Astro Player app - View embedded lyrics on Android phones

Open Forum
1

Since I got my Nexus One in May of last year I’ve been looking for an Android player that displays embedded text while you’re listening, and I finally found one called Astro Player

http://www.astroplayer.com/

The reason this is so great is that you can look at the text that corresponds to any audio you’re listening to, it simply requires that you use iTunes to embed the text in the “properties” of the audio track under “lyrics”.

This means you can refer to the text of a lesson without having to access any sites and look for a particular lesson.
(chinesepod.com pre-embeds the characters, pinyin and English translation in all of their podcasts, and I think chineselearnonline.com does as well)

This is a standard feature on any Apple player with a screen (iPod/iPhone/iPad), but as I already had an Android phone and I didn’t feel like spending $100 or more just to buy an iPod, I was very excited to find this app.

I believe the trial version only works for 5 days and then it’s $5 dollars to purchase, but IMO it’s well worth the price.

On a related note, if you want a way to view these embedded lyrics within iTunes while you’re listening on your computer, I recommend Cover Version

I use this at work so I can listen to Mandarin podcasts while I’m working and quickly refer to the text of an audio without having to break away from what I’m doing.

2

I have since found out that the basic AstroPlayer application including the embedded lyric viewing functionality is absolutely free of charge.

I am currently in the process of embedding all of the characters, Pinyin transliterations, translations and vocabulary tables into all of my lessons from LingQ, ChinesePod, ChineseClass101, and CSLPod for easy viewing on my smartphone. It’s a lot of preliminary work, but it’s greatly increased the effectiveness and convenience of my Mandarin learning.

3

This is really great, especially for Beginners.

As I usually listen when I’m driving in my car, it is more healthy for me to read not :wink:

4

Ya, that might be a little dangerous :confused: You can always try it out on your new tablet though! :slight_smile:

5

Sure, I’ll try it.