The 5 Best iPhone Apps For Music Lovers
Monday, 22 March 2010 , 1 Comments
by Chris Taylor
A couple of months ago I posted "the 5 best iPhone Apps for musicians" detailing the best apps to help musicians advance their career. This got me to thinking, if there's all of these apps available for musicians, what's out there that will appeal to the music lover in us all. My search led me to a bunch of apps that had a ton of cool features that make it easier to discover, share and even create new music for free (with the exception of LaDiDa which costs $3 to download). Here are the 5 iPhone/iPod Touch apps that music lovers can't live without:
1. SoundHound
SoundHound is like Shazam but it fills in the missing pieces. Play a song, sing it or even hum the tune into the iPhone's microphone and it will name the song in as little as four seconds. It can even do it while your iPhone/iPod plays a song and identifies the track name to keep your library organized. SoundHound also provides lyrics for songs, purchase capabilities, artist bios with pictures and top songs, and extensive sharing capabilities. Offline search is available too for all those inconvenient times when you're iPod doesn't have a wireless connection and you don't want to forget the tune of the song you've been humming to anyone who will listen asking "what the hell is the name of the song that goes like this...?"
2. TuneWiki
TuneWiki is a great app that combines music, videos, and lyrics (that are synced with the audio) while building a community around these features. The video above demonstrates one of the coolest features in my opinion, which is the ability to check the lyrics in a karaoke-style format as the words scroll with the music, regardless of whether or not the song is in your music library. The extensive database of radio stations also provides a great source for listening to very specific niche genres as well as mainstream artists.
The community aspect is also very interesting. You can contribute to the community by adding and syncing lyrics to songs that aren't already available. There is also a "music maps" feature that shows what people are listening to around the world and what songs are being played in certain areas. There are still some bugs to be worked out but it's a very cool feature regardless. This app has a lot of great features and is still somewhat new, so we can expect more cool features in the future.
3. Last.fm
When it comes to preference-based streaming radio, both Last.fm and Pandora are at the top of my list for their mobile apps. Last.fm takes the cake for me personally, with some additional features that take the standard streaming radio app up a notch.
The way these preference based radio players work is you start by inputting an artist or genre and the application creates a radio station based on what you're looking for. Then songs that are similar to that artist or genre are mixed in to introduce you to new music. You can give songs a thumbs up/down in order to train the app to know what kind of music you like. With the Last.fm app you can also get more information about each track, tag songs for later, and if the artist is on tour you're provided with tour dates, time and location, as well as a link to buy tickets.
One very strong advantage that Last.fm has over Pandora is the unlimited skip feature that it offers. With Pandora you are allowed a maximum of 5 skips every hour. This can get annoying when the app is first adjusting to your preferences and there are more than 5 songs that just don't do it for you and you don't want to have to listen to them all the way through on a particular station. Last.fm offers unlimited skips, providing a fast and easy way to begin finding new music.
4. LaDiDa
Who says professional (or semi-professional) musicians are the only ones who can create a song? LaDiDa is considered a "reverse karaoke" app that allows iPhone/iPod Touch users to sing into the microphone, whether on key or not, and then the app creates a track by analyzing your voice and adding music to match it. If you're off key (note the developer’s voice in the video above), the app will correct your pitch giving you a T-Pain-esque autotune sound. From there you can easily share your latest masterpiece on Facebook or Twitter. So, why pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to see if you've got what it takes to create a great song? This may be the only application on the list that isn't free, but $3 is pocket change when you consider the amount of fun you can have with an app like this.
5. FlyCast
At first glance FlyCast seems like a lesser version of the streaming radio apps that have also been featured in this post. While it may not be preference based or include song lyrics, it focuses on one of the main features that is missing from the other apps that can be particularly helpful to iPod Touch users that are not within distance of an accessible wireless network. FlyCast offers StreamAhead which allows you to stream a radio station while you have a wireless connection and listen to it later when you can't get a connection. It may seem like a small detail, but as the video review above mentions it gives you the ability to listen to streaming radio while going for a walk, driving in your car, etc.
On top of the StreamAhead function, FlyCast offers over 1500 digital channels, the ability to pause live streams and a built-in web browser so you can surf the internet while listening to a station. FlyCast also offers user accounts so you can access your favorite stations and features from a computer as well as your iPhone/iPod Touch.
That concludes my list of the best iPhone/iPod Touch apps for music lovers. If we left out an app or missed any features that you love or you hate, let us know. Comment below or e-mail me.
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