Ecoute

Ecoute serves my purpose splendidly: playing my private music collection which I store entirely on my iPhone. I have not tested its cloud capabilities. The first thing I noticed about Ecoute is how snappy it is. Being a long time user of Cesium 4 and 5, and having played around with Marvis, I can say that Ecoute is lightning fast. It loads faster than the other apps, is smoother, and there is never any wasted time fighting the user interface. However the cleanliness of Ecoute is also its biggest weakness. Ecoute is not as feature rich as Cesium or Marvis, and it has the least customizability. With Ecoute, what you see is what you get; it’s pictures are exactly the screens you will see when you go through the music selection process. It is a very clean cut and beautiful user interface; I really enjoy how the player screen takes the color pallet of the song artwork. For any Cesium users who are looking for something a little bit cleaner, I highly recommend Ecoute. For the price of $1, this app is great. But no app is perfect in the intimate eye of the users. For instance, two things that bug me in particular is a lack of sorting options. I like to sort my albums by year, and that is not possible in Ecoute, sorting is always done alphabetically. Similarly it has no way of displaying an albums year, I wish this was an option instead of displaying an albums track count and play time. There is also no ability that while in artists > albums view, to use a grid. But the feature that could use the most improvement is the view playing artist/album. I really want a quick and painless way to jump back to the album I’m currently listening to. Trying to use this feature opens up a new overlay on top of the current search, instead of changing the current working path. This layering is super clunky and must be closed by tapping the close button, and does not respond to swiping like the rest of the app. And as sort of a side comment, the pull down to search feature uses a custom animation that is decidedly not snappy, which kinda sticks out.

I can’t really give this an honest review, because I can’t test the functionality. The search bar is too high on the screen, and makes it impossible to navigate easily.

I LOVE the simplicity of Ecoute! I had grown to really hate how cumbersome Apple’s built-in music player for iOS had become; I felt like I was jumping through hoops every time I wanted to play a song. Ecoute is simple: filter however you want (by artist, album, playlist, etc.); choose your song; THAT’S IT! Shuffle and repeat controls are right there, easy to access. My suggestions for improvement: 1) songs will restart when you lock your phone, whether you press the button to do it manually, or you let your phone auto-lock on its own. It’s very frustrating to get into a good groove, only to have it reset to the beginning of the song again. I hope they fix this, but I will say, I’ve tried other third-party music players and had the same issue, so it’s not a problem that’s unique to Ecoute. 2) it would be nice to have an alphabet sidebar to be able to scroll to a letter, like in Apple Music or your Contacts, but at least there’s a search bar at the top (I like the sidebar better, personally). 3) I love the simple filtering function, but I think it’s a little clunky to get to. Maybe it should be a drop-down menu or something? Or maybe a sidebar on the left side? Or a set of tabs at the very top? Other than those issues, I’m really enjoying Ecoute, and it’s become my go-to music app! :)

Like so many others, I grew tired of Apple’s music app. In my search to find something that would work with my iTunes library, I found Ecoute. The design is nice and the app is fairly simple to use. However, I find that the playback buttons, especially play and pause are buggy. I have issues trying to play and pause a song. I also noticed that the time elapsed bar doesn’t seem to move while a song is playing. Still beats Apple Music though.

My only request for the developers would be to please add the album year to the album info in all places the app displays the amount of tracks and total minutes per album. Otherwise, this is a really great replacement for the stock music app. Hopefully you guys are still showing this app some love. It’s really as beautiful as advertised.

I used Ecoute for a long time, but an apparent update has created a major problem. When the app is opened, your music library is displayed. I typically had it displayed by artist, and all the albums by that artist would be displayed by tapping on the artist. Then you chose the album you wanted. The problem is that after selecting an album, I can no longer go back to the previous screen if I decide to listen to a different album. I have to force close the app and then reopen it. As much as I do not like the Apple Music app, at least it is not missing this important feature.

This was my go to music app for years but apparently it is not being updated and now longer functions on the latest iOS updates.

I don't require much more from a music player. Plain and simple while being easy to use. Haven't checked if there's lyrics support? And an update with a dark theme would be good.