MusicStreamer Reviews

by Eremuck

I bought MusicStreamer because the description said it played to Chromecast Audio. I couldn’t get it to work for quite a while — my Chromecast device finally showed up when I went to playlists. Not sure what happened there...

MusicStreamer doesn’t leverage the iTunes library. Rather, it scans a particular PC path for music files and allows you to stream them. I have had problems that, when I try to play a playlist, MusicStreamer mysteriously stops between songs. That’s a bit irritating.

So, overall, while it does what’s advertised, it seems a bit clunky. I wish iTunes allowed you to play to Chromecast, but this is an acceptable workaround.

by ShelbyGT500

One positive thing is finally a player that allows a playlist. Now for what is missing from MusicStreamer. Although the same app developer here is the same for FileBrowser you cannot play songs that are stored on your phone. Such a mystery why this option is not there. MusicStreamer does not offer a cross fade option so that you can blend from one song to the next to eliminate the silent gap between songs. Overall yes it does play your music from a network source but it is missing a very basic option to play songs you spent a lot of time downloading to your phone.

by Mark___s

This is app is the best of all that are available for my situation (SMB streaming & downloading my network stored songs to my phone). If not for the absence of Spacial Audio, it would easily get five stars. I've got other music playing/streaming apps on my phone that do play my content with Spatial Audio, so I'm guessing it's something that can be added. I certainly hope so.

by Voodooroller

MusicStreamer is fast, responsive, and minimalist, though its UI is pretty seriously outdated. Everything is crammed onto one screen, making it a little annoying to browse or search your library. Your play queue is hidden in the playlist tab, for some reason, though it works great once you find it. Those gripes aside, I can finally listen to my mp3 collection on a flash drive plugged into my router's usb port. Pretty nifty!

by Grbay

I had been looking for years to find a player for my networked music, but one that had the database reside on my phone: this works perfect and far passes my expectations. Initial scan (of a very large collection) just took minutes, secondary scan finished later in the day.
I find the iPad GUI a little nicer than the iphones, but both are beautiful. Some actions seem a little clumsy, like erasing current playlist, but must work well and are neatly presented.
Download (for offline play) is very efficient. Never crashes. Original setup of network far better than other apps I’ve tried.
Worked very good at demonstrating how messy my genres were, so I did the manual re-tagging (whew) and then rescanned.
Only little complaint, on my set-up, it takes 20-25 seconds for music to start on first start of a session. After that, though, all selections and skips are immediate.

One of my favorite apps!

by Persistenceofvision

Solved the problem, I think. The Sony Personal Wireless Server seemed to not be connecting due to the media type I placed in the server. I am using a 16GB Patriot USB flash drive and that seems to work with the server allowing a connection to be made by this app. Other brands didn’t seem to work with the Sony PWS such as PNY and all were formatted in FAT32 except one which was NTFS, and it seems USB 3.0 not friendly with the Sony PWS.

Bottom line: MusicStreamer this app does work with the Sony PWS and you get all the enjoyment of playing songs randomly!

by 0.jimndeb.0

My music files are stored on a drive shared by OSX server.
I’ve been looking for an iOS app that can find and connect to a shared drive and stream files - forever.

I’ve also been using Stratospherix’s brilliant File Browser forever. Which does just that but is not a music player. I recall thinking if File Browser can find and stay connected to shared drives, why is it so tough for other apps?

Still a good question but it turns out Stratospherix made the perfect solution the whole time. This is one case when I wish an app had advertised related products.

Music Streamer connects to all kinds of shared drives effortlessly and does a beautiful job of indexing all types of audio files. On top of all that it is one of the nicest audio players I’ve used. Now we can leave the ipad laying around and folks can browse and que up music which is cast to an airport receiver to play music through our stereo.

by MDriverZ

A nice straightener interface that deals easily with the music I’ve moved onto my NAS. It queues and plays well, and changes/adjustments are intuitive. No “extra”stuff in the way, and the interface is consistent between my iPhone and my iPad. Supports multiple libraries in different storage locations so my wife and I can see and play each other’s tracks without having to duplicate them redundantly.

by Strava Blows.

When I found MusicStreamer, I almost couldn’t believe it. It solved so many of my current issues.

I’m a user of pc on desktop, but iPhone for mobile, so I’m always looking for programs that are friendly cross-platform. this app provides a robust music manager and player that casts easily from my PC home server to my Chromecast Audio units, which was the main reason I got MusicStreamer . Flawless solution to this problem.

I was also looking for a way to transfer files from my pc to my phone without iTunes, which I did not want to install on my pc. MS allows easy downloading and removal of music files, which can then be played using the regular manager while you’re on the go.

I have a large library of hi-res music files- mostly FLAC. MS supports these formats when casting or listening on your phone.

It’s compatible with tags used in MediaMonkey (which I use) so my files were already structured correctly, and accessing them required no work.

Finally, playlist building is fast and easy.

I have no complaints. This is a lightweight, solidly featured program that’s makes it easy to access your whole library from your phone

by Zippay

It took several minutes to scan my music folder on a network attached storage drive on my network. After that, I can access all of my music anywhere in my house. I use an old iPhone to plug into a 1960 Dynaco tube amp setup. It sounds wonderful!

Update: Still going strong! It sees my NAS drive plugged into a network switch, a 4TB USB3 drive plugged into a router, a USB thumb drive plugged into the same router, and all my shared drives on PCs scattered about the house. Using various iPhones and iPads all over the house and yard.

by Baahh

It just works. Setup info could be fleshed out a bit more. A FAQ and setup troubleshooting info section would be helpful. Having said all that I found it fast and relatively intuitive to use. I’m now running about 2000 albums off a 256gb flash drive plugged into router for home network. Took me a wile to figure out I had to allow guest access to router usb (Samba) on an Asus router via Asus’ router management application. Ymmv.

by Abe Rad

This is a great app for streaming music. I have not found anything close for streaming from a NAS especially if you want to stream high bitrate/bitdepth files to an external USB DAC. As of the latest update the devs have recently addressed all of my gripes. I can now say that this is a solid five star app. Great job!

The great news:
1. They fixed the issue with high resolution Flac files not being sent to an external DAC in the correct format. MusicStreamer used to downsampling these, now works great. Thanks!
2. Fixed my tiny UI quibble... the UI has now been updated to scale nicely on a large iPad Pro. Thanks!
3. Fixed Flac bit rate issue. Thank you!

Wish list:
1. Apple TV app. Would love something similar for Apple TV. It would be great to have access to SMB music files with the similar experience on home theater. Obviously wouldn’t get the same external DAC support but would still be nice. I’d even pay more for a premium.

by Netstream22

I find this the best app on the iPad for streaming your music collection over your network from a NAS or computer. The one thing that I would like to see that would be an improvement is the ability to minimize or collapse the playlist or que panel to give more space to display the album covers.

by Elasticdemand

Edit: UTF-8 encoding issue. Converting my playlists to M3U8 did the trick. 5/5 again.

MusicStreamer is great, and worth the money purchase, BUT there seems to be a bug with importing M3U playlists via FileBrowser when the file path contains umlaut characters. It will cause the whole playlist to fail to import. Hoping a dev sees this and looks into it so I can bump my review up to the 5 stars it otherwise deserves.

by Chrisbanner

Long-overdue update brings multiple improvements to what has always been a rock-solid streamer. Some of the major streaming services could look to these guys for tips!

However 2 minor improvements

1) Clicking the search icon should bring up the keyboard for entry - you shouldn’t have to then go to the search box for this to happen, an unnecessary extra step.

2) Playing offline albums is funky and for some reason takes pressing the play icon multiple times before anything happens.

Otherwise a rock-solid update congrats to the team behind it.

by Hikermiker

An excellent app, as all other reviews will attest. I’m thinking about the upcoming iPad Pro with two terabytes of storage ... I could copy the bulk of my music collection to the new device ... it would be nice to use this app on my device to listen to music on my device ...

by C.r.a.f.t

I have been researching a way to play PC and NAS stored music to our 8 Chromecast Audio speaker setup. Google searches had us jumping through hoops to do it.
This Amazing app scanned and found all our streaming sources in 60 seconds and showed then showed Chromecast devices icon when playing music from my PC. No iTunes or any PC software required! Just share you top level music folder and enable Media Sharing in Network Sharing Center. Absolutely worth the 3.99!!!!

by MountMango

To start with, I’m just going to quote from the developer’s own description since it’s better worded than anything I was going to write:

“Do you have a music collection with thousands of files on your PC, Mac, Network Drive or Time Capsule?
Now you can play that music directly on your iPad / iPhone without syncing.

this app will scan your music, display beautiful album artwork and is a joy to use.”

I couldn’t agree more! MusicStreamer elegantly solves the problem of getting my several thousand song files located on a NAS drive over to my iPad, where i can then connect to Bluetooth speaker or headphone.

You can filter by artist, album, genre, set up playlists, and play tracks sequentially or randomly. MusicStreamer connect to my drive with no problem and is a breeze to us.

Also, I had one question and received a detailed personal response with all the answers I was looking for.

I can go into my back room wood shop and have all my music coming in on my nice headphones.

It’s a beautiful thing!

by Megamon1200

If you, like I have, been compiling a disk full of music for a decades and want something that plays on all your devices has easy download for offline and easy album art update, and web search right from MusicStreamer and doesn’t cost a bunch. Media streamer is perfect. Haven’t enjoyed a music app this much since Winamp!

Also it will discover 20k files pretty quickly and did a great job of that.

I highly recommend apps from this developer because the actually answer support requests!

by Eyemagee

this app was just what the doctor ordered. Although I use a PC, iTunes is designed for iOS systems. With this app, one can just about disregard iTunes altogether. I can play all of my music through my iPhone or my iPad without iTunes. Such a relief!! I can really only think of one thing for improvement. That would be the inclusion of an equalizer.
The product support was great when I needed it. Those guys were right there providing the help I needed.
Oh yeah; if your concerned about the cost, just toss that notion out. You really can’t find anything better for streaming your music at home or work (as the case may be).
If I could, I’d only give 4 1/2 stars for the lack of an equalizer. So 5 will have to do.

by Tom In Raleigh

I was looking for a way to stream music from my Brennan B2 cd ripper/NAS box so that my wife can listing when working in the backyard. I found MusicStreamer somehow, and wow. This is an amazing app. It takes a bit of time to learn, but being able to stream high quality FLAC files is a real treat. This is easily the best 4 dollars I’ve ever spent.