CM9 Music app gets rebranded as Apollo, adds new features and headed to the Android Market Soon

Back in January we alerted every one of the CM9 Music app and a download that you could snag to try it out yourself. Today we have some new and update information about the app that is sure to please many of you. The app has been rebranded now as Apollo and is loaded with new stuff. It is now much faster, uses less memory and has a few minor UI tweaks. There is going to essentially be three version of the app.

The first will be available for all in the Android Market. With an artwork grabber, Last.fm integration, sleep timer, Android Beam stuff, more widgets and more animations. The usual needs will be available such as sorting your music by artist, album or track name. You will also find a few UI changes that have been implemented to go along with the Apollo branding. I doubt you will find anything NASA or Tom Hanks related. The Apollo app will be landing in the Android Market “soon” and be free with in app ads, or you can clear out that annoying aspect for a minor price of $0.99. The good news, is that the free version will ave all the same features as the paid version, just with ads. The new app will also feature new artwork from A.J. Lopez.

The CM version of the app will be included in the CM9 ROMs when it is ready to rock and roll. That version will be fully functional but will have less extra’s included. Mostly performance improvements and some fancy animations. Take a quick read of the full informational release from Andrew Neil. 

 I’ve added an artwork grabber, Last.fm integration (artist and album info, events, top tracks and albums, similar artists), sleep timer, some Android Beam stuff, more widgets, more animations to choose from, I’ve made it faster and use less memory, options to sort your tracks by artists, album, or track name, and lyrics. I’ve also made a few minor UI changes to help match the new branding. That’s all for the Market version.

As far as the CM version goes, mostly performance improvements and some animation stuff. I might add some of the Market features into it later, but I haven’t decided.

As far as a release date, very soon. I’m pretty much working on this daily. It’s going to be free, but with ads and an in-app purchase to remove them for $0.99. So, it will be the cheapest, most fully featured music app in the Market. The ads don’t get in the way either. I thought they might at first, but after using it, you hardly notice them. You can close them whenever you want via a little “x” button, but they reappear if the song changes. I wanted to have things ready before now, but I actually had to teach myself how to do a few things along the way. Haha

The Market version has several more features, basically everything I just outlined. If you’re not using ICS, then you won’t have controls in the notification bar or on the lock screen, although, I’ll probably make my own pseudo-lockscreen to compensate. It’s not going to be a paid app. It’s free, completely. The only thing you’d have to pay money for is the remove the ads.

I attached a screen shot of the little artist hub you can access and all the banners and promo stuff that A.J. made. He was extremely easy to work with. He must have done over thirty renditions to the icon before I said okay. He’s awesome.

I’m also going to release that little artist hub as a separate app working with Google Music. So, I think people will enjoy using that, although I’m still working out a way to use it without leaving the Google Music app. :) 
- Andrew Neal

Sounds pretty amazing to us. We can’t wait to let you all know when it finally goes live for download. Until then, be sure to add +A.J. Lopez and +Andrew Neil to your G+ circles to stay in the loop on this app and other projects they are working on.

Source: Rootzwiki