I don’t think it was worth the $4.99.

Thank u so much for the response through the email. The new files added did not have any file extension in the file name, hence CloudBeats was not reading it as you said. Now I can see all the google drive files in cloud beats app.

Till September 2020 it was working perfect. But off late, it is not accessing the new files added to google drive. Please fix this issue. I hv deleted app, downloaded, signed off google drive and signed in again. Nothing helps

I was looking for an app to use to play an offline playlist of songs from independent artisti for a work function. I tried several apps but they were either too clunky, had very annoying ads or wouldn’t allow me to use local files that weren’t already in iTunes. this app works perfectly. Uploading the files to Dropbox or OneDrive was easy. I had a question and their tech support got back to me with an answer (including screen shots) very quickly. I highly recommend this app!

Not an especially intuitive interface. Once you connect to a cloud storage service, you have to hammer on CloudBeats to talk it into scanning for music. “Downloaded” music is not available once you sign out of a storage service, which sounds fishy to me. Also - please consider that you are allowing CloudBeats by proxy to access your entire cloud-based storage for whichever service you sign into (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.), so I do not recommend using a cloud location where you store confidential data.

The organization of your music is pretty straight forward. It’s best if you already have your music sorted beforehand such as all the meta info like Artist Name, Song Name, Album Artwork, etc. since you cannot edit through CloudBeats (sorting it through the iTunes desktop app helps with doing so).
Drawing from most cloud storage sites, you can just stream all music directly to your device plus the option of downloading to your phone.
Great app nonetheless!