Daily Mac App: Discovr Music
Music discovery has become harder and harder, especially if you, like me, don't listen to the radio. There are quite a few radio-type music discovery services, things like Last.fm and even Spotify will do it. But what about when you simply want to search, listen to snippets and explore artists that might tickle your fancy based on your favorite bands?
Discovr Music does just that. It allows you to explore a plethora of artists, all linked in a mind-map style interface. Start by searching for your artist of choice. From there you can listen to song clips, read their biographies, get links out to their music videos on you tube, as well as links to Last.fm, iTunes, Amazon, MySpace, Spotify, Rdio, Mog and even Rhapsody.
Bouncing back to the map you can visually explore similar artists, and a simple double click takes you into their info page, to preview songs and see whether you like them. It's a really engaging and slick experience. It's certainly a lot faster and more effective for finding new artists you might like than relying on the radio-style suggestions of Last.fm and their ilk.
The problem I have with Discovr Music, and something that comes from the modern expectation that, rightly or wrongly, everything should be free -- it's US$4.99. Although the music search is good, the clips of songs are just that, clips. I can appreciate that a developer needs to make money, but $5 just seems a bit steep to me -- it is purely a music discovery app, not something to replace the likes of Spotify.
Having said that, the app works well, is a great alternative to the likes of Last.fm for music discovery, and if you're into music and finding new artists, then you'll probably find it's $5 well spent.
