Shuttle review: the Google Now of music players totally deserves its popularity

Developer: SimpleCity	Download: Android
Genre: Music & Audio	Price: Free (paid version available)

One thing that makes smartphones better music players than the dedicated "MP3 players" of old is the sheer freedom of choosing different music apps at whim. If you are truly addicted to music, you can't simply choose a music player and stick to it forever, but Shuttle Music Player begs to differ. Described as a "simple, lightweight and powerful music player" with a "fresh Google Now interface", Shuttle's free and paid versions are already enjoying massive popularity in Google Play. Let's see what all the noise is about then, shall we?

We loaded up some of Her Majesty's finest psy-trance (courtesy of Nano Music), and got the party started within Shuttle's free version running on a LG G Pro 2. Don't worry, we passed on the LSD. At the entrance, we were greeted by the Vienna Boys' Choir. We felt the boys didn't belong to our party, so we tried politely escorting them out. That's when our first hurdle with Shuttle emerged - apparently, you can't simply remove a song from the player's lists. The only option is to delete it from your device's USB storage. This includes the inability to delete a song off a playlist, for example. What gives? Oh, it's just us being temporarily clueless that removing a song from a playlist happens with a simple swipe! Ta-dah! In addition, Shuttle's maker has addressed unwanted songs with the Blacklist option. If you don't want a song in your playlist played, ever, simply paint it black.

After dealing with the boys' choir for good, we were greeted by what is best described as "Google Now Player". Shuttle doesn't make it a secret which app it's designed after. The player has a clean, almost sanitary Google look to it, which fits perfectly within Android. Of course, Shuttle offers a choice of color themes, but the free version is to dark (black), light (black and white), hybrid, and the white and blue theme, which felt right at home to us at PhoneArena.

Opening up an album presents you with the songs it contains. Next to each song, you will find a menu that lets you choose a particular song to play next, add to playlist or queue, use as phone ringtone, blacklist, or delete. Playing a tune brings you to the Now Playing view, which fills most of the screen with the album's artwork. Music controls are positioned down, and choosing a song happens from a menu on the upper side which is accessible with a button. Above that, you will find buttons to Favorite a song, Share it through social media, and another round of useful options. There, you will find a lyrics display, which either reads embedded lyrics off the tune or grabs the words from musiXmatch. There's also the option to save a tune to a playlist, clear the queue, delete a song, activate a Sleep Timer, adjust the equalizer, change the song order, and access Shuttle's settings. Of note there is the player's ability to seamlessly scrobble music to Last.fm via Simple Last.fm Scrobbler, and options to automatically pause playback on headset disconnect, resume on connect, and activate gapless playback.

Shuttle comes bundled with a variety of widgets styled in the same uninterrupting, minimalistic manner. There are 2x1, 4x1, 4x2, and 4x4 widgets that can be colored in a gradient shade of your choosing. Their functionality is limited to showing album art and music controls. Sancta simplicitas!

For all its straightforwardness, Shuttle isn't bare-bones or anything like it. It's a very polished, supremely focused music player with just a few shortcomings to even out the scales' balance. First, there are no visualizations of songs – yes, although these can be quite corny, at least a spectrum analyzer and some electric colors to please our eyeballs would have been a welcome addition. Also, in certain situations, such as browsing in Album view, the cover art is able to obscure the top three buttons for Search, Favorites, and Options. They are borrowed from Google's iconography and have a hint of transparency to them, which makes them hard to discover on anything but a dark background.

All things considered, Shuttle is almost perfect for what it is – a simple, intuitive music player. Hopefully its creator SimpleCity will continue improving and expanding it without bloating it with too much functionality in the process.