One of the flagship features on these iDevices is the music-playing capabilities. Of course, if you listen to music as much as I do, you will be on the constant search for some new tunes. This is where Discovr Music comes into the picture. This nifty little application allows you to find new music literally in a tap.
Let’s dive into it after the jump.
So Many Options
The first step to finding new tunes is learning how to use the application. Discovr Music uses a series of taps, motions and gestures to do different functions.
A simple music map (Left); navigate using various gestures, motions, and taps (Right)
To start, just search up a band of your choice — I looked up one of my favorites, the Freelance Whales. Six similar bands will branch out from your selection. So for Freelance Whales, we have awesome bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Matt & Kim, and Foster the People stemming out from the original band. From each of these groups, you can tap once to spawn an additional six related bands (i.e. if I tapped on Matt & Kim, six new bands similar to Matt & Kim will appear on the screen).
Say I wanted to learn more about a particular band I discovered. By double-tapping on the band’s photo, users are greeted with a new page with tons of information on the artist. By tapping and holding the band’s photo, you are greeted with a few other options such as playing the artist’s top tracks, playing similar artists, or even looking at the artist’s profile in another music app like Rdio.
Over time, your music map will grow rather large. Luckily, by pinching in and out, you are able to see the map in its entirety or just focus on certain parts of it. Or, you can just start fresh by shaking your device.
Wait, Who Are These People?
Choose a band. That’s right. Any band. No matter how obscure they are, you will find them in Discovr Music’s servers. Quite honestly, this is a great feature as it allows you to find bands that you would never have found otherwise — which I suppose is the point of this app in the first place.
Discovr Music makes it very easy to learn more about the bands you have discovered.
Learning about these new bands is as easy as, well, a double tap. As mentioned before, by double-tapping on an artist, you will be greeted with a page with all the information you would possibly want to know about it. Everything from the band’s biography, blog posts, reviews, tweets, and other social links are available from this page.
I found that two features from this page could use a little bit of work. Both the Songs and Videos features are not all that great. Videos are pretty new to the app, so, like all new features, it needs some work. Depending on how videos are tagged and how well known the band is, the suggestions may not be accurate. In some instances, none of the videos that were associated with the artist even had their songs in them, which is obviously a problem.
The Songs section of the application does what you think it does — it plays previews of the artist’s songs. However, I have found that the previews are often pulled from the beginning of the song; thus, you will only hear the first thirty seconds of each track. That being said, you will get some pretty crappy previews more often than not, and may not even get into the actual song.
Judging by the Cover Art
Although it is common in universal apps for the iPad app to be better than the iPhone counterpart, I feel as if Discovr Music’s iPhone app is far superior to the iPad application, design-wise, that is. The developers really did use the small amount of space they had to work with to their advantage.
The interface is simple yet effective, and photos of artists add a nice pop of color to the app
You could tell that the designers really thought that “less is more” while designing this application. This idea was definitely pulled off. A greyscale color scheme and the use of Helvetica give the application a very basic yet professional look. Plus, it directs your attention towards the bands themselves instead of other aspects of the user interface. The photos of the bands also give an extra pop of color which always looks nice.
Where this application really shines is on the artist pages. All of the different content layers are separated into their own individual pages, which allows you to really focus on one thing at a time. This also keeps these pages clean, simple, and uncluttered. It’s also impossible to get lost because of the navigation bar on the bottom, and all of your social features are displayed clearly on the top of the page with neat little icons.
Be the Groupie
Discovr Music boasts several features to help support the new artists that you have found. For one, the app allows you to purchase the band’s music from several different places such as iTunes or Amazon. They also give links to sites or services like MySpace, Last.fm, or Spotify so you can listen to their music in-depth.
The application also has features to share the great new music you have found. You can easily send messages containing the band you have found through Facebook, Twitter, or Email. However, it does not provide a link to the particular artist, which is a little bit of a flaw.
The Verdict
Overall, Discovr Music is a great way to find some new tunes. Their music library is huge and even contains bands so underground that you can feel the Earth’s core. Music suggestions are fitted to your taste, and the application makes it really easy to buy new tracks. The awesome design is another big plus as well.
As with every other application, Discovr Music is not flawless. Cruddy song previews, unreliable video sources, and flawed sharing services detract from the quality of this application. Regardless, I recommend this application because never before has finding new music been as simple as a tap.