It’s safe to say there’s no shortage of music apps in the market, and even the native client is very capable and suitable for most — so why would anyone want this app? In short, there are two reasons: beauty and simplicity.
Audium is an exceptionally elegant music player that gets rid of complex options like playlists and even individual song lists, instead focusing on the albums. Head past the break to check it out.
The Basics
The app is very straight forward; your list of albums along the bottom and your “now playing” album in the top view. You scroll through your albums smoothly and simply double-tap to start the album playing.
The basic view left; paused on the right
This app is gesture orientated. For example, to play the next song in the album you swipe to the right, and previous song you swipe to the left. Volume can be controlled by swiping up or down respectively, and a double-tap on the album artwork of the current album will pause the playback. Something that I didn’t discover immediately but is vey helpful is swiping down on the album in the bottom row will reveal the album name; this is very handy when some of your albums are missing the artwork.
Really helpful feature if you haven't got the album artwork
As I’ve already explained, the app focuses on the album first, and by stripping away these often over used features like playlists and putting the album front and centre, Audium encourages the user to appreciate them as a whole and rediscover those forgotten tracks.
Design
One of this app’s main attractions is its beauty. It’s so simply designed that using is actually a pleasure and not a chore like many other apps can be. The album artwork along the bottom is displayed in an elegant and playful way that makes them look almost like coasters on a table, and the simple wooden and dark background really put the focus on the actual albums. The whole interface is beautiful, effortless and focused.
Elegant minimalism makes this app stunning to use and play with
Functionality
Its not easy try to make an app that relies heavily on gestures, and although it can make it more intuitive, it can often lead to an unusable experience with gestures not being recognised and ultimately the user getting frustrated. I’m glad to say that’s not the case here. For the most part, the gestures are very intuitive and work well. Occasionally swiping for the next or previous song can go unrecognised, and I believe this is because if you start the swipe outside of the actual artwork it won’t recognise it — I think this could be an easy fix, so I’m not worried because its only an occasional problem.
Scrolling between albums works very well and quickly, and the animations are silky smooth. Currently albums are displayed in alphabetical order, but I’m told by the developer that the next update will bring the ability to change the sort order. Another problem that is in need of being sorted is when an album has been played through, it will restart at the beginning. However, I’m glad to hear the option to make it pick a random album once finished will be appearing in the next update as well.
If you’re like me and your iTunes collection isn’t completely full with album artwork, then this app won’t shine quite like if your library was full of colour. I resorted to using TuneUp to clean up my library and now nearly all my music has an album artwork so now it looks much better. A small bug I have found is that occasionally it will not display the artwork in the bottom row, but when double tapped and the album starts playing, then it will reveal the artwork in the main section.
Incorrectly displaying no cover art in the bottom, but in the main view it shows it
In terms of functionality, this app is strong but with room for some improvements (but what app doesn’t?). Perhaps the ability to rewind songs might come in handy but for the most part, with the promised updates, it is very capable.
Conclusion
Overall this app is a great little package worth every penny that cuts out overused features and lets us appreciate an entire album for what its worth. Since using it I have found myself listening to entire albums much more than before and it opens up a whole new experience rather than skipping from track to track sporadically until I find a song I like. Despite its minimalism, I find Audium very functional and fun to use, and it takes little to no time to get a hang of the controls. Its (almost) everything you need to enjoy your music, without a clunky interface getting in the way.