Updated August 2026 · rebuilt from four F-Droid entries and one Google Play listing, all read on 16 August 2026
This page reports what two catalogues publish about four Android music players on one date. It does not describe how any of them behaves on a phone, because nothing here rests on running them. Where a catalogue has no such field, the page says so rather than leaving a blank for a reader to fill in. For the standing picks across the whole category, the music player roundup covers the wider field.
How to read the last two columns. An added date is the day F-Droid took that build into its repository. It is not a release date, and this page prints no release date for any of the four, because none of the four entries carries one. None listed in the last column means F-Droid has attached no Anti-Feature flag to that entry. Those flags record what the repository has flagged, so no flag is the absence of a warning and not a finding that an app is clean.
A plain offline library player · the only entry here listing neither view network connections nor full network access
Version 1.1.1 on F-Droid, added to the repository on 28 July 2026 · Licence GNU General Public License v3.0 or later, SPDX id GPL-3.0-or-later · Author on the F-Droid entry: nift4, contact [email protected] · publisher account on the Play listing: devpandaxda, whose support email on that listing is that same address · Play install band 10,000+, the band Google Play prints and not a count of people · Free to install, with no in-app purchases shown on the listing · No star rating is published for it on either catalogue · Play listing updated 23 July 2026 · Data Safety on Google Play: no data shared with third parties, and no data collected · Its F-Droid entry lists no Anti-Feature flag, which is the absence of a warning rather than a finding about the app · Read from two catalogues: its F-Droid entry, read 16 August 2026, and its Google Play listing, read 16 August 2026 · Google Play's own ads label for it, read 16 August 2026: that listing shows no Contains ads label · Contains ads: No · checked 16 August 2026
Google Play listing · read 16 August 2026
Gramophone is the only one of these four with a record in two catalogues, and the blunt part comes first: neither of them publishes a star rating for it, so there is no score to read on either. What Google Play does publish, read on 16 August 2026, is a free install with no in-app purchases, an install band of 10,000+, no Contains ads label, and a Data Safety section declaring no data collected and no data shared with third parties. What F-Droid publishes is version 1.1.1, added 28 July 2026, under GPL-3.0-or-later.
The two records label the publisher differently, and they also overlap. Its F-Droid entry, read on 16 August 2026, names the author as nift4, gives [email protected] as the contact on its author line and links github.com/FoedusProgramme/Gramophone. The Play listing for the same package id, read the same day, is published by an account named devpandaxda, links that same repository and the same privacy policy, and gives that same [email protected] address as its support email, while its About the developer block names a person and a second address. One shared contact address and one shared repository is an overlap between two records, not a chain of custody, so the Play listing is treated here as a second catalogue record for the same package rather than as proof of who maintains the project. The description on that same entry, read on 16 August 2026, makes the project's own claim in its own words: Gramophone is completely offline, thus it does not support downloading or streaming music.
The one thing on the record that can be set beside that sentence is the permission list on the same entry, which names neither view network connections nor have full network access, the only entry of the four here that names neither. That is what the build may reach, not a measurement of what it sends. Skip it if you want a published rating before installing anything, because neither catalogue has one. Choose Gramophone over Local Player if an older phone has to run it: its builds say Android 5.0 or newer, where the other three entries here start at 7.0 or 8.0 on their own entries, read the same day.
A local library plus podcasts and internet radio · the most recent date here
Version 1.0.0-beta.6, added to F-Droid on 3 August 2026 · Licence GNU General Public License v3.0 or later, SPDX id GPL-3.0-or-later · Author Ali Zare · Summary published on F-Droid: Local music and podcast and stream player, built to enhance your quality of life · This version requires Android 7.0 or newer · 11 permission entries listed for that build, among them view network connections, have full network access, run at startup, and reading and modifying the contents of your shared storage · Anti-Feature flag: Non-Free Network Services · This catalogue publishes no rating, no review count, no install count, no price and no Contains ads label for any app, and it has no Data Safety section · No Google Play listing: play.google.com returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026 · F-Droid entry, read 16 August 2026
F-Droid entry · no rating is published there to quote · read 16 August 2026
Sound Center is the most recently added entry here and the one carrying the plainest warning about itself: the project's own version string is 1.0.0-beta.6, and F-Droid has attached its Non-Free Network Services flag to the entry. No rating, price or ads label exists in this catalogue to weigh against that, and Google Play returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026. What the entry does give is a version added on 3 August 2026, a licence, a change list and a permission list that includes full network access.
Read this first. The Anti-Feature block on its F-Droid entry, read on 16 August 2026, carries F-Droid's own reason for the flag, word for word: iTunes and PodcastIndex Search API are used for podcast search. GitHub API is used to check for new app versions and Radio Browser is used to search for streams.
That is what the flag on this entry is about: an app that reaches services which are not free software, for podcast search, for stream search and for its own update checks. It is not a statement about advertising, and it says nothing about anything else the app does.
The change list the entry prints for this build names backup and restore, an automatic restart for podcasts and streams after an error, ICY metadata support, and a fix it describes as network connection leaks closed by adding an internal proxy. Skip it if you want a version its own authors call finished: this one is labelled beta in the version string itself. Choose Sound Center over Gramophone only if podcasts and internet radio in the same app are worth the flag, because the reason F-Droid published for it names the services behind exactly those two features, plus the app's own update check.
A local library built around word by word lyrics · the shortest permission list here
Version 1.1.1, added to F-Droid on 10 July 2026 · Licence MIT License, SPDX id MIT · Author Cristian · Summary published on F-Droid: Modern local music player with word-by-word synchronized lyrics support · This version requires Android 7.0 or newer · 6 permission entries listed for that build, the shortest of the four read here, with view network connections the only network one among them · The entry lists no Anti-Feature flag, which records what F-Droid has flagged and is not a finding about the app · This catalogue publishes no rating, no review count, no install count, no price and no Contains ads label for any app, and it has no Data Safety section · No Google Play listing: play.google.com returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026 · F-Droid entry, read 16 August 2026
F-Droid entry · no rating is published there to quote · read 16 August 2026
Local Player asks for less than anything else here: its entry lists six permissions for the current build, and full network access is not among them. The blunt part is the licence and the silence around it. MIT is permissive, so a modified build can be passed on without its source, and no Anti-Feature flag on the entry is the absence of a warning rather than a clean bill. Neither catalogue read for this page publishes a rating, a price or an ads label for it either.
The description on its F-Droid entry, read on 16 August 2026, makes the project's own claim in its own words: Privacy First: No ads, no trackers, and no internet required. Your music stays private.
That is a project writing about its own work, not a catalogue label, and this catalogue publishes neither an ads label nor a data handling section that could be set against it. What can be set beside it is the permission list on the same entry, which names view network connections and no other network permission. Skip it if you want a published rating or an install count before you install anything, because neither of the two catalogues read for this page publishes either: F-Droid prints neither for any app it carries, and Google Play returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026. Choose Local Player over Booming Music if the shorter permission list decides it: 6 entries against 18, and no flag on the entry against a flag with a reason.
A local library with an equalizer and USB DAC output · the longest permission list here
Version 1.3.0, added to F-Droid on 4 May 2026 · Licence GNU General Public License v3.0 only, SPDX id GPL-3.0-only · Author mardous · Summary published on F-Droid: Clean, fast, and Material-driven music player with powerful features · This version requires Android 8.0 or newer, where the two builds before it required 9.0 or newer · 18 permission entries listed for that build, the longest of the four read here, among them have full network access, modify system settings, run at startup and schedule precisely timed actions · Anti-Feature flag: Non-Free Network Services · This catalogue publishes no rating, no review count, no install count, no price and no Contains ads label for any app, and it has no Data Safety section · No Google Play listing: play.google.com returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026 · F-Droid entry, read 16 August 2026
F-Droid entry · no rating is published there to quote · read 16 August 2026
Booming Music carries the longest permission list of the four and the oldest current version: F-Droid added 1.3.0 on 4 May 2026, three months before this check. It also carries the Non-Free Network Services flag, and F-Droid's reason for it is one line long. What the entry publishes is a licence, a version, a date, a change list and that flag; what it does not publish, for this app or any other, is a rating, a price or a Contains ads label, and Google Play returned 404 for its package on 16 August 2026.
Read this first. The Anti-Feature block on its F-Droid entry, read on 16 August 2026, gives F-Droid's own reason word for word: The app uses APIs from non-free services such as Last.fm.
That reason names Last.fm and stops there. The entry does not say which part of the app reaches that service, and Last.fm appears nowhere else on the entry: the only scrobbling its own feature list names is ListenBrainz, which is a different service. So what the flagged dependency is used for is not on the record, and a reader who came to this catalogue to keep third party services out of a music player should read the reason before the feature list.
The description on the same entry closes by calling the app lightweight, open source and free of advertising. That is the project describing its own work, and this catalogue publishes no ads label for any app that could be set beside it. The change list for the current build names ALAC decoding and bit perfect playback through USB DACs, ListenBrainz scrobbling, a full screen widget and an editable favorites playlist. Skip it if the permission list decides it for you: 18 entries, among them modify system settings and full network access, is the longest read here by a wide margin. Choose Booming Music over Local Player if bit perfect USB output and the equalizer are what you came for, and accept the flag and the permission list that arrive with them.
All four of these are catalogued on F-Droid. One of them, Gramophone, also has a Google Play listing for the same package id. The two catalogues publish very different amounts, and that difference belongs to them rather than to the apps.
The fields each F-Droid entry gave this page are listed in the How we verify box above. Two of the four also carry an Anti-Feature block with F-Droid's own reason for the flag, and both reasons are quoted in full in the sections above.
What F-Droid publishes for no app at all: a rating, a review count, an install count, a price, an in-app purchase range or a Contains ads label. There is no Data Safety section either. So a blank in those places on this page is a gap in the catalogue and not a finding about an app, and a rating nobody publishes is not a poor one. Google Play carries those fields as a catalogue, and for the one entry that has a listing there, what its listing does and does not show is set out in that entry's section, with the date each line was read. For the other three, play.google.com returned 404 for the package id on 16 August 2026.
Two things are true of all four entries and are therefore not points in favour of any one of them. Each says of its current build that it is built and signed by the original developer and guaranteed to correspond to the published source tarball, which is a statement about where the file came from rather than about what the app does once it is running. And each carries an open source licence, three copyleft and one permissive, which decides what someone else may do with a modified build. A licence is not a privacy guarantee, an ad free guarantee or a quality guarantee, and nothing above treats one as evidence about behaviour.
One threshold, applied to all four: an entry counts as current here when the newest date its own catalogue publishes for it falls inside six months of 16 August 2026, and stale when a record has not moved for more than eighteen months. All four are current, and none is near the stale line.
The two catalogues do not measure the same event, and this page keeps them in separate sentences for that reason. F-Droid prints the date on which one specific build was added to its repository. Google Play prints the date the listing as a whole was last updated. Neither of those is a release date, and no release date appears anywhere on this page, because nothing read for it carries one. Gramophone is the clearest case: two dates five days apart, for two different things, on the same app.
A gap in a catalogue is also not evidence that work has stopped. The one entry with the widest gap here still lists a change list for its current build, and nothing read for this page says anything either way about what its project is doing now.
A music player reads the audio library on the phone, and two of these four ask for full network access on top of it, so the data question is worth asking. This page cannot settle it, and the reason is worth stating rather than smoothing away.
Where this page says a field is absent, it means absent from the catalogue, and it was checked on the entry rather than assumed.
This page used to carry eight write ups and a closing section on the apps with no news. It now carries four entries, and that is worth explaining rather than papering over.
An entry here needs a first party catalogue record that can be re opened and re read on the day of writing, with the date printed beside every figure. Four of the apps this page used to name have one. Those four are also the only four the previous version linked a catalogue page for: the four f-droid.org entries were the only catalogue links on it, and all four are still linked here. Its one other outbound link went to a project repository on GitHub, which is where code lives rather than a catalogue record. The previous version described its own sources collectively, in its opening paragraph: changelogs, GitHub release dates, F-Droid build dates and upload listings. For the entries that have gone, this pass had no catalogue entry to re open and re read, so none of their figures is left standing here with a fresh date on it. Every entry that went is named in the changelog at the foot of this page, with the reason it went.
Four entries is a short list for a category this size. Saying so is more useful than filling the gap with apps whose figures could not be re read today.
Nothing read for this page answers that for three of the four. F-Droid publishes no Contains ads label for any app it carries, so its entries cannot say. The fourth, Gramophone, also has a Google Play listing, and on 16 August 2026 that listing carried no Contains ads label at all. Two of the projects state in their own F-Droid descriptions that their app carries no advertising, and that is a project describing its own work rather than a catalogue label. Checked 16 August 2026.
It is one of F-Droid's own Anti-Feature warnings, and the repository publishes a reason for each app it applies to. For Sound Center it reads, in F-Droid's own words: "iTunes and PodcastIndex Search API are used for podcast search. GitHub API is used to check for new app versions and Radio Browser is used to search for streams." For Booming Music: "The app uses APIs from non-free services such as Last.fm." Both are about services an app depends on rather than about advertising. Checked 16 August 2026.
Local Player, with 6 permission entries listed for its current build, where Sound Center lists 11, Gramophone 12 and Booming Music 18. Gramophone is the only one of the four whose list names neither view network connections nor have full network access, though it does name two Bluetooth permissions. A permission list records what a build may reach, not what it sends, and F-Droid publishes no data handling section to set beside it. Checked 16 August 2026.
One of them. Gramophone has a Google Play listing for the same package id, published by an account named devpandaxda, with an install band of 10,000+, free to install, no in-app purchases shown, no Contains ads label and a Data Safety section declaring no data collected and no data shared with third parties. Google Play returned 404 for the Sound Center, Local Player and Booming Music package ids on 16 August 2026. Checked 16 August 2026.
No. A licence says what may be done with the code, not what a build does on a phone. F-Droid publishes no data handling section for any app, so for three of these four there is no declaration to read at all, which is not the same as a clean one. The fourth has a Data Safety declaration on Google Play, and a declaration is the publisher speaking to Google rather than an audit finding. Checked 16 August 2026.
Sound Center: F-Droid added 1.0.0-beta.6 on 3 August 2026, the most recent date on this page, and that version string says beta. An added date is the day a build entered the repository, not a release date, so none of the four can be called the newest release from anything read here. Checked 16 August 2026.
Checked 16 August 2026: this page was rebuilt from what two catalogues publish, both read on 16 August 2026: the F-Droid entries for Gramophone, Sound Center, Local Player and Booming Music, and the Google Play listing for Gramophone. Google Play returned 404 for the other three package ids on that date, and the page now says so instead of leaving the gap unexplained. Every figure here was re read from a catalogue entry today rather than carried over from the previous version.
Corrections against the previous version, each checked on the entry itself: Sound Center is listed today at 1.0.0-beta.6, added 3 August 2026, where the page named 1.0.0-beta.4 and 1.0.0-beta.5 as its only builds; the gap between the two most recent Gramophone builds is eighteen days by the dates on its own entry, and the page said 16 days after 1.1.0; and Gramophone is on Google Play as well as F-Droid, which the previous version did not mention at all. Retracted with the sections that carried them: the claim that one entry sat in the Retro Music lineage, which no record read today supports, and the description of another as ad free, offline only, which asserts a field F-Droid publishes for no app. The framing that called one release the headline release of the year goes with them.
Entries withdrawn, with no first party catalogue record behind them on this pass: Oto Music, whose dating the page took from an upload mirror and whose version 5.0 write up rested on it; Auxio, whose 4.1 dating the previous version did not source on the page and whose catalogue entry was not re read here; Rhythm, which the page said needs a third party repository or a sideloading tool; and Namida, whose 6.0.1 the previous version did not source on the page either, and which it said is on neither catalogue. The closing section on apps with no news went with them, and with it the entries for Symphony, RiMusic, InnerTune, Vanilla Music, Musicolet and Metrolist. No block was deleted: every section whose subject left now carries copy sourced from a catalogue entry read today.
Added: one decision table, since the page carried none at all, built from the F-Droid record rather than from price, ads and rating columns this catalogue publishes for no app; a dated How we verify box; a dated fact line, a licence, a permission count and an Anti-Feature line for every entry; and both Anti-Feature reasons quoted word for word, where the previous version paraphrased one and did not mention the other. The verdict capsule was rewritten rather than added: the one the page carried opened on what shipped in 2026 and named six apps, two of them withdrawn here. The title no longer promises new players either, because a build being added to a repository is not a release and none of the four entries carries a release date. The FAQ was rewritten in full. It held five questions: one was about an app withdrawn here; two named withdrawn apps beside kept ones, one of those asking which are ad free, a field this catalogue publishes for no app; one, on bit perfect output to a USB DAC, is answered in the Booming Music section instead; and the last described the method in the first person, which the How we verify box now does instead. The four screenshot strips are kept unchanged, each in the section of the app it shows, with the caption naming the project that published it.