Liquid Bear still plays last.fm on Android

When last.fm killed its radio stations for most of the world, KLastFM and CoboltFM stopped playing.

But that doesn't mean that last.fm radio for Android is dead, because alternative last.fm player Liquid Bear rocks on.

Liquid Bear uses a trick to bypass all those silly last.fm restrictions: it uses your last.fm data to make playlists, and then pulls the songs from vk.com (the russian answer to Facebook). This means that you need a last.fm account and a vk.com account, but you can simply make an "empty" vk.com account with a fantasy name to tap into its music collection.

That's a clever solution that other apps might use as well. CoboltFM and KLastFM could use the vk.com route, or they could play custom last.fm radio stations by pulling the songs from Grooveshark. Grooveshark clients like Dood's Music Streamer and TinyShark could integrate last.fm in a similar way.

Liquid Bear has three main tabs. The left tab is the current playlist, which is built from whatever you select in the right tab. This tab lets you make last.fm-like radio stations based on tags, artists, your own last.fm library or the music libraries of your friends, etc. The central tab shows what's playing now, with album art and playback controls.

Want to see lyrics? You can load 'em from the playback tab (hit the drop-shaped icon) or by long-tapping a song in the playlist.

The playlist is also the place where Liquid Bear shows that it needs some work done. You can't change the order of the songs in the list, the search box shows white text on a light grey background (it may be different on your phone or tablet), deleting songs ahead of the currently playing track pauses playback, and removing songs already played stops the current track and skips to the next. The playback screen shows elapsed time but doesn't show the song duration, even though it could: if you pull the playback slider it shows how much time remains, so Liquid Bear could show that in the empty space next to the forward button.
Edit: an update added remaining time to the playback screen.

But these are minor shortcomings for an app that does what other last.fm players can do no more.

Liquid Bear is free, and I couldn't find any ads in it. It's definitely worth a try, so head to the Google Play Store to get a copy.

• Liquid Bear