 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
My parents are looking for a music playing solution that doesnt involve Apple. My mum has a bog standard mp3 player with most of her music on but also has a few cd's. Her friends had a device which was controlled by an iphone and had bluetooth speakers but i am guessing this was all part of the Apple eco system. She has a samsung smartphone running android but thinks her music collection is too big to store on there. What are her options here for something wireless, storing and playing of music preferably controlled by her android phone? I rarely listen to music or radio so my music kit knowledge is zero.
SONOS with a NAS
probably quite expensive solution for what she wants. Cjeapest sonos speaker is 160, and a NAS will be a hundred or so, and will need to be tech savvy to set up the NAS...
She has a samsung smartphone running android but thinks her music collection is too big to store on there
Really? It's not hard to find a 128GB SD card, which would hold about 30000 songs. So just add a bluetooth speaker that fits the budget.
Or something like this http://www.denon.co.uk/uk/product/compactsystems/networkmusicsystems/ceoln9
You could just get a little USB OTG flash drive and stick the music on that, then buy a bluetooth speaker and play direct from the phone.
Or a bigger SD card for the phone.
Big SD card and a bluetooth speaker will be the easiest/cheapest. Use the TuneIn radio app for radio. Any bluetooth speaker should work fine on Android.
Our audio is currently running from a raspberry Pi which will play anything on the NAS and TuneIn radio. You control it via a web interface (so any phone or computer) but once running it is stand alone. Actually very easy to set-up and cheap but maybe not ideal for parents.
Big SD Card makes sense, although if they already have a stereo I'd go for plugging a Chromecast Audio into it, rather than getting a bluetooth speaker. It connects using wifi which means you can wander around the house with the phone and not have to leave it within 6ft of the speaker.
Oooo, and I've just spotted this PSA 🙂
http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-google-chromecast-audio-15-at-curry-online
If they have a mini hifi or something already, then a simple bluetooth receiver plugged in to the aux will work fine.
You can upload all of your music to Google Play. It allows up to 50,000 songs for free.
Then you can play that through the app on your phone, or tablet etc, plus it can play through a Chromecast.
Works fine, so long as you have wifi, and a fast enough internet connection.
If she has her music on a computer anyway how about Google Play? My Android phone has Play on it and I have a Bluetooth receiver plugged into the stereo. Any music you add to the phone or computer is added to the Play account. You can then create playlists etc. Only thing I don't like it for is podcasts because I have so many. Don't know if you can list them by date, that'd help.
I think bluetooth might be the way but not sure they will always be close enough to use it. I could set up a nas for them no problem but as they are in Spain its a bit far to go. I dont think they have any form of hifi over there so not much of an option there. I think a bigger sd card is probably the best solution and a warning that bluetooth has limited range. I will mention this and wait for the moon on a stick list of needs that will then come my way.
Google play might be an option as they have a laptop, thanks for the suggestion i will look in to that further.
Chromecast uses the Wifi in the house so bigger range than bluetooth, and better quality.