While I like music streaming when I'm at home, things are quite different when it comes to listening to music on my smartphone. Here, I don't have a large library of individual tracks ripped from CDs or other sources, it would be too much work… Also, I don't use online streaming services while I'm on the go as the amount of data I have on my mobile contract per month is limited, the battery goes flat much too quickly and there are spots on my daily commute where I don't have coverage. So what I have on my mobile are recordings of the radio streams I like, each spanning several hours. The player to play these must only do one thing: play them. No album art, no database lookups, just play and play them instantly.
Unfortunately, pretty much all native players I've come accross. Especially the CyanogenMod Apollo player has problems with my recordings as it takes at least 10 seconds before it starts playing. I have no idea what it does in the meantime. So I had to go on the lookout for another player app that meets my needs and I had to find out that there's a large assortement, but all not to my (privacy) taste. But then I stumbled over a player I use on my notebook as well that fits perfectly: VLC. It's open source, simple to use, there's no album art lookups and privacy leaks, it plays pretty much any audio and video codec ever invented and it plays my files without any delay. Perfect!