The GoneMAD Music Player is a favorite of many audiophiles, and it’s easy to see why. With a diverse range of configurable options and great features, it’s an audiophile’s paradise. All you need is a high-quality song library, and a pair of good headphones, and then you will be transported to another world. Yes, it is that amazing.
Another great app for playing music offline is BlackPlayer Music Player (a nice mouthful, right?). It lives up to GoneMAD, and thanks to its brilliant features, it has a highly customizable interface. Furthermore, it also supports almost all available audio formats, including FLAC.
So, in case you are between the two music players, we will make it easy for you. In this post, we pit these apps against each other and see how they stack up.
Table of Contents
- 1 App size
- 2 Design and interface
- 3 Equalizer support
- 4 Modifying Playlists
- 5 Lyrics: Online or offline?
- 6 Additional characteristics
- 7 Personalization
- 8 Topics
- 9 And the winner is
App size
The free version of BlackPlayer contains ads and is around 21-23MB. BlackPlayer EX is its paid version that removes the ads and offers a ton of features for $ 0.99.
Download BlackPlayer Music Player
Whereas the GoneMAD (Trial) is relatively light at about 15MB. The trial period lasts 14 days, and you will have to pay $ 2.99 to unlock the full version.
Download GoneMAD Music Player
Design and interface
The design and interface of the BlackPlayer are minimalist, as it only maintains the necessary features on the home screen. True to its name, it has a black interface with a tabbed layout and a sleek navigation bar at the top. Needless to say, the black UI looks amazing, especially on AMOLED displays.
The tabbed design gives the player a stylish look, and the gestures make browsing like a walk in the park. All you have to do is swipe horizontally to navigate the tabs. So even if you have a phone with a tall screen, these gestures greatly facilitate one-handed use.
Also, the search icon is right at the top of the screen, which means that you can search for the song directly from the screen itself.
The feature that I loved about the BlackPlayer is the Most Played option in the menu on the left. Shows the top five songs that are heard frequently. However, you can change this number to your liking.
Meanwhile, GoneMAD’s design is inspired by Google’s Material Design. That is why it is themed in blue and white. Like BlackPlayer, it allows you to slide horizontally through the tabs at the top.
The other notable difference in GoneMAD is that instead of having a tabbed preview, you get the songs and albums sorted in a list. This ends up making it appear like other music players. In short, the appearance is not enough to differentiate it from the other applications.
One specific problem I faced was that I had to tap the menu on the left every time I wanted to search for a song. It’s awkward if you have to do it often. The top bar of GoneMAD only has the sort option.
At the end of the day, if I had to choose a music player for design alone, I’d side with BlackPlayer for its smart, minimal, and eye-pleasing presentation. Also, because it provides me with the tabbed layout and the elegant transition effects.
Equalizer support
BlackPlayer comes with a built-in 5-band EQ and 10 amazing presets. Depending on your musical preferences, you can always create your custom presets.
There is an additional tab for sound effects that allows you to further customize your music experience. This app has features like bass boost, virtualizer, and a sound booster (depends on your phone’s hardware).
The GoneMAD features a 12-band EQ and 16 presets
On the other hand, the GoneMAD has a 12-band equalizer and 16 presets. Furthermore, this app also offers features like DSP limiter, audio pitch correction, and bass boost.
You can customize the presets and save the settings according to your audio preferences.
Playlist Modification
Naturally, both music players support playlists. It’s a basic feature of any music player, and they both do it excellently. GoneMAD follows the conventional method of first creating an empty playlist and then adding the songs. Although it also allows you to create playlists on the fly, and I found this method to be more streamlined and easier to handle.
Furthermore, it also has a neat folder called Smart, which is a collection of three self-healing playlists (Most Played, Recently Added, and Recently Played).
Similarly, BlackPlayer also allows you to create a playlist using the Recently Added and Most Played options. Rather than having the “smart” feature, BlackPlayer places both on separate tabs within the playlist folder. Adding tracks or modifying a playlist is as easy as making a cake in both apps.
Another difference is that the BlackPlayer allows you to import playlists. It currently supports the m3u and .m3u8 formats. Just tap the Import button (on the playlist page) and select the appropriate files.
BlackPlayer allows you to import playlists
GoneMAD lacks this feature, and the app developers plan to offer it in the future.
Lyrics: Online or offline?
Singing the lyrics of a song is a totally different experience. And I bet looking up song lyrics on Google can be a bit of a hassle at times.
Although both players support embedded song lyrics, the situation is a little different if a song does not have them.
In the case of GoneMAD, it allows you to display the lyrics of the songs through a third-party application such as MusixMatch. Therefore, you will have to download it and, if necessary, edit the tags of the song. Once this is done, clicking on Show lyrics will automatically display the text.
BlackPlayer does not pull song lyrics off the web, and probably never will in the future due to licensing issues. Instead, you will need to Google the letter, then manually copy the text and paste it into the application’s letter window.
The manual process of adding song lyrics may seem unpleasant, but for now it is the only way to see them in BlackPlayer. Or, you can use the help of a third-party song lyrics app.
Additional characteristics
There is a long list of common features between the two apps such as sleep timer, cross fade, tag editing, album cover customization, etc.
Some of the distinctive features include GoneMAD’s Bookmark (save the position of a song), Jump to Time, and Rate. And they are easily accessible via a song’s three-dot menu.
If GoneMAD allows you to bookmark a particular song, BlackPlayer goes one step ahead and allows you to bookmark songs. However, the feature I liked the most about both apps is that you can update album art for songs.
I don’t like having empty album covers, and this feature fills that gap wonderfully. Sometimes you may have to edit the tags before hitting the automatic download button. However, that extra effort is worth it.
The album art accentuates the look of any music player, if you ask me. The album art update process is more or less similar in both apps.
My only complaint with BlackPlayer is that its three-point menu is underutilized and could provide some additional options.
Personalization
Who doesn’t like to change the look and style of a music player? With BlackPlayer, you can even change the font if you don’t like the default.
You can also turn the Gapless effect on or off along with countless other options like including a navigation bar or adding / removing folders from the menu on the left.
Prepare to be launched with more than 250 GoneMAD customization options
If you find the customization of BlackPlayer overwhelming, prepare to be missed with GoneMAD’s 250+ customization options. You can modify almost every aspect of it. From modifying the breadcrumbs and selecting the default path from the playlists to enabling the search buttons, GoneMAD allows you to play the customization game to its fullest.
Interestingly, BlackPlayer also has an added feature called Quick Action for gestures, but the options are limited.
Topics
When it comes to themes, GoneMAD lets you play a lot. The variety of themes includes design families ranging from classic to material design.
So even if the app doesn’t have a dedicated light or dark theme, you can use the Material Design presets and create a custom theme accordingly.
As far as the BlackPlayer is concerned, I suppose it would be unfair to compare it as it only provides a white or light interface. You would miss the whole point, right? Well the app allows you to switch to light mode. However, it is only available in the paid version.
And the winner is
Now, it is time for the ultimate question: what is the best music player? Well, if you want a hassle-free and easy-to-manage music player with a minimalist approach, then BlackPlayer is the answer.
But if you are someone who would love to have a ton of features available at the push of a button, then GoneMAD is the winner. Although the design of the cylinder head isn’t impressive enough, it makes up for it with its great configurable options and fantastic EQ settings.
