Apart from the promotions to take advantage of the free months and use my partner’s account, I have never paid for Spotify or Prime Music and not even that bad: I listen to music from time to time in random mode, I have limited song skips and I binge a few. announcements. But on long trips, not paying costs me more, so after using RiMusic in the car, I discovered RiMusic and I took it on a trip running Android Auto.
When I read its name, I thought the same thing as you: ViMusic and RiMusic are too similar, right? Yes, it turns out that RiMusic is a standalone fork of ViMusic. The essence is the same: two services Free, ad-free, open source streaming music.
Of course, I was able to verify that RiMusic is updated more frequently, which is worth it for both the new features and the bugs. Either way, both work on Android Auto and exceed 100 million titles (drinks from the YouTube Music catalog) and I attest that I searched from Linkin Park or Rozalén through Izaro or Raimundo el Canastero and I found them.
Download and install on Android Auto
RiMusic is not in the Google Play Storebut that’s not a problem: as it explains on its website, you can download it from alternative stores such as F-Droid or from its GitHub repository. From here it’s as simple as downloading the APK and don’t forget to give permission to install from unknown sources and that’s it.
Once installed, if you go to the car with your cell phone You won’t see it in the Android Auto menu because you need to do a few more things: you will need to open the Android Auto settings and scroll to the bottom, where the version number appears. There you tap like there is no tomorrow until you enable developer settings. Then go to the three small dots in the upper right corner and in ‘Developer Settings‘enable option’Sources unknown.
Left: Android Auto developer options. Right: RiMusic Settings
Finally, we open RiMusic on the mobile and by pressing the icon with the three lines in the upper right corner we go to ‘Settings‘>’Miscellaneous‘ and there we scroll until we find the option ‘Enable Android Auto support‘, by sliding the corresponding toggle. We will now see RiMusic on the Android Auto screen when entering the car.
This is what RiMusic looks like on Android Auto
RiMusic essentially offers a very close experience both in terms of interface and possibilities of Spotify: from this dark interface with green details to functions such as search engine, library, playlists, artist/song/artist tabs and even a quick selection according to your tastes. . On the main screen you will find recommendations, new albums, artists similar to those you like, groupings by genre… In Android Auto the interface has been simplified but it is quite complete
To highlight the care of its designvery intuitive and clear, so there is no need to give many explanations about how it works. For example, there is no shortage of classic icons for pausing, starting, rewinding or skipping songs. Returning to the beginning is as simple as pressing the green button with the logo in the upper left corner and we will not find any hidden options, since everything else is up to the application.
In the Android Auto app the menu is in the top bar (in the app it is in the bottom area) with songs, libraries, albums and artists where what you already have in the application is displayed. This is why before getting into the car, it is essential to have certain artists selected and added in advance and the same for songs. Or better yet, that you took your time to create your playlists (the procedure is the same as in Spotify: search and add to the list).
Actually, the key section when driving is the librarywhere you can see your lists (as you can see in the image above, “2024” is the name of one of them), but also the songs you have downloaded to the device for them listen without consuming data, your most listened to songs, among others.
When you bring playback to the foreground, the classic controls appear, like the ability to shuffle, queue, or rewind. If you change screens while keeping RiMusic in the foreground, a button appears to return to that playback screen, but it is combine it with other applications thanks to Coolwalksomething he does perfectly. So you can see the song you’re playing and skip or rewind, but it also has a quick menu with options like favorites or downloaded. Everything is very careful to be agile and fast.
During my tests with this application while driving, I was quite satisfied with both the catalog of applications and the handling, although it is true that from time to time I experienced a certain slowness When it comes to loading tracks and the audio quality is not as polished as the others, but it serves its purpose.
In any case RiMusic is a great alternative for those who have an Android phone and Android Auto in their car and who do not pay for streaming music services for the possibility of listening to music on demand and without advertising or simply if they want to save data ( or bad cover) and download the music first.
Cover | Eva Rodriguez de Luis
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