Fall In Love with Music Videos All Over Again with VEVO HD

Who doesn’t love music videos? We were all teenagers once, rocking out to MTV and VH1 as we watched songs from our favorite artists unfold in an artistic drama on the screen.

For a very short while, Apple had a section where you could watch free music videos on iTunes, but this was quickly replaced by paid downloads, leaving a void for free music video content for Apple fans. Vevo HD fills this void for iPad owners and brings a ton of great music videos for music fans of all types, no big downloads or expensive purchases necessary. Today we’ll go over the app’s features and interface and discuss whether or not you should download it.

Getting Started

When you first open the app, it’s deceptively simple. I saw a slideshow with a few videos and naturally assumed that this app didn’t have much to offer.

However, when I started digging around, I realized that Vevo HD gives you access to a huge library of music videos from an impressive span of artists. The content is ad supported in the form of the occasional commercial before a video, but these are well worth sitting through for the mountain of content available here.

Apart from the featured section above, there are five other tabs, each providing a different way to browse the video collection.

Videos and Artists

The “Videos” section features a grid showing all the most recent content. The bright and crisp thumbnails contrast beautifully on the black background, giving the app a classy feel.

You can scroll down and browse through the offering, enter a search or filter the videos by category, time and genre. Everything from Eagle Eye Cherry to Katy Perry is present so no matter what you’re into, you’ll likely find something to suck you in right from the start.

The “Artists” tab is essentially the same as the “Videos” tab, only instead of seeing individual videos, you see a grid of different bands and artists to scroll through. All of the filters from the previous section are present here as well.

When you tap on an artist, you are taken to a page containing a photo, the available videos for that artist and even their Twitter feed and tour dates.

Playlists, Music Map and History

Vevo HD gives you the ability to create playlists of videos to come back and watch later. This is implemented really nicely across the app in the form of a button and the very bottom right of the screen. When pressed, a little drawer pops up from the bottom and “+” symbols appear on every video thumbnail. Simply press the “+” to add the videos to your playlist.

When you bring up the Playlists tab, you can browse through all of the playlists created and submitted by other users. This is a great way to discover new content that you might not have given a shot otherwise.

The next tab is the “Music Map” feature. Here you can check out what’s popular in your area. Once you allow the app to determine your location, a Google satellite map will pop up showing your location and a list of videos people near you have been listening to. You can also change locations to quickly see what’s popular in LA, New York, etc.

The final tab is “History,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a quick list of everything you’ve watched. Don’t worry, if you’re embarrassed by all of those Bieber hits in your history, you can easily clear this section.

Watching a Video

Tapping on any video will bring it up in the full-screen player. While the video loads you are greeted with interesting trivia about different artists. The full-screen video controls are pretty standard and include the playhead and video control buttons along with other options like “Add to Playlist” and social network sharing.

If you exit full-screen mode, the video keeps playing and a list of related videos pops up. This is yet another feature that keeps you hooked and watching video after video.

Worth a Download?

I’m actually really impressed with this app. It could’ve easily been a mess of poor usability and slowly loading videos, but it isn’t that at all. Instead, it’s a well-design, intuitive and downright addicting way to browse an awesome selection of free music videos.

I had a lot of trouble getting through this review because I kept getting distracted by the app. Watching Michael Jackson’s amazing rendition of “Come Together” inevitably leads to sitting through the full “Thriller” video, which then leads to the discovery of the bizarre claymation film “Speed Demon.” Just like that, over 30 minutes had gone by and I hadn’t written a thing! It’s definitely not common for me to spend such a big chunk of time in a single app.

So the answer is a big “yes.” If you’re a music fan (and who isn’t’?), go download Vevo HD. The next time you need to kill a few minutes, chill out with your favorite artists and videos from the past few decades.

As with just about any video app, there is the occasional crash, but they’re really quite rare. On the whole, the app is fairly stable and hardly gave me a single issue the entire time I used it.

Conclusion

To sum up, Vevo HD is a fantastic app for browsing and viewing music videos from all of your favorite artists. The app and the videos within are completely free so there’s really no reason to not go to the iTunes store and grab your download now!

Give Vevo HD a shot and let us know what you think in the comments below. Also be sure to let us know if you’ve found any other music video apps that you would recommend.