Streaming music is convenient, but it also eats up your mobile data and can be a pain if you own lots of digital music. If you'd like to enjoy offline music on your phone, there are plenty of great apps available.

Here's our pick of the best offline music player apps for Android, some of which you may not know about.

Many popular music streaming apps, such as Spotify and YouTube Music, offer the ability to download music for offline playback. However, we won't include those here, since they're primarily built around streaming.

The Best Free Offline Music Player Apps for Android

You could embrace the perks of portable music players, but if you're all about smartphones, browse the mobile software below, perfect for online and offline entertainment. And you don't have to pay for a great listening experience. Let's look at the best free music player apps for Android first.

1. AIMP

At first glance, AIMP looks a bit simplistic for a music player. Flat interface designs are popular, and AIMP's approach certainly follows this method of presentation. This is the entire point, though. This offline music app is straightforward; it plays your music and doesn't mess around with distractions.

It handles nearly all audio file types—including lossy and lossless formats—and comes with a 29-band equalizer, which is rare to see in music players. It can also mix multi-channel files to stereo and/or mono. Overall, if you can get past the bare-bones interface, it's a solid choice that won't let you down.

Download: AIMP (Free)

2. jetAudio HD Music Player

jetAudio HD offers both free and premium versions of its Android music player. However, you get so much in the free version that most users won't need to upgrade. The only downside is that ads support the free version, but they aren't intrusive. As you can see from the screenshots, the ads live at the bottom of the screen.

Here's what you get: a 10-band equalizer with 32 presets, lossy and lossless support, effects like reverb and x-bass, playback speed control, automatic gain control, and more. The Plus version comes with a 20-band equalizer, a built-in tag editor, over a dozen widgets, and a few other convenience features.

Download: jetAudio HD Music Player (Free, in-app purchases available) | jetAudio HD Music Player Plus ($3.99)

3. Rocket Music Player

Rocket Music Player has been around for a while and has come a long way since its inception. The developers fixed a lot of bugs, improved performance, and expanded the feature set.

For free, you get a 10-band equalizer with several presets, over 30 themes, a built-in tag editor, Chromecast support, a sleep timer, a nifty playlist manager, and even support for podcasts.

Get the premium app to unlock gapless playback, replay gain, cross-fading, tag editing, expanded support for audio formats, and more. It's one of the best Android music players for a reason.

Download: Rocket Music Player (Free, in-app purchases available) | Rocket Music Player Ad Remover ($3.49)

4. Pixel Music Player

If the lighter options discussed so far aren't satisfying, we recommend giving Pixel Player a try. It's not as well-known, but it's still pretty great for an Android music player.

While Pixel only supports basic file formats, it has a five-band equalizer with bass boost, gapless playback, a built-in tag editor, and a few options for customization, such as themes and colors.

Most notably, Pixel Player can analyze what you listen to and suggest more music that matches your taste. Pixel+ Music Player is also available. This removes ads and unlocks all features.

Download: Pixel Music Player (Free) | Pixel+ ($2.49)

5. Impulse Music Player

What makes Impulse Music Player different? It's designed as a gesture-controlled music player, making it perfect for any situation where you're preoccupied, such as when cooking or driving.

Besides gesture controls, Impulse Music Player supports several useful features: a five-band equalizer with bass boost and virtualizer, gapless playback, cross-fade, metadata editing, automatic album art downloads, and more.

This offline music player is no gimmick; it's highly functional and definitely worth trying. Note that the free version of the app appears as "Music Player | MP3 Player" on Google Play. The Pro version is Impulse; both are developed by Appmetric.

Download: Impulse Music Player (Free) | Impulse Music Player Pro ($1.99)

6. MediaMonkey

MediaMonkey is a great app for offline listening. It scans your local storage for any music before adding it to the library, so after a quick set-up, you should be ready to play your songs. It supports a wide variety of file formats, both lossy and lossless audio.

The app has the usual features you'd expect from an offline music player: track editing functions, EQ, multiple navigation modes, and even a sleep timer.

MediaMonkey Pro allows you to sync via Windows. You can even set up your home computer as a music server, which the mobile app can stream from. Do this at home and you won't eat up any of your mobile data, as it works over your Wi-Fi network. It's another great option alongside the best Windows music players.

Download: MediaMonkey (Free, in-app purchases available) | MediaMonkey Pro ($5.49)

7. PlayerPro

Like most of the offline music apps here, PlayerPro has all the standard premium music player features. Thus, choosing one comes down to the interface. While most non-Material apps are ugly, PlayerPro's unique design is both attractive and satisfying to use.

Special convenience features include importing music history and ratings from desktop music players, custom smart playlists, voice search, and free plugins.

Download: PlayerPro (Free) | PlayerPro (Pro) ($4.99)

8. Pulsar Music Player

If you're using an older device with outdated hardware, a lot of modern apps may frustrate you with poor performance. Pulsar strikes the perfect balance between a gorgeous appearance and lightweight performance.

It comes at a price—a lack of any advanced features—but that doesn't mean Pulsar is barebones. You still get smart playlists, fast search, gapless playback, and a built-in tag editor that works quite well. For the five-band equalizer, bass booster, and reverb features, you'll need to upgrade to Pulsar Pro.

Download: Pulsar (Free) | Pulsar Pro ($3.99)

The Best Paid Offline Music Player Apps for Android

While many free apps offer paid upgrades, you can use a truly free app indefinitely, without upgrading. You can even enjoy Android music players free of ads. Nevertheless, paid music players tend to be of higher quality. The following apps all require payment to use, aside from free trials.

9. Neutron Player

Despite its outdated appearance, Neutron Player is one of the best offline music players available. If you're an audiophile, you'll immediately recognize that the audio from this app is of the utmost quality.

And that's what distinguishes Neutron Player; it's truly the best offline music player for audiophiles. You'll need to connect your device to a proper set of speakers to hear the difference, of course.

If you're using headphones, know that there are a variety of things that affect sound quality. So, if you're using a generic pair of headphones, you might not hear the subtle nuances in the track.

The app also comes with all the standard premium features you'd expect.

Download: Neutron Player ($7.99)

10. Poweramp

Poweramp's free trial has over a million reviews, which speaks to its popularity. The trial lasts for 15 days, after which you'll need to upgrade.

Poweramp has everything you'd need in an advanced music player: 10-band equalizer, gapless playback, cross-fade, replay gain, a built-in tag editor, fast library scan, along with some other nice-to-haves like dynamic queues. While the app may not be luxurious compared to the best music players for Android, it's reliable.

Download: Poweramp (Free trial) | Poweramp Full Version Unlocker ($6.99)

11. GoneMAD Player

GoneMAD Player is the perfect music app if you love tinkering and customizing every little detail to your heart's content. It has a built-in theme builder and over 250 options that you can tweak. Or choose from over 1,000 preset themes if you don't want to tweak it yourself.

Other notable features, on top of the standard premium ones, include an optimized media library that supports 50,000+ songs, two shuffle modes, custom actions on queue completion, custom gestures, and multi-window support on some devices.

Download: GoneMAD Player (Free trial) | GoneMAD Unlocker ($4.99)

Which Offline Android Music Player App Do You Like Best?

Not everyone wants to Spotify their music collection. Streaming music can be convenient, but listening to offline music is more reliable and doesn't eat into your data plan.

AIMP and Pixel Player are two of our favorite music apps for Android, but you can't go wrong with any of the ones here. And if you really like an app, spend a few dollars to upgrade.