SoundCtrl – MTV Artists App Cleans Up Music Discovery

The launch of Apple’s iOS7, with its minimal design features and maximized screen real estate, urged designers to rethink the user interfaces of the apps we’ve all come to know and use. Aside from the usual, essential social media suspects, many newer apps have taken advantage of this design shift, and have capitalized on the new look and feel that will accompany mobile devices into the future.

MTV’s new Artists app does just that by offering a focused peek into the musicians that influence and inform the music industry today. With MTV’s shift away from dedicated musical programming over the last decade or so, it’s presumable that another venture by the brand would miss the boat on the music industry (there was, in fact, a Snooki app) entirely. But surprisingly, MTV Artists does quite well by crafting a navigable database of artists big and small, popular and obscure, with relatively clean profile pages that can’t afford favoring, given the size of an iPhone screen.

Each artist’s profile is formatted identically with a simple, but extensive rundown: photos, music videos, a biography, a “years active” timeline, a map locating their hometown, links to share on social media networks, related artists, and links to buy tickets to concerts.

MTV Artists has several search options–you can search for an artist by name, by typing in a lyric, or by holding the phone to a sound source. MTV Artists could be in the running to compete with Shazam or Soundhound for identifying tracks on the go, especially by offering biographies, photos, and a 90-second preview of each artist’s catalog comprising 10 song clips.

You can also browse pre-made collections that are genre-specific or artist-chosen, or search back in your history to recover artists you’ve searched before.

The new app, now available on the App Store, may help MTV regain a foothold amongst music enthusiasts that wouldn’t normally turn to the brand for music discovery.