SoundCtrl » App Review

Now Playing: Twitter #Music Launches on Browser and Mobile

SoundCtrl — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:02:31 +0000

Twitter #Music is now up and running as Twitter announced this morning on Good Morning America and via a blog post.

According to the post, which claims that the new service will “change the way people find music,” Twitter #Music will utilize twitter activity to “detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.” It also places an emphasis on what music artists themselves are listening to and follows a spiderlike web of tweets and engagement to draw connections between artists with similar tastes.

Currently, the service pulls its music from iTunes, Spotify, or Rdio. By default, previews will come direct from iTunes but Spotify and Rdio subscribers can log into their accounts to access full streams… pretty smart to engage across multiple platforms rather than creating a clear alliance with just one and cannibalizing other listener activity. Twitter also claims that it will make a concentrated effort to “explore and add other music service providers.”

The browser version is very user friendly and is reminiscent of We Are Hunted’s design, with artist’s images loaded into squares that when clicked, allow you to listen to the track, follow the artist, compose a tweet or go purchase the song. Also pulled from We Are Hunted’s interface is the ability to rearrange the checkboard based on filters like “Popular,” which sources music that is trending on Twiiter, “Emerging” which claims to find hidden talent found in tweets, “Suggested” which suggests the music your favorite artists listen to, and “Now Playing” which is music tweeted by the people you follow.

All in all, it’s a bold move from Twitter which as long desired to enter the music space. Twitter is ripe with data that can make connections between fans, artists and music that is visible nowhere else. The app is available in the App Store and the web version is live now.

SoundHound & Rdio Launch New Andriod Tablet App

SoundCtrl — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:36:14 +0000

By Josh Ong via The Next Web

“Music search company SoundHound has released a new tablet-optimized version of its Android app with a redesigned layout, improved music discovery and Rdio as a launch partner.

SoundHound, which has over 130 million users worldwide, says the app has been designed specifically with the Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire and Kindle HD in mind… ‘By utilizing the tablet’s larger screen space and leveraging new tools from Google, users can much more fluidly navigate within the app and have access to more content in one location,’ VP James Hom said in a statement.”

To check out all of the SoundHound 5.3 updates and for the rest of the story, visit www.nextweb.com

App Review: DeliRadio

SoundCtrl — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:00:25 +0000

by Dave Mainella

Last fall, SoundCtrl discussed the idea of hyperlocalism – “creating super-niche products for a specific community”. The trend continues with DeliRadio’s app for local social radio.

DeliRadio, also accessible through its website, offers free, location-based, streaming music. The hyperlocal service gives users the opportunity to listen to emerging bands performing nearby and established artists passing through town on tour.

The app performs accurately and easily. After installing and opening the app on your iPhone or Android device, the immediate call-to-action is a simple “Quick Play,” creating a playlist based on your automatically detected geographical location. The music begins, with most of the visual space consumed by the track’s artwork. The app also displays basic information, including artist, track name, and when and where the band is playing next. A simple music player at the bottom allows pause, skip, and back-track functionality.

Tapping the info link displays a biographical write-up of the band, all upcoming shows for the next two months (powered by Songkick), and links to the band’s websites and social media outlets. There are also links to directly purchase music. DeliRadio boasts that they do not take any commission or fee out of digital sales through their app.

A glance at the entire location-generated playlist reveals an incredibly wide range of bands performing at most nearby venues over the next two days. While I’m sure the list is far from complete (New York is certainly a saturated music environment), it offers more than enough of a selection to choose from, or simply listen to. DeliRadio has 100% artist consent for streaming music.

DeliRadio also includes a database of local venues where each venue lists all of their upcoming shows, a trending and featured category, and filters by proximity, genre, and date.

Signing up for a free account grants access to additional features like bookmarking tracks and artists, creating and saving your own stations, and sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and directly from phone to phone – social aspects of the app that seem key to its sustainability and growth.

The app performs exactly as advertised, making it easy to find nearby shows and preview the music. It would be interesting (and perhaps nearly impossible) to note the effectiveness in drawing concert-goers.

The DeliRadio app is available for free at the iTunes App store and through Google Play.

Social Platform Music Apps: Facebook or Spotify?

SoundCtrl — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:16:40 +0000

by Carolyn Heneghan

In today’s online social landscape, apps reign king. They’re on your phone, your desktop, your tablet, and even on your social media profiles. Facebook and Spotfiy both started out as non-app platforms. But as the app technology rose in popularity, both have assimilated themselves to the trend and added its functionality to their respective services.

As a more generalized social media presence, Facebook’s apps run the gamut, but many of them are indeed geared to music—a popularly shared subject on walls across the globe. Spotify began as a free music streaming service, so its apps are all music-based. Both have partnered with developers to share the best types of music apps for their respective audiences, and both have seen certain apps and certain types of app rise above the rest.

What Can Music Apps Do for Me?

Apps for both services cover a wide range of music-related topics. The most popular apps tend to involve music discovery, connecting with artists, and creating and sharing playlists. But there are apps that help you find lyrics, create a hangout for you and like-minded listeners, stream radio stations, watch and share music videos, or receive “push” notifications for music and video releases, tour announcements, and so on. There are plenty of musician-facing apps too that allow bands and solo artists to connect with their fans in new and innovative ways.

Facebook’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

The top two most-used apps are actually both band-facing, so we will skip them for the purposes of this list. They are BandPage and My Band, which both enable bands to customize a Facebook hub containing all of the information about their tours, music, pictures, Twitter and wall postings, and so on. My Band also allows fans to add and share music as well as buy tickets to a show or even music from right there in the app.

Spotify. A bit ironic, Facebook’s otherwise top used app is Spotify itself. Along with 2.2 million other users, you can connect with your Facebook friends via shared playlists that you’re currently listening to or that you’d like to share with a friend.
Music (iLike). At 1.5 million users, iLike creates a music tab on your profile that allows you to do a little of everything, including create and share playlists, receive concert notifications, discover and share new music, and even play the iLike Challenge to prove your music smarts.
Bandsintown. More than 4.2 million users use this app to keep track of when and where their favorite artists will be coming to their town, and musicians can share with their fans their tour schedule and ticket info. The service reaches over 20 million unique Facebook users per month.
YouTube Video Box. Also not a shocker, this app, used by 850,000 people, allows users to share their favorite videos to their profile and Facebook Pages. In addition to the standard YouTube share function, you can also view your friends’ favorite videos and sync your YouTube.com account. The YouTube app itself came in sixth/eighth place with 590,000 users.
iLike this Artist. In relation to the other iLike app, iLike the Artist lets musicians show off their fan count across the iLike network and add an “iLike this artist” button to their band page.

Spotify’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

Spotify released its ten most popular apps of 2012 with its 2012 Spotify Review of the Year.

TuneWiki. This app allows you to sync lyrics and auto-scroll through them. You can use it to sing along to all of your favorite songs, matching the words as you listen through it.
Soundrop. Soundrop presents a series of themed chat rooms based on the genres, music, and artists you want to talk about with fellow music lovers.
We Are Hunted. This music discovery app places emphasis on “cool” and emerging artists. Based on what you listen to, the app recommends playlists in tune with what other users are listening to.
Last.fm. Last.fm offers personalized recommendations based on the music that you choose. It was Spotify before Spotify existed, but it is moving more toward being a social network for music.
Pitchfork. Brought to you by the magazine of the same name, this indie-lover’s Bible is the “Essential Guide to Independent Music & Beyond” and a companion to the Pitchfork website.

Facebook’s Top 5 vs Spotify’s Top 5

Besides Spotify and YouTube, Facebook’s top apps are generally there to link bands and fans, allowing them to share music and information between them. Facebook is the more social platform of the two and encourages sharing with friends and fans at every turn. So it should come as no surprise that this is the primary function for all of the top 5 (top 7 including the skipped two) Facebook apps.

Spotify is a bit more single user-focused, and most of the service’s top apps are geared toward that individual user’s ability to discover new music, with the exception of Soundrop. As Spotify is still a music streaming service at its core, it also comes as no surprise that its top apps would mostly deal with music discovery and personalized playlists.

Both services are free, and both offer a different selection of apps that meet different needs. Based on your personal and social preferences, either of these platforms may have just the right app to enhance your music experience.

App Review: Radio Cloud Lite

SoundCtrl — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:15:11 +0000

By Steven Zeisler

Radio Cloud Lite, developed by Giles Chanot, is a free, interactive radio app for all iOS devices that allows you user access to nearly 200 of the very best, most popular radio stations from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and Spain.

Working through a Wi-Fi or 3G / LTE connection, the app constantly streams music from a variety of stations that are set up on a stunning 3D user interface that hovers in front of your eyes amidst – yes, a background of clouds – either in landscape or portrait mode.

As soon as the app fires up, it’s streaming music from a random radio station around the world. With a simple swipe of the finger, you can delegate which station to turn to, and what’s awesome is that the current radio station fades out as another smoothly fades in, without interruption in listening. From classic rock to talk radio to sports broadcasting, the Radio Cloud Lite doesn’t miss a beat. It is intuitive, natural, and just plain smooth. Plus, you can pause and resume any radio station at any time. Radio Cloud Lite even supports multitasking because it can run in the background if you get out of the app.

Upgrade to Radio Cloud for just $0.99, and you have a number of added on features including the ability to:

Filter by country and genre
Uninterrupted listening because of no ads
Airplay to wireless speakers, AppleTV, etc.

There are, however, some crucial features missing. This includes the ability to save your favorite stations and the stations do not provide artist / title information for each song. Hopefully this will eventually change with added improvements.

So if you’re looking for a simple music app to zone out to, Radio Cloud Lite is a good music companion.

Musicplayr finally goes mobile for iOS

SoundCtrl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:49:03 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

We have been following the exploits of German-founded music sharing startup Musicplayr, since the summer when they started to get the ball rolling on awareness in the United States. Back in October, momentum hit a big high for the company after a €500,000 funding boom came into Musicplayr’s possession. Summing things up for those who may be hearing this company name for the first time, Musicplayr is a free service centered around the idea of sharing the music one loves –via existing outlets like SoundCloud, YouTube and Vimeo– and the company doesn’t stray far from this mantra.

That focus may sound one-dimensional against the rest of the social media community and every other multi-functional platform out there, but founding partners Thorsten Lüttger and Stefan Vosskötter have made it clear for a long time, even devoting an entire blog post to explaining their stance, that they want to cut away from the excess of chatter and overstimulation so Musicplayr can stay true to what its name implies: a place to play, share, and express your favorite musical tastes.

One of the most anticipated aspects of Musicplayr’s development and march forward in the worlds of music and communication is the arrival of its iOS mobile app. Both Lüttger and Vosskötter have known when this piece of the puzzle finally got put into place, that they would become a much stronger contender in the field. Over the past few months, Musicplayr has been steadily adjusting and fine tuning its main web interface, taking user feedback –both from their initial private beta period and after going public– into constant consideration and sometimes implementing changes to the interface directly in response to an expressed concern or suggestion of something to improve user experiences.

One example, was the later addition of a bookmarking tab. Despite knowing Musicplayr had no app to this point, the founders wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to integrate Musicplayr into their everyday internet routines and not feel incumbered by having to specifically type in the web address and login for each song a person wants to share. After a person has created a profile, there is also a keyboard shortcut menu available to help streamline use even more. In this way, users were being prepped as much as possible for the mobile experience and accompanying interface that would ultimately make sharing favorite songs as easy as pushing “Like” on Facebook.

Now, for the mobile interface itself:

If a person has no Musicplayr profile prior to downloading the app, they can create one right after downloading and do so just as they would on a regular browser; via Facebook or a separate email address. If one wants to explore before signing up, there is a “Discovery” option that brings up a tile-like display of many existing profiles showing a user’s photo, their username and the first few of their listed preferred genres. One can then tap any of these profiles and see what songs a person has on their public playlists.

After signing up and getting a profile of one’s own, what one will see is an interface that is clean, runs smoothly and gives easy access to the core features of Musicplayr. At the bottom of the screen, a fixed option bar has buttons for the following:

Home screen or main music stream: Think of this like a newsfeed of the music posted by those you follow.

Individual Profile: This displays much like the web browser with one’s public playlists in view. To view a person’s profile text, tap the username and their followers and description appear.

The Discovery Menu: The same as what’s described above, tapping this will bring up others’ profiles for browsing and following or just liking individual songs to your profile that others have posted.

Tagging Screen: This seems to be the newest and most unique feature to the mobile app versus web access. Tapping this brings users to a screen with the Musicplayr mascot and a simple instruction to just give a single tap or shake of your phone to start a quick recording of whatever music that is playing around you. Following the sampling, the player will come back with the artist, title and album name of the specific track, as well as displaying videos circulating the web that feature the same artist. Having tested this element against music off a distantly playing, low volume television and active iTunes in a semi-noisy environment, the recorder and results given showed themselves to be very quick and accurate.

Overall, Musicplayr’s new app absolutely delivers, in spades, what Vosskötter and Lüttger have been working toward since they began. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Musicplayr forges ahead even faster now, than the speed it is already traveling with an app this solid. If the company continues listening to their users with such a high degree of immediate and serious response, that customer service factor can help set them apart as grounded and extremely likable, even if Musicplayr eventually rockets to the corporate stratosphere of social media.

Musicplayr can now be downloaded worldwide, free from the iTunes Store.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1

App Review: Turntable’s Piki App for Social Music Sharing

SoundCtrl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:49:11 +0000

by Dave Mainella

The creators of Turntable.fm are at it again, bringing us the newest addition to the online world of social music discovery. Introduced earlier this week, Piki combines several elements of online radio and powerful social features to present a platform that continues to emphasize Turntable.fm’s belief in the interpersonal component of the music listening experience.

The concept of Piki is to provide an online and mobile-based radio app that relies on human involvement and personality rather than Pandora-like algorithms. “There’s still demand to listen to music that’s powered by other people,” Billy Chasen, Piki co-founder and CEO of Turntable, explained via TechCrunch. Rather than investing users with a real-time, virtual listening space like at Turntable.fm, Piki is a simple and “laid-back” experience. Users start the app and press play without having to browse and search for music.

Upon joining the app, users are automatically following a short list of people (including the co-founder) so that hitting the play button means Piki immediately begins to stream music hand-picked by these “friends.”

The stream is impressive, browsing through songs “picked” by friends you follow. It filters out genres that you don’t want to listen to, courtesy of an easily-accessed “genres playing” feature that includes an amazing collection of musical styles – everything from Celtic Rock to Psychobilly.

Sharing a similarity with Pandora, Piki allows users to fast-forward to the next track but does not allow for the on-demand playing of specific songs. You’ll have to use a different platform for that. “If I want to listen to a single album on repeat, I’ll use Spotify,” Chasen explains.

But this doesn’t leave a listener to the mercy of the computer. Rather, it’s the collective Piki social network that determines the quality of music. The Twitter-esque social features mean that everyone contributes and shares tracks they like, either by searching and “picking” a song or by “repicking” a song that others share. Users can leave a comment with a “pick” or “repick” for others to read, and they can label a song with a “reaction” that best identifies with the music e.g. rock, fist pump, jam, love.

Piki makes it easy to “pick” songs from YouTube, Rdio, Pandora, or other music sites by offering a bookmarklet to install in your bookmarks bar. When you hear a song you like, clicking the bookmarklet automatically identifies the track, “picks” it, and posts it to your Piki profile. A user’s profile and Piki identity is made up of recently liked songs via “picks” and “repicks.”

Piki is currently only available as an invite-only beta for desktop, and co-founder Billy Chasen emphasizes that “Piki is for mobile.” Keep and eye out for the iOS app, available in the App Store in the next month or so. It’s easy to imagine this human-powered radio app catching fire in a mainstream social music marketplace.

Watch the demo video for Piki below, and head over to their website to request an invite.

App Review: TinyVox Update Helps Improve The Memo-taking of the Future

SoundCtrl — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:17:01 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

Originally released in November of 2010 by creator Srini Kumar, TinyVox took voice memos to a whole new level. Instead of long texts, or a call that goes to voicemail, (because really, who picks up their phone anymore?), TinyVox allows users to record a voice memo, and then send it to a friend. The app allows you to send messages via email, Facebook and also Twitter, as well as record memos as mp3s to use for yourself.

The newest version of the app (updated at the end of November), features a brand new, easier interface for the iPhone 5. Upon launching, it is immediately apparent that this is a voice-recording app: the interface is literally a tape recorder. You have the option to type text that will record into a voice message, or record a file yourself (using the buttons at the bottom). The home screen also gives you the option to send it various ways: email, Twitter, chat, Facebook, and YouTube.

Once you record the sound and are ready to send it, the screen gets much busier. Looking a little bit like a ‘90s Internet pop-up, the app allows you to send the sound as a link, or as a YouTube “talking picture.”

The “talking picture” is basically the choice to send a photo with the audio file via YouTube. You can either take a picture of yourself, or use photos from the Library.

Although this feature is cute, it doesn’t seem particularly useful. More useful is the transcription use of the app, which allows you to take (or type) a standard voice memo and play it back—and then, if needed, share it with friends, colleagues, or classmates. The integration of social media certainly gives this app a boost up over other standard video recording apps.

What is also useful is the ability to title files. Instead of audio 1, 2, or 3, you can label exactly what the memo is about. Then, you can also share directly via social media: most usefully, you can tweet an audio link to a person by typing in their Twitter handle.

The biggest update to the app was actually the version before this one, in which Facebook was fully integrated. It allowed you to directly post or chat an audio link/file to someone’s profile. It also adjusted the toggle buttons and improved the quality of the audio sharing, as well as the audio file itself.

This latest update seems more aesthetic than anything else. Of course, there is no doubt that a cleaner, easier interface makes a better app. The simpler anything is to use, the better and more effective it works. The UX quality has also been improved, and continual improvements to the quality of the social media tools within the app certainly give it an edge over the competition. Since it is more than just a voice memo tool, having a way to share memos with others beyond just putting it on a physical drive is clever. Therefore, this particular update where the Facebook and Twitter were made more readily available and faster was definitely an improvement overall.

While the concept of TinyVox is exciting, the execution can be a little confusing. However, if the maker continues to improve the social media integration, and cleans up the screen even more, it will definitely become a useful tool for not just sharing funny jokes with your friends, but for studying (as it suggests), work, and even day-to-day activities. Although the app still has room for improvement, the continual updates show promise.

GoMusic is bringing two business opposites together

SoundCtrl — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:27:19 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

The rivalry between Android and iPhone is notable. Subsequently, these phone brands and their inner programs provide users with their amenities, (e.g. apps, music, books), through the also opposing iTunes Store and Google Play Store.

Apps to cross these services are not new to the mobile scene, though apps that are official, safe, and openly recognized by a competing company, usually do not jump to the foreground. When it comes to the of music, Dimitry Sokol of Sokolware LLC, has proven such apps can come to exist, as Sokol has connected the Apple iOS with Google Music through his app GoMusic, which was recently updated late last month. This app was first introduced to the world last year but has gone through several incarnations and updates to perfect its purposes, currently at v. 2.8.

The main features of GoMusic are essentially those of Google Music but attained through an iPhone or iPad. As stated above, when brought up in a user’s iTunes player, the full description for GoMusic emphasizes first and foremost that it is, “The only app with real Google authentication!!!!” Syncing is the primary function involved but GoMusic extends beyond a one-dimensional connection to successfully integrate other Apple hardware functions like AirPlay and Apple TV and have the two work well together for more options to stream using one’s iOS device.

The other main set of features include:

Playlists – Create new, delete old, edit, and access auto-playlists generated from actions like purchasing music, recently played or Google’s version of the Genius function: Instant Mix.

Multi-Tasking Usage – Some music apps aren’t able to play if you want to minimize the program to use something else. Some are able to do this but are not able to integrate the album artwork like the i-device’s native player. GoMusic does both and works with the same background or shortcut play controls users access in between apps.

Secure Data – The mixing of two major services and devices might cause unease about user data but GoMusic has two-step authentication and is always using a HTTPS connection with encryption by default.

Music Transfer – Any tracks a user wants to hear while without a wi-fi or network connection can be downloaded to their device for offline playback.

Music Search – Just like in the Google Play Store and Apple’s native music app, users can search within their many tracks by artist, album or individual song.

Pandora-Style Rating – Each track that plays can be given a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” and the collection of tracks a user gives the former will automatically become another available playlist.

As a complete app, GoMusic appears to have conquered the technical schism dividing Google and Apple’s music stores, while not drastically altering what i-device users are accustomed to with their existing native apps and accompanying fluid functionality. The idea of having the best of both worlds might make GoMusic sound too good to be true but Sokol seems determined to provide a quality app, by evidence of the fact that he requests direct emails if customers have feedback to give or problems to address. The only quandary that sticks out among GoMusic is the question of how big a consumer base there is for this app. Google Play isn’t the primary music provider for i-devices, so how many iPhone or iPad users might there be with an extra Google Music account with which to extract and access music? The two stores have their differences in interface and perhaps in the occasional pricing but those factors are irrelevant to the part where customers already have music to listen to and simply want another branch of compatible access.

GoMusic is available for $0.99 in the iTunes Store.

Songful: With Your iPad, Air Guitar Like a Pro

SoundCtrl — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:28:11 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Tech-savvy air guitarsmiths will get a kick out of the latest mobile guitar simulator, Songful, which transforms your iPad into a musical instrument you can really strum. This song-based app will have you playing along with your favorite tunes in no time—no matter what your musical experience level might be.

The app draws from Tel Aviv-based music apps developer instruMagic’s latest gesture-controlled technology and Ultimate Guitar, the largest community of guitarists and largest database of chords and lyrics. Even if you have never picked up a guitar, this app will make you feel like a virtuoso within minutes. And with such an expansive music catalog available, you should be able to find all or most of your favorite songs to jam out to—whether by yourself or surrounded by a group of friends.

Songful’s clean and user-friendly opening page displays some of the digital library’s top songs against a light wooden background resembling the body of an acoustic guitar. Simply click a song to load it into the app.

The first time you load up the app, you’ll receive instructions that detail how to use the virtual guitar. Close the instructions if you’ve already figured out what you’re doing. If you ever need to access the tutorial again, click the Help icon at the bottom of the main screen.

While you’re playing, you’ll strum along by swiping across the screen, and you’ll tap the arrow button in the top right-hand corner to switch to the next chord. After the chord is changed, continue swiping to hear that next chord played aloud, and you’re all set to play the full song. There are even different versions of the chords with ratings for their accuracy that you can choose between by selecting Versions from the bottom of the screen.

Note that there is no single string capability, only the strumming of entire chords. You can also click the back arrow button underneath the chord changer to switch back to the previous chord.

The music itself doesn’t play along from within the app—though you certainly could play it in the background yourself—so you can strum the chords at your own pace. This could also help intermediate to professional players practice the chords of a song to play on the own guitars once they’ve learned it on the app.

The chords are written above the lyrics to demonstrate when the appropriate time is to switch chords, so feel free to sing along to help you keep the beat. You can also switch between guitar and ukulele for a wider range of accompaniment sounds.

The Hit the Deck option allows you to toss in some taps on the body of the app guitar, which increases the utility and breadth of sounds possible with the app. You can even play with vibrato by simply shaking the iPad after strumming the chord.

In terms of song selection, the music catalog contains up to 200,000 songs for you to choose from with unlimited access provided by Ultimate-Guitar.com. You can add songs to your Favorites list to make them available to play even when you don’t have an Internet connection. The Top 100 list, displayed on the opening screen, is also always accessible, even offline.

The songs are listed with the name of the song, artist, and level of difficulty—easy, medium, and hard. You’ll learn how to switch more quickly between chords while you strum to be able to learn and play the more difficult songs as you go along.

You can toggle between the lists of Featured apps, your Recent selections, and your Favorites using the top toolbar of the main page. There is also a search box so you can search directly for the tunes you want to play rather than browsing.

The app is a unique approach to tablature as well as a simple and fun way to make air guitar even more seamless and realistic—and now even technologically savvy. It allows you to not only learn and play along with an entire catalog of songs, but it also allows you to add your own voice and expression to the music itself.

Songful is available for download from the App Store for $2.99.

App Review: Shake up music sharing and discovery with Mixtape

SoundCtrl — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:54:18 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Nostalgia and ‘old school’ have been the name the game in music tech for while now. Tangible hardware and apps on our digital devices both have tried in many ways, to bring back either the function or aesthetic memory of tech from decades past. This strategy has so far, managed to nestle itself in a positive place among consumers. Endeavors like the Air Cassette and Cassette to iPod Converter are two examples that come across as clear throwbacks to the playback entity of the 1980s, each managing to gain a worthwhile consumer base.

A new addition to this marketing angle has recently been released and has just enough uniqueness to nudge its ‘niche neighbors’ aside for a spot of its very own.

Mixtape, the name of a new (currently iOS exclusive) app that was first launched about a month back on November 8, was announced formally last Friday. One of many minds that conjured up the app, is that of Jeff Theimer. Theimer is a well regarded member of the music industry, as Mixtape is hardly his first venture of widespread proportions. The New Noise and Music Foundation and Festival is a major, annual event, run under Theimer’s direction.

The experience Theimer has garnered over the years though projects like the one above, make it no surprise that he and the rest of the principal Mixtape team know the ‘what’s what’ of existing music app interest and popularity. Mixtape works together with the selection and sharing power of Spotify and Rdio to give users of either service, the ability to browse for, craft, personalize and share their special mixes with anyone within their reach via users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. Expressing intent of sharing is as quick as painless as tagging a friend using their name or Twitter handle.

Where crafting the mixes themselves is concerned, if there isn’t a hard and fast list already at the back of a person’s mind ready to select and send to someone, as described in the press release, “…mixes can be conveniently pulled directly from the tracks recently scrobbled on Last.fm or the bands and performers a person likes on Facebook.” Quoted also from the release, Mixtape’s CEO, co-founder (Nick Long), designer, co-founder (Darien Edwards), and another of the four co-founders (Michael Gaertner), respectively, sum up what they would like Mixtape to become –both in practical terms and in terms of how it represents the undefinable emotions of the music industry for musicians and listeners alike.

“We want to become the place where users can share music and engage with each other regardless of what music service they pay for.”
– Nick Long

“As digital music has become more prevalent and accessible, we’ve become somewhat dissociated with it. It used to take hours to put together a cassette mix. Meaning is lost when you hit randomize or a friend shoots you an email that links to a 500 song playlist they found online. We want to change that and make the mixes personal again, for the creator and the recipient.”
– Darien Edwards

”By sharing mixes of their own tracks or the music they personally like and listen to, we see a great opportunity for music professionals and artists to expand their connection with their fans…Services like Twitter and Instagram have allowed artists to build their brands by offering an intimate snapshot of their personal lives. We think sharing personal music tastes offers another great avenue for artists to connect with and grow their fan base.”
–Michael Gaertner

Mixtape is hoping to grow largely from the participation and frequent sharing of mixes by its most active users; both average consumers and featured musicians. This is a move similar to the user-inspired beginnings of Musicplayr, which displays profiles of popular users as suggestions for connecting, so newcomers have an easier time integrating the service into their regular cyber routine. The only downside is that without a Spotify premium account or Rdio account, half minute samples are all that one can access from a given playlist. However, to expand compatibility, Deezer and MOG are in the works of being integrated as well.

Available as a free app, Mixtape can be downloaded now from the iTunes Store.

See Mixtape in action below, soundtracked by a song that sounds suspiciously like The Black Keys’ – “Howlin’ For You”:

App Review: Music Buzz Improved In The Newest Version of Hype Machine

SoundCtrl — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:47:05 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

If you’re into music, you’re probably already familiar with Hype Machine (either the blog or the app). The newest version of Hype Machine as an app for iPhone and Adroid recently came out, and it markedly improves an already handy app.

The Hype Machine App and blog (developed by The Hype Machine Inc) combines social media and real time music trends to great effect. The basic idea is one place to get all the latest music that’s trending on the web and on blogs. Both the App and the Blog allow you to listen to the music as well. Basically it’s a great way to keep track of old artists, discover new, keep your pulse on the next big thing to hit the music scene—and then share it with your friends.

The newest update has revamped the App. As usual, you can sign up via the site, or sign in with Twitter or Facebook. The new home screen is very visual, and scrolls album art while showing you popular tracks. Down at the bottom is the feed which is continually updating to show you the latest music blog trends.

Hit the bar on the top right corner, and you are brought to a Menu. Via the Menu you can scroll through from What’s New, to Popular, to different Genres and a Blog Directory. You can also get to your own tracks, the feed, friends who are also sharing, your History, what Album’s are Premiering, the Hype Machine Radio Show, or access the Settings menu. Via settings, can also now enable Last.fm scrobbling.

It’s a lot of options, and perhaps some of them are extraneous—Album Premiere is strikingly similar to What’s New—but the Blog Directory is a nice touch, and Favorite and Popular are standard for these kind of apps.

Once you enter a category (or feed), the visual turns less busy. Each feed shows you a song list, no matter what the category. It also provides them with a small snapshot of album art on the side. It’s easy to scroll up and down, and the app is very fast. The connectivity and stability problems seem to be mostly solved, and tracks load extremely quickly.

The audio quality of song playback is clear, and songs continue to play even if you close the app. The app now also includes remix filters for the Latest and Popular feeds, so you can now find both original tracks as well as the different mixes that have been applied to them. It also gives you the option to do “No Remixes” or “Only Remixes.” This change was due to listener feedback, and it’s nice to see a maker actively incorporating changes from its app audience.

With the Friends feed, you can see what Friends are tuned in, as well as see what they’re listening to at the moment.

In essence, Hype Machine was always one of the better radio apps available. It’s unique approach to featuring music and artists via blogs instead of say, popular radio or Billboard, is the 21^st century way of being on the pulse of the music scene. The update has only improved a great app. Speedy, not as prone to crashing, and a clean, user friendly design, this is an app any music lover ought to have on their iPhone. Bloggers will find it useful to, in keeping track of what other music blogs are saying—and hopefully, by getting on Hype Machine’s radar to be included on their feed.

Webapp Review: Spotify Takes To The Web

SoundCtrl — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:26:38 +0000

By Alex Horowitz

Welcome to the internet, Spotify!

That’s right, at long last, it’s in beta, but it’s here (for some of us) — a webapp version of the music streaming service Spotify. It took being beaten to the punch by Rdio, MOG, Rhapsody, Pandora, etc. but it finally happened: Spotify, meet the web. Web, Spotify.

Gut Reaction

It’s slick, if safe. It’s a bit confusing, if only at first. It basically works, if only well enough for beta.

It’s here, and I’m glad.

Deeper Dive

Upon opening the webapp it becomes clear fairly quickly that this is a bit more complicated than a cut-and-paste of the desktop app onto a website. Let’s take a quick tour through Spotify’s web-based experience:

Design

While looking for a word to describe the look and feel of the webapp, the word that most consistently came to mind was safe. Spotify clearly borrowed its favorite bits from those that came before them, and what resulted was sort of the HTML5 ambition of Pandora mixed with the style of Rdio.

Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. To be crystal clear, I kind of like the design.

That said, they certainly didn’t push any boundaries. The quality of the app’s look and feel is on par with the level you would expect from the leader in music streaming — it’s slick, it’s smooth, and it’s fairly devoid of any pleasant surprises.

User Experience

Using the app really is not very complicated, but it does take some getting used to.

After a bit of playing around you’ll eventually realize that navigating the searching and browsing experiences takes place on the left side of your screen, and managing what you’re hearing at the moment takes place to the right.

The left side of your screen is fairly straightforward. The right…not so much.

Clicking on the image of the album or playlist you’re currently listening to (right side of your screen) slides, from right to left, an expanded view of the album or playlist, featuring the tracks on the album and other albums you might enjoy by the same artist. While it would seem to follow that clicking on the album art again, either where you clicked on it the first time or the second smaller album art that resulted from opening the album details, would close the expanded view, such is not the case. In reality, you have to find some unused real estate elsewhere on the page and simply click there to close the tray. Not complicated once you get the hang of it, just not what I was expecting.

What’s a bit more confusing is that you can open up more than one tray at a time. You can always close one tray at a time, but again, it’s not always immediately intuitive how.

Share buttons for the music you’re listening to are tucked away in a drop-down menu that only appears once you hover over the album art on the right hand side of your screen. Again, once you know where it is, it’s fine — but for a while I didn’t, and it was a bit frustrating.

That’s really this app’s user experience up and down — everything is somewhere, you just have to commit to finding it the first time if you want to fully enjoy the experience of using it in the future.

Syncing

Well, not quite everything is somewhere. For those hoping to manage your favorite music device with the webapp, please prepare for disappointment. So far such functionality has apparently not been built out for the beta at least.

Bugs

So far the app has only crashed on me once, and for all I know that was my browser’s fault. What’s more apparent in using the app so far is that my (admittedly pretty huge) starred playlist has yet to fully render with a complete list of all the music I’d put in there. I can find all the same music by searching for it, but sometimes I just like to shuffle through the playlist of all my favorites. Online, that’s not easy to pull off at the moment.

All that said, I can’t stress enough that I am reviewing a beta. I love Spotify, and I have faith that these issues will be resolved soon.

(Side note: Feel free to sound off in the comments if you’re reading this after the beta tag has been removed and keep us up to date on how these bugs are resolving themselves. I’ll be sure to check back myself as often as I can. What can I say, I’m a Spotify junkie.)

Conclusion

Spotify should have had a webapp long ago, and when it finally came I should have been running down the streets of New York screaming about how Spotify just changed the game. That’s what industry leaders do for their biggest fans, right? Rdio, Pandora, MOG, they’re all playing catch up to Spotify in terms of adoption and cache; and yet, here we are, slowly realizing that Spotify’s got nothing on the web-based experience of their competitors. Their offering is far from bad (seriously, I do like it!) but it’s not enough to be a reason to pick Spotify over any other streaming service.

Fortunately for Spotify, that’s not the point.

The point is that Spotify, whatever the reason might be, is the industry leader in music streaming. And now, it (almost) has a webapp. Soon it will also have a properly functioning webapp, (I can’t stress enough that this is beta country.) It won’t blow your mind in terms of new features or revolutionary design – which, again, I do like – but it exists. Bugs aside, it’s solid, and that’s a very good thing for a tech nerd with a Spotify subscription like yours truly.

App Review: Borderlands Granular – Harvesting Grains of Sound

SoundCtrl — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:08:02 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

The latest high-tech tool for musicians and music lovers, Borderlands Granular, enables users to control and evolve sound using the latest in gestural technology. Developed by Chris Carlson, the instrument favors the user’s gestural interactivity over the knobs and sliders common to most mixing and sound-harnessing instruments.

The demo video depicts a pliable graph interface that looks like something straight out of an iTunes visualizer, with almost psychedelic qualities to it. Waves of sound conjoin, break apart, and mesh in a dissonant bending of sounds that resemble what I’d imagine to be alien transmissions. How to get the app to look and sound like that takes some time spent familiarizing yourself with the complex and intricate gestural interface.

When you first load up the app, on screen you’ll find four overlapping and transparent boxes with sound waves depicted in stark white lines. Double-click any spot on these boxes and a blue circle will appear filled with seemingly erratic red dots, or grains, that fade to white and then pop up elsewhere within the circle. These red dots correspond to a sound located on that particular spot on the sound wave graphs. In the center, a white atomic nucleus spins and jolts around with the sound that’s played, tracking its waves in real time.

Dragging is one way to manipulate the interface. With single-finger swipes you can move the four graphs to separate and align in different ways as well as stretch and rotate them. You can also move the blue circle to different points of these graphs for different combinations of sound. Two-finger swiping over the circle allows you to spin it around at different angles, and it also allows you to tilt the background graphs.

Double-clicking the circle will pull up more circles and options for manipulating the sounds. For example, you can drag the volume circle away from the main circle to increase the sound, and you can drag the LFO or Hz function up and down to dictate the hertz at which the sounds are picked up and played. The pitch will modulate and bend the pitches of the sounds overall, and the overlap function will shrink the atomic nucleus closer into a line so less sounds will play at any one time. The number of voices affects how many different pitches you hear throughout the sound waves, and so on. You can play around with these endlessly to find different versions of the sounds you are creating.

When you double-click another spot on the sound wave graphs, another blue circle will appear and all of the sounds for all blue circles onscreen will play. Some graphs, for example, sound more like voices, and others sound more like chimes or notes on a synthesizer, so manipulating the smaller circles within each of these larger ones will create still more different varieties of what you’ll hear.

The sounds not only fade in and out; when wearing headphones, they also switch from ear to ear, enveloping you in your creations. Depending on where the graphs are lined up, the sounds will not only be dissonant, as the demo might suggest. At times they will sound in perfect if not erratic harmony, sounding something like wind chimes or bits of an overheard phone conversation depending on the frequency and duration of the sounds you’ve selected.

There are still more and more granular ways you can use this app, more than we could possibly go into in one review. The interface is incredibly expansive and intensive, and has innumerable possibilities built into it—only hindered by the extent of your imagination and ability to play around. But once you mess around with the app, particularly if you are a musician that is familiar with these types of programs, you will unlock the limitless creations of sound that you can control, manipulate, and evolve with just your fingertips.

You can also upload your own sounds by creating a playlist named Borderlands in iTunes and syncing it with the app. This way you can manipulate your own creations from other music tools in a unique, gestural-controlled way.

This iPad-only app has been optimized for the iPad 2 and 3. It will run on the first generation tablet but will perform much more slowly due to heavy audio processing requirements.

The app is available for download on the App Store for $3.99.

App Review: Record Your Inspiration On The Go With 4Trax

SoundCtrl — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:31:41 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

If you are a budding composer, or aspiring singer songwriter, or just like creating zany dialogue in funny voices, 4Trax should be on your downloadable must-haves.

Created by John Macaluso, the app is for iPhone users. When opening the app, the screen shows the four tracks on which you can record.

Recording is fairly simple. Hit the record button on the top, and then the button again to stop the track. You can play it back with the play button at the end.

To save a session, not an individual track, hit the tool button in the bottom right hand corner. You can also import or overwrite tracks using that option. Once you save, you can play back the entire mixed track with the master play button at the bottom.

To export the m4a file on your computer, hit export, which gives you the option to send to Facebook, your phone Library, or email.

The app so far has a few bugs. The Save session is sometimes unresponsive, and it is difficult to tell for certain if a track is recording—the indicator bars do not always respond.

For short sound scribbles (so to speak), 4Trax isn’t a bad app to have. If you want a more fun option to record your voice than the standard recorder on your phone, download the app. It won’t cost you much, and if you grab it this week, it won’t cost you anything at all. Normally offered for $0.99, the app is being offered for free for one week starting Monday, 11/12. Get it today at the App Store.

App Review: Playground.fm – Personalized Playlists from the People who Share your Taste in Music

SoundCtrl — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:34:33 +0000

By Steven Zeisler

Playground.fm is a 100% free, ad-less music app that allows you to browse playlists from people who share your taste in music. The entire platform of the app is dedicated to bringing the user a wide collection of music playlists, ranging from “Indie-ish Rock & Electro” to “Lazy Sunday” to “$WAG,” just to name a few.

Co-founder and head of product development Mehul Trivedi speaks for the Playground.fm team about their inspiration behind making the app. “We fell in love with the playlists created by music fans everywhere, but found it was too much work to find them. We wanted to build a music service that did the work of finding those playlists for us so we could just sit back and listen.”

The user interface of the app allows you to swipe down through a series of tiles organized into two columns, with each tile representing a single playlist. The tiles also show the current song that is playing, the cover art of that artists’ album, and the photo of the person that created the playlist.

Once you choose the desired playlist, you can follow the person who created it and share it to your Twitter followers. The app also gives you the ability to AirPlay your music to wireless speakers, Airport Express, AppleTV, etc.

Audition Your Playlists

In order to get your playlist featured in the app, the Playground.fm crew allows anyone – DJs, music bloggers, playlisters, and music fans everywhere – to submit their Spotify playlist.

“When users submit the playlists, our algorithms show the best playlists for you based on the music you listen to. So if you created a hip-hop playlist, your friends and people who like hip-hop would be able to see and listen to the playlist. The idea here is that what’s popular is boring, and what my friends are doing isn’t enough, so we can be smart enough to surface the right playlists for you and filter through all the noise that’s out there,” said Trivedi.

Think you know great music? Submit your playlist for consideration and download Playground.fm from the App Store.

App Review: Tonetic – Your Very Own Ringtone Creations

SoundCtrl — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:25:49 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Depending on your phone’s built-in ringtones, your ringer may be a catchy tune or your eardrum’s kiss of death. If you don’t have the time or money to browse purchasable ringtones, there are applications available to help you create your own ringtone. The Tonetic app from Space Lama aims to make every ring or text-tone you use your own personalized favorite.

There are three options for creating this customizable ringtone available from the app’s main menu: Record, Music, and Keyboard. In the Record section, simply hit the center right button to begin recording the sounds and voices around you with the app’s built-in and optimally sensitive microphone. As you record, the length of time you’ve been recording will be tracked, and the voice volume will adjust in real-time. Hit the stop button whenever you are finished.

You may prefer to take an existing song from your iTunes library and shorten a certain part to make it into your new ringtone. When you click Music, your iTunes library will pull up and you can browse, search for, or select your favorite track from the list.

If you’re a musician, you can show off your new or favorite melody with every phone buzz by recording it via the app’s keyboard. After selecting Keyboard from the main menu, practice your melody on the double keyboard and then hit the red button to start recording. You can choose from an array of instrument sounds, including anything from bells and choirs to classical guitars and slap bass, and you can also toggle between octaves using the plus and minus buttons.

Working on a new song but can’t figure out the next part? Plug the written sections into your ringtone to have handy for inspiration on the go.

If you’re satisfied with your recording—no matter which method you have chosen—you then have the option of editing this recording down into your maximum 40 seconds of sound for incoming calls or texts. You can slide the recording until the section you want fits between the two blue bars, which signal the beginning and end of the tone. The fades in and out will be adjusted accordingly with these blue bars. If you want the tone to be less than the maximum length, simply drag the front blue bar to the desired spot. When you are finished, give your new tone a name and it will be saved onto the app automatically.

On the main menu, you can access any of these creations in My Tones. View and edit any that you choose, or delete the ones you no longer like. The Tutorial option will show you how to export and sync ringtones between iTunSpes and your iOS devices.

To celebrate their launch, Space Lama is offering the Tonetic app for free download until Friday, November 9^th, when it will then go up to its original price, $1.99.

Grab Tonetic at the App Store.

App Review: DJZ Txt Takes Emoticons To A Whole New Level

SoundCtrl — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:00:23 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

Ever wished your emoticons came with sound effects? Or you could communicate your life solely through music? If these questions occurred to you, then download the free DJZ Txt App for your iPhone.

Created by DJZ Inc., the app itself is fairly simple. When opened, it gives you the option to sign in via Facebook or Twitter. It then takes you to the “emojis” (emoticons that have sounds connected to them) main page.

You can sample the “sound” by pressing the play button at the bottom. There are four pages of emojis you can swipe to for more message options. Combined, they offer (at least, according to DJZ) over 250 sounds and loops to create many, many, many songs.

You can combine both text and sound to create utterly unique messages, whether it’s creative commentary on how your day is going—or if you just want to send a song to a friend.

If you’re an amateur DJ, or just really want the next step up in emoticons, then download this app. The downside is, unless you sign in via Facebook or Twitter, it doesn’t allow you to send anything. Then again, you can always send a bunch of text messages to yourself and have a solo dance party in your pajamas while you bake chocolate chip cookies—or something. If that doesn’t appeal, well, don’t waste the space on your iPhone.

Download DJZ TxT at iTunes.

Cool Desktop Apps for Linking All Your Music Services Together

SoundCtrl — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:57:46 +0000

By Jason Epstein

If you’re like a lot of people, you want all your music at your fingertips at any given point in time. The creators of music source meshing desktop apps Tomahawk and Music Control understand this and have offered up a way that allows you to seamlessly bounce between playing music from a variety of sources, linking your iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and more together.

Tomahawk allows you to plug all your subscription services, networked libraries and online data repositories together. When Tomahawk looks for a song, it searches all your available content, both local and via cloud, and plays it from the best available source, though it’s not clear if “best” means the fastest to get playback on, the highest quality, or a mix. You can also connect to friends via Google chat, Twitter, and more to browse and play selections from their music libraries, sample their stations, and check out their customized playlists. Tomahawk also hooks you up with music charts, information on new releases, and the ability to make custom radio stations.

Even without downloading Tomahawk’s program, you can check out a cool area of their website where you can look up a song either by entering info into a regular search feature or by pasting in a link from Spotify, Rdio, or Deezer. I looked for the most obscure thing I could think of, a tiny band called Manic Subsidal from the mid-80s that eventually turned into The Offspring and found a solid half-dozen songs and live performances. Impressive.

The Tomahawk app is easy to navigate, with a plethora of customizable options and features that allow the user to make playlists and cultivate their music collections across everything from YouTube to SoundCloud. The interface is user-friendly and it will be interesting to see what the program is like once out of its Beta phase.

I’ll get this right out of the way first; Music Control is currently for Mac only. It also costs $5 instead of being free. It acts like Tomahawk, streamlining the playback process for Pandora, iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify into one app. Installation is a simple process and its lay-out is conducive to getting what you want quickly and efficiently. 20% of the profits go to VH1 Save the Music Foundation which was founded to bring music education back to public schools that don’t have the budget for it.

Though Music Control contributes to a great cause, it not for Windows and it’s not free. Tomahawk, on the other hand, is still in its Beta phase so it isn’t as slick looking as Music Control, but already it links through a ton more services than Music Control. For now, we’re going to recommend Tomahawk, though we’d also urge you to keep an eye out for subsequent release versions of each of these innovative music players that seek to amplify your music listening experience.

App Review: Beat Bang – Electronic Music Discovery in the Palm of Your Hand

SoundCtrl — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:08:13 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

The Belgian app developer La Mediatheque has developed a new genre-specific music discovery app, Beat Bang, which enables you to browse through hundreds of electronic music references. Spanning from 1988 to the present, this extensive library of music, bios, and articles lays out the massive history and evolution of this growing genre, making its information more accessible to both the biggest fan or the curious observer.

Electronic music has surged in popularity since its introduction into mainstream music scenes in the late 1980s. Though electronic music history actually extends as far back as the late 1800s, it would be nearly a century before the genre became widely known and popularized.

The basic requirement for inclusion in this genre is that the sounds are produced by electrically powered instruments, such as keyboards or synthesizers, electric guitars, drum kits, computers, and the like. Generally speaking, the trend is toward dance-based music, but many other aspects of the genre—such as deeper bass and circuit bending—have also risen in popularity.

Beat Bang aims to teach anyone interested in electronic music where the artists came from, how they were influenced, and what they have ultimately created for their audiences. The app’s interface is a series of colorful bubbles arranged in a chart based on year of release on the x-axis and BPM—or beats per minute, an important distinguishing characteristic for the electronic music genre—on the y-axis.

The BPM ranges from 180 in red bubbles at the top of the chart to arrhythmic in bluish-purple bubbles along the bottom. It is interesting to notice the progression of certain BPM styles over the years, such as:

An increase in arrhythmic and 60-100 BPM styles from the late 80s to the present
A steady high volume of songs in the 100-140 range throughout
A concentration of the 140-180 BPM style in the mid- to late 90s

To begin, simply click any of the bubbles, and you will zoom in closer to that portion of the chart, wherein any similar, larger year/genre bubbles will be displayed. Click the bubble again to see smaller album bubbles relating to that year/genre, and click once more on the album bubble to bring up all relevant information.

For example, 1998 and 148-152 BPM brings up Grooverider’s Mysteries of Funk, a short bio, playlist, and any similar artists or albums. There is an arrows icon which will bring you to a reference page on the La Mediatheque website, and there may be another icon with more info about the artist along the bottom of the bubble.

Everything from an artist’s birthplace and influences to culture and socio-economic background unfold with each expanding bubble. Every subgenre from trip hop, breakbeat, and industrial to techno and house is represented.

Perhaps the one drawback is that you have no idea what exactly you are clicking on with each bubble, but that’s also part of the fun of it. Whether you choose to be or not, you’ll be learning more and more about artists and albums you may have never heard of before, all around the same range of music you were searching for to begin with.

To zoom back out to the main chart, or to any other more general screen of info relating to that particular bubble, simply click the bottom circle of the zoom options on the left side of the screen. You can spend hours clicking, reading, listening, and comparing a seemingly unending treasure trove of beat-driven music and history available in the palm of your hand.

Beat Bang is available for free download from the Google Play store, and there is also a web version available (website is in French, so be sure to use a decent translator). The app is also coming soon to the iTunes store.

App Review: BAMM.tv App Brings HD Videos of Emerging Artists to iPad

SoundCtrl — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:49:38 +0000

by Dave Mainella

It is generally understood that music videos are not the most lucrative sources of revenue, particularly for emerging bands without the big budgets and resources of celebrity status. But BAMM.tv (Brick And Mortar Media) has spent that last year and a half building a reputation around confronting that norm, shooting and collecting an impressive database of live music videos. And last week, the San Francisco-based company released its app for the iPad platform, bringing its vast collection of up-and-coming artists to your fingertips.

BAMM.tv began shooting high-quality, exclusive video around the time of SXSW 2011 and continued to record select live events. They also invite, based on the recommendations of their editorial staff, emerging artists touring the area into their San Francisco studio.

As a result, BAMM.tv absolutely has the material to provide users with a very rich, exclusive, unique experience of watching emerging artists perform live in HD. Browsing BAMM.tv’s website reveals beautiful videos with great sound (and often great-sounding bands). The new app aims to bring that content to iPad with a different, more indirect approach.

The app’s appearance and interface is meant to represent a virtual music venue that encourages a complete, immersive fan experience and rewards interaction.

A sense of nostalgia is certainly unavoidable. An old-time TV displays music videos, and cassette tape icons and boomboxes help to realize the app as a fun, old-school game of sorts.

There are three distinct areas within the app. First, the Alley acts as the homepage, with select videos and music on the TV and boombox. The Lobby is the entryway into the app’s full experience. It offers a vending machine containing content that users can unlock with the points they accrue by repeatedly visiting, watching, and sharing. Finally, the Auditorium is where users explore videos and playlists, make their own playmixes, learn about new bands, and interact via the “engage” feature.

You can watch the introductory tutorial here:

The app seems to be designed first and foremast with a gaming experience in mind. It is meant to be thoroughly explored. It is not a device for the quick and clean organization of new music video content, and because of that, the app’s functionality can be a little distracting.

While it’s admirable that BAMM.tv is trying to offer a highly interactive experience for iPad users, it doesn’t necessarily pull a user into its virtual world in a convincing way. And the occasional sluggish response time and moderate learning curve can leave the user disenchanted, especially the content-minded user.

But it is an interesting first step for a company with a lot of potential.

BAMM.tv has identified a unique music video market while providing a high quality product that directly benefits artists. BAMM.tv doesn’t charge artists at all; rather, the artist is allowed to use the finished product as they like in accordance with the creative commons license, and BAMM.tv retains global distribution rights. BAMM.tv has partnered with several distribution platforms including Samsung, Chungwha Telecom, Selectv, MunduTV, and FuugoTV.

Bands gain free worldwide exposure and a paycheck. Artists and BAMM.tv split net profits from licensing and advertising 50/50, with profitability ultimately depending on the number of views a band’s video receives.

Try BAMM.tv’s new app for iPad for free, available in the iTunes store.

App Review: Jamn – Jam Buddy Meets Music Tutor

SoundCtrl — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:26:11 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Calling any guitarists or pianists who want to take their jamming skills to the next level, any beginners wanting to learn the basics of chords and scales, or any seasoned professionals wanting to sharpen the knowledge of their instrument—there’s a new app for you. Among many other tab and fingering apps on the market, Jamn (iPhone, iPad, iPod – $.99) from MiQ Limited aims to make the chords, scales, and transpositions involved more accessible to musicians of all skill levels.

Jamn is both a guitar tabsmith and a music theory professor in one handy app. Its main purpose is to make the theory behind jamming with your buddies or soloing over a quartet easier to understand in terms of theoretical notes, scales, and transpositions. It’s a pocket-sized visual, textual, and audio music reference that stands to revolutionize guitar teaching.

The interface itself actually resembles a throwback, non-touchscreen black iPod with its rounded rectangular shape and prominent wheel in the lower half. The first time you open the app, popup boxes walk you through the interface’s features and abilities with a video-like tutorial, which can be accessed at any time in the Info section of the menu.

The two ways this app is most effective are the chord tabulations, or fingerings, for guitar and piano, and the visual and audio explanation of major and minor scales and all of their intricate components. The fret board or keyboard—between which you can swipe—along the top of the screen displays dots corresponding to its letter note located on the wheel.

Major chord notes are coded white at default, and all notes then selected are color-coded and appear on the fret board in any place that would fit the selected chord. Selected notes and chords will be played aloud so you can play around with the app until you find chords you like.

Spin the wheel for more transposition options regarding the base major scale displayed, the note for which will be denoted by a blue line over the letter, as well as a red line over the chord’s native minor note. As you select different combinations of notes, they will be tabbed on the fret board, and the name of the scale in the center box will change when certain combinations within the scale make up different chords.

You can use the chord finder for the current key you’ve selected. For example, if C is selected, dragging the chord to A will display options for both its minor and minor7 scales. When one of those scales is selected, the appropriate notes will be tabbed on the fret board. The scale selector shows you different scales to work with corresponding to genre, such as classic, rock, and blues.

In the Menu, there are various settings you can toggle between, but there is also a wealth of information to help you work through the interface itself. For example, you can choose between the default dots or Roman numerals—the way that music theory classes are generally taught.

You can also select to see chromatic tones in either sharps or flats depending on how you’re used to reading music. What’s important is choosing whichever is easiest for you to remember—that is the point of this app after all.

As simplified as this app attempts to be, the features and interface can still be a bit overwhelming, particularly for beginners. To help you out, Jamn offers a number of other tutorials and music theory texts to accompany their app and ingrain this information as you go along.

The menu’s help section also provides a mapped out interface in case you forget which dots, letters and words mean what. Again, with such an expansive set of features included all on one map, this is another tool to help you navigate, especially if you’re just starting out with theory or playing your instrument altogether.

Without these Help and Information sections, I could see this complex yet highly functional app becoming an enigma to those with little or no theory knowledge starting out. But once you get the hang of it and familiarize yourself with all its intricacies, this app can be a phenomenal teaching, transposing, and jamming tool.

The Jamn app is available for download ($0.99) on the iTunes store.

App Review: Hum A Song To Kill The Boredom

SoundCtrl — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:45:46 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

After Shazam and Google essentially killed “what’s that tune?” bar games, the App Hum A Song revitalizes the concept, turning musical memory gaffes into a game.

Developed by Hibernum Studios, the app works on the principle of “Name That Tune,” except you are the singer. With thousands of well known songs in its library (including hip hop and rap), the player listens to a tune, hums it into the phone, then sends it to a friend. The friend listens to the “hum” and then sends back an equally amateur rendition of say, “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)” back for the player to guess.

When opening the app, you see the status of your friends, and what stage of the game they are playing. You can then choose between three game modes: Duet, Party, or Random. In Duet, you and 1 other friend play. Party mode allows up to 3 friends to play at once, while Random matches you up with another user of the app, luck of the draw style.

Once you’re in the game, you have a plethora of song styles and genres to choose from. Pop, rock, rap, Alternative – the song-wise world is your oyster.

When you’re playing a friend, that friend’s profile is shown on the screen. You’re under a time limit, and only get 3 tries to guess the song. You also have the option for hints or keywords that are revealed to help you guess the song.

At the moment, as a promotion for the app’s recent release, all the songs in the library are currently unlocked. This will most likely change after a period time, and either charging (or levels) will take its place.

If you are out of your mind bored and really want to sing—sorry, hum—back and forth with a friend, then download this app. It’s available on iPhone and iPad and free to boot. The kind of app you play once and are done, it’s made even more inaccessible by being connected to Facebook (the login is through your Facebook profile). Now, if you don’t have a Facebook profile or are hesitant to connect the app, that can make Hum A Song annoying.

UPDATE: Hum A Song has released highly-requested additions include support for email invitations and a streamlined interface that lets players specifically challenge friends who have Hum A Song installed. Users are no longer required to connect to Facebook.

YouTube trailer of Hum A Song below:

App Review: Tonara – Bringing Sheet Music into the Digital Age

SoundCtrl — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:14:45 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Many musicians of all stripes love playing long, developed pieces, which are a chance to showcase their instrument and their mastery, and really dig into the complexities and harmonic deviations therein. But the bane of such lengthy compositions is the choppy, unavoidable page-turning inherently involved.

With the digital age, significant progress has been made in the music industry, from social media’s increased accessibility to musicians to the way they record and share music over the internet. The next development was to devise a way to help these artists practice and perform lengthier pieces more easily, and various guitar tab and automatic page-turning apps have since been created.

One such app, Tonara, from Israel-based Tonara Ltd., has been developed specifically for the iPad and takes this technology one step further. Most of the similar apps automatically and passively flip to the next scored section of the piece at the time the musician should reach the end of the previous section, based on a built-in metronome. Tonara actually listens to the musician and adjusts the page-flipping to when the musician actually reaches the end of the page in their own time.

With what’s been referred to as polyphonic note recognition, Tonara has the potential to revolutionize the way digital sheet music is played amidst a slow decline of the sheet music industry. The app actively and fluidly adjusts to the tempo of the musician, whether the musician plays faster, more slowly, makes a mistake, repeats a section, or stops completely.

To move beyond its competitors and improve upon the technology’s intelligence, Tonara had to listen, with the cursor following the performer in real time instead of the other way around. This provides a truly interactive experience for both professional and amateur musicians, as well as a whole new way to learn and perform their new or favorite pieces.

When you’re ready to begin, pull up the score you want to play and toggle the Tonara Magic button in the top right corner. As you play the music displayed onscreen, a red cursor tracks your every note, and you can see it actually slowing down, speeding up, and skipping notes as needed. You can toggle the metronome’s visual and audio presence on and off to help you keep time as you like.

Tonara also records your performance as you go along. You can listen to the playback to identify sections you’d like to practice, or you can save the recording with its own file name. When you save the performance, you will also retain valuable information along with it, including the date and time of the recording, the duration of the recording, and how many measures were played.

One handy feature of the app is that it is able to ignore ambient noise and not interpret it as part of the performance. You can also play with other musicians by setting up multiple iPads with several instruments playing at the same time. Another is the scribble feature, which allows you to take notes directly on the sheet music to help you as you go along.

Tonara comes with six scores already preloaded, including Beethoven’s “For Elise” and Chopin’s “Prelude in E.” To purchase more scores, simply access the store directly from within the app and browse their enormous, growing catalog of songs. Classical music isn’t the only genre represented. In the store, you will find sheet music for everything from pop and rock to jazz and soul to Christmas-themes and soundtracks. Scores are available from $.99 to $2.99, and still more are promised in the future.

The app is available for free download on the iTunes store for the iPad.

App Review: The last.fm of Hip-Hop? Check Out Mix.HipHop Mixtapes

SoundCtrl — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:58:36 +0000

By Ollie Green

If you’re looking for new hip-hop artists, or want to get hold of a mix tape you may have heard from a friend, Mix.HipHop will help you to find whatever you may be looking for, and will make a truly special addition to your Android device.

Mix.HipHop is essentially a huge encyclopedia of mix tapes available to access straight from the application interface. The main page shows the newest mix tapes available in the application, and also features a search tool to help you find something specific. When clicking on a mix tape, you’ll receive a list of tracks that the mix tape includes and the artist and track info. You’ll then be able to listen to the mix tape straight from the application completely free of charge.

The quality of the audio is usually of a very high standard, and the music player works very smoothly. You can turn the screen off while listening, or use the music player when running other apps, and whilst it plays in the background, you’ll have an icon in the task bar showing information on the current track playing.

Mix.HipHop does require an internet connection to listen to the mix tapes from the app’s music player, but if you don’t have the option to connect to the internet while out and about, Mix.HipHop simply allows you to download the music from the app itself. You can choose whether you’d like to download the whole mix tape or just choose certain tracks.

The download speeds aren’t hugely impressive, but you can sit back whilst it does its thing, and then pick up your Android phone when it’s done, and play your favorite Mixtapes straight from your offline media player.

Mix.HipHop makes it very easy to find hot new artists; with the new mix tapes on the homepage, you’ll always have quick access to new content, and the search feature can help you track down certain sub-genres, or different artist styles, as well as mix tape remixes. You really have such a wide selection of hip-hop songs at your hand with Mix, and whether it is early songs from the legends at the top, or small time artists showcasing their talent, what you listen to is all under your control.

Mix.HipHop Mixtapes is completely free, and can be downloaded from Google Play.