Gone are the days when your entire music came from a single favorite radio station or, at best, from the iTunes Store. This is the age of mobile apps and you can have as many of them as you want. Below is a quick rundown of 10 must-have music apps for your mobile device.
Shazam:
This one is my personal favorite, although it is not strictly a music discovery app. Rather, this highly popular app listens to any song you play to it and then finds the name, artist, album and other details related to that song. To top it, Shazam does this within seconds, letting you instantly discover the details of any new tune that you find intriguing.
You can then tag the song or go on to purchase it from any of the popular online music stores. You can download the app from Google Play or the App Store.
Band of the Day:
If you are into discovering new music, this is just the app for you. ‘Band of the Day‘ is hailed as one of the most popular and successful music apps. It basically streams curated music from 955 Dreams and displays this content in a very enticing interface. You can easily navigate back to songs streamed on the service in the past and access them instantly.
The folks behind this app have recently pushed out an Android app which comes with a similarly neat and user-friendly interface. Since the music played on Band of the Day is licensed, you often get to have exclusive tracks.
The app can be download from the Google Play or the App Store.
Bloom.fm:
This is an excellent on-demand music streaming app which is not free and currently available only in UK. Despite these limitations, we can’t pass on the stunningly beautiful interface of this app. It displays genres and bands as flowers and petals and you can interact with them to find the right music for you. You can subscribe to different packages, costing you £1, £5 and £10 per month.
The app provides not only the music that you seek but also lets you discover entire radio playlists. In other words, it is a good mix of streaming music of your own liking and discovering new music. Bloom.fm can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
Sonarflow:
Sonarflow is another music app that boasts a very creative interface. This app relies more on your own music collection and lets you discover music similar to what you already have in your playlists. The best thing about this app is that it lets you choose music similar to your current songs collection by displaying relevant genres and bands in tiny, colorful clouds.
So you just have to pinch and swipe, and discover music similar to your taste and likes. The Android version of the app relies on 7digital and you can link up your Last.fm playlists to the account. In the case of the iOS app, there are two versions available – one relies on Spotify whereas the other is meant for iTunes.
You can download the Sonarflow’s Android app from Google Play. To get Sonarflow for iOS, choose between Sonarflow for Spotify and Sonarflow for iTunes.
Rdio:
If you are all about mixing your social media accounts and music discovery online, Rdio is one of the prime choices. This is a paid app which lets you stream songs from a vast collection of 8 million tracks.
The easy to use interface lets you see what your friends on Facebook and Twitter are listening to, and then share your own choices likewise. Moreover, if you have a collection of songs on your iTunes account, Rdio connects to that and lets you access those songs through the Rdio account.
You can download the app from Google Play or the App Store.
Pandora:
If you are looking for the pioneers in the realm of online radio, Pandora is the answer. Pandora is among the top online music radio apps and dishes out customized music, based on your choices. You can specify an artist and then stream songs by him or you can name a song and get access to it right away.
The app sifts through the music choices you make and also keeps presenting you new music based on that. While listening to a track on Pandora, if you want to buy it, you can do so directly from iTunes. The app is available as a free version as well as with a subscription model.
The Pandora app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
SoundCloud:
SoundCloud has long been a prime choice of indie music artists. So if you are into indie music, look no farther. SoundCloud features not only the up and coming indie artists but also provides music from most of the notable artists and bands.
The mobile app of SoundCloud banks on this vast collection of music and comes with a neat interface. You can even record and post your own tracks to SoundCloud, making it an excellent choice for music artists.
The app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
Uberhype:
If you want to keep track of what music is popular on the web these days, Uberhype is the perfect solution. This app relies on the popularity of different songs across multiple music blogs on the web and then indexes these songs accordingly.
So when you fire up the app, the top songs that are displayed are the most popular tracks all over the internet. You can download the app from Google Play or the App Store.
Last.fm:
Last.fm has become popular as a music app which is able to deliver just the kind of music you are looking for. With one of the best music-discovery algorithms, this app is most effective in letting you find music based on your likes. The app is able to discern what you listen to on your different mobile devices as well as on any online radio accounts that you use.
It then uses this information and recommends music based on them. It is a free app which can’t be used by buy songs – rather, Last.fm displays you with different free download options for the tracks you like.
The app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
Songza:
This app is really unique in the way it provides music to you. The app asks you different questions about you routine, your current mode and whether or not you are working at a particular moment. This way, it is able to identify your genre choices in different modes.
The best thing about this app is that it then provides playlists based on these preferences and these playlists are not auto-generated – rather, they are curated by a human being. Unfortunately, the app is available only for users in US and Canada for now.
You can download the app from Google Play or the App Store.
Do you have any other recommendation? Let us know via comments.
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