Probably once a year I go looking for a new music app. I download three or four, give each the ol’ college try, and delete most of them within a few days. I’ve done this for years and I have never found one. There’s some nice ones out there but none that I love to use.

The problem is always the same. I don’t listen to music in one big pile and playlists have never been a great way to organize music. I listen to groups… Old school stuff. The current releases I’m working through. The weird records I’m not ready to rank yet or the ones I want to listen to so I can write a review… Every app I tried treats a library as a flat list of albums with a search box, or hands me playlists, which are something else. A playlist is a list of songs.

None of them organized collections in a way that I think they should, so I built my own music app! No Ads, No Bullshit. (But I do plan to offer a one time pro purchase)

It’s called Crated, and it’s an Android app. You make a collection, drop albums into it, and it builds a fanned cover from them, or you give it your own art. Shuffle songs, or shuffle albums so a record plays through before the next one starts. That’s the whole reason it exists. So far, I’ve put some features in that I think will help to better organize collections and I think it’s worth checking out.

Here are some highlights:

Collections

• Group albums into named collections with a description and a picture.
• Auto-built fanned cover from the albums, or your own art.
• Play or shuffle a whole collection, by song or by album (a record plays through before the next starts).
• Browse a collection’s artists and songs, and keep favorites inside it.

Tags

• Add your own hashtags to albums (#blackmetal, #avantgarde) from the album menu.
• Tags tab, to the right of Playlists, lists every tag with its album count.
• Tag page shows all albums with that tag, with Play and Shuffle.
• Genre-based and existing-tag suggestions in the tag dialog.
• Tags live on your phone and are never written to your audio files.

Browsing

• Tabs for Collections, Artists, Albums, Songs, Favorites, Playlists and Tags. You choose which to show in settings.
• A-Z index on the right edge that bends out into the list as you drag.
• Landscape layouts with a side pane.

Library tools

• File tags viewer shows every tag per song and marks where songs in an album disagree.
• Merge duplicate albums. Tags follow the merged album.
• Artist photos and covers can be fetched from the internet, only if you choose.

Playlists

• Add any song to a playlist from its menu.

Player

• Mini player morphs into the full player.
• Queue, shuffle, repeat, sleep timer, equalizer.
• Gapless playback.
• Lock screen and notification controls (tapping opens the full player), Bluetooth and car buttons.
• Remembers where you left off.

Privacy

• Plays your own files. No streaming, no account, no ads, no tracking.

It is not endlessly customizable. There’s no theme engine and no 40-page settings screen. It looks and behaves the way I decided it should, and if you disagree, that’s fair, you probably want a different app. I’d rather have a few strong opinions than a hundred toggles I never touch.

Crated is in testing now. It’s Android only, and I need people to try it before Google will let me release it to everyone.

If you’ve done your own yearly hunt and come up empty, you might be exactly who I need. Steps are below. It will be paid, one time, no subscription, when it’s out. If you do something with collections that I haven’t thought of yet, tell me. I’m still adding things.

Want to test Crated?

You need an Android phone and a Google account.

1. Join the testers group (use the same Google account you use on the Play Store): Join the Crated Testers group
2. Open this link and tap “Become a tester”: Become a Crated tester
3. Install Crated from Google Play and keep it installed for two weeks. That part matters more than it sounds. Google counts testers who stay opted in.
4. Tell me what breaks, or what you’d change. Email: bradleyjcooper@gmail.com

If you can’t join the group, check that you are signed in to Google Play with the same account you used to join it.