My music collection stretches way beyond 10 GB but I can’t have it all on my phone. I’d love to but I can’t. If you’re like me who has a large music collection but limited space on Android, try streaming music from the cloud. Google Drive gives you 15 GB storage for free and Dropbox has promotions for free storage regularly (I’m up to 80 GB right now, all for free). That’s the free cloud storage space you can save your music on and then stream songs as and when you need to. Alternative: If you wish to stream songs from something like Spotify instead of your personal music collection, check out our guide on Spotify’s features and how to get the free music streaming in any country in the world (video embedded below).
Stream You All Night
You can do it the old school way and just download or play songs one by one from the Dropbox app but that’s just not the best way. So instead, download an app called Beat (free). It allows you to log in to cloud based storage accounts like Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. Once you’re logged in, you can browse the entire file system or look for music specifically. The music scanning didn’t work for me so I just went to my Music folder in Dropbox. Once you’ve found your jam, tap on it and the app will start downloading it. After a couple of seconds, when it has buffered just enough, it will start playing. The rest of the songs in the folder will be added to the queue. You can also make playlists.
Getting To Know You
The app is not light on features. It has a pair of slide in sidebars. The one on the left shows the connected cloud storage services and their cached content. You can add more accounts from here. The right sidebar contains settings and feature options. From here you can limit the cache for songs that are available for offline use. There’s also a floating player that you can access no matter where you are. The notification controls were enough for me.
If I Ever Caused You Trouble
To its credit, Beat streams music quite well. Depending on your internet connection, it can take a couple of milliseconds to a couple of seconds to get going but once the playback has started and you’ve got a queue/playlist going, things flow smoothly. The trouble with Beat is with the UI that tries to be like Google Play Music app but fails miserably. The app says there’s a way to play music offline but there’s no clear button to mark songs for offline use, there’s only a cache that you seemingly have no control over. The app will also play songs stored in your local library but I’d suggest against that.
I Never Meant To Do You Harm
Beat has its quirks but if you’re in the market for a free, easy to use cloud music streaming app for Android, this is your best bet. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
