EvoMusic
A free music app for the web and Android — search, play, synced lyrics and playlists that follow you.
- The problem
Free music is spread across different places, each with its own limits, and most players are full of ads.
- What I did
Built one clean player for the web and Android, with synced lyrics, playlists and a library that syncs through the cloud.
- The result
An ad-free music app on 2 platforms: search, lyrics that move with the song, and the same library on laptop and phone.
The short version
It's a free music app, like a small Spotify I built myself. Search any song and play it. The lyrics scroll along with the music. Like songs, make playlists and line up what plays next. Sign in with Google and your library is the same on your laptop and your phone. There's also an Android app.
What it is
EvoMusic brings songs from public music catalogues into one clean player, adds lyrics, artist pages and a personal library, and syncs everything through the cloud. The same player runs in the browser, installs as an app, and ships as an Android app.
Why I built it
Free music is spread across different places, each with its own limits, and most players are full of ads. A simple app built the obvious way quickly runs into those limits and slows down.
What it had to do
- One clean, ad-free player
- Lyrics that move in time with the music
- A library (likes, playlists, history) that syncs across devices
- Fast searches, even when many people use it
- Feel like a real app on Android
What it does
Search songs, artists and albums, with recent searches and a top result
Home rows: Trending Now, Featured Charts, Recently Played, Popular Artists and Popular Albums
Synced lyrics, with buttons to nudge the timing earlier or later
Queue: Play next, Add to queue, Up Next
Playlists, Liked Songs, shuffle play and “Not interested”
Artist and album pages with photos, bios and credits
Full-screen player, plus a mini player that controls music from any page of this site
Smart shuffle, autoplay, playback speed (0.75× to 2×) and a sleep timer
Keyboard shortcuts
Sign in with Google or email, or continue as a guest
Installs as an app and comes as an Android app with lock-screen controls
Step by step
- 1
Find the music
Search and charts draw on public music catalogues, including free, openly-licensed collections.
- 2
Play it
Each song plays through the right player for its source, with one set of controls for everything.
- 3
Add the extras
Lyrics, genres, credits, album covers and artist bios come from open music databases and are matched to the song playing.
- 4
Save the library
Likes, playlists, queue, history and preferences sync to the cloud, so they follow you to every device.
- 5
Keep it fast
Results are cached at several levels, so popular searches load instantly.
- 6
Ship to Android
An Android app wraps the player and adds Google sign-in, lock-screen controls and an offline screen.
A closer look
Problems I solved
Staying fast and within free limits
Searching the same songs over and over was slow and wasteful. Smart caching now makes repeat searches instant.
The wrong “artist”
Online, the uploader is often a record label, not the singer. A dedicated check now tells the label and the artist apart.
Searching in Indian languages
Searches typed in Indian-language scripts ranked badly. Script-aware matching fixed it.
A light portfolio
The music features load only on music pages, so the rest of this site stays quick.
Playing in the background on Android
Some sources don't allow background play, so those songs pause when the app is hidden while others keep playing.
Takeaways
- Design around limits from day one — caching is part of the architecture
- Data quality (artist names, lyrics timing) decides how “real” an app feels
- One codebase can serve the web, an installable app and Android
Built with
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