TNW Quick Look
Hits:
- Beautiful interface
- An immersive experience
Misses:
- No customisation at present
The Details
Remember how Flipboard overhauled the idea of sharing content by making it tablet-friendly? Here’s a new iPad app that does the same thing with new music discovery.
Aweditorium presents you with a vast grid of darkened photographs of bands and solo artists. Tap on an image and it fills the screen while a song from the act begins playing. Factoids about the act pop up around the screen while tasteful icons in the corner of the screen give you access to full-screen videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and links to buy music from iTunes or share the song on Twitter or Facebook.
Aweditorium’s gorgeous interface is addictive. Pop on some headphones, sit back and you’ll find yourself flicking around the grid, surfing from act to act, immersed in a world of music discovery.
What’s perhaps surprising is that Aweditorium presently isn’t personalised in any way. The selection of music has been entirely curated for you. That said there’s a wide range of genres here, from folk to electronica, and the grid is so huge it will take you a long time to experience it all.
Aweditorium’s website says it will be opening up to new applications from acts soon. While it would be nice to have some kind of Last.fm integration that would allow for personalised recommendations, the fact that each act will need to be specially formatted for the app means that if this feature is coming, there will be a wait while the developers build up a large enough stash of artists to offer customised results based on your tastes.
If you have any interest in exploring new music, Aweditorium is well worth spending some quality time with. You can download it from the iTunes App Store now, for free. [iTunes link]
Thanks to Robert Scoble for the tip. Here’s his video which gives more background to the app.
Here’s my video interview of the CEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IVGdVnZ68
Thanks Robert, I’ve embedded it above. Gorgeous app!
The UI experience seems to be adopted from MS Zune Desktop app :)
So, good to see Zune on iPad :P
// chall3ng3r //
It’s ok, but discovering music based on what artists look like is a bit flawed, esp with no alternative navigation available… and especially as 90% of all acts look like Midlake these days and the other 10% look like early Human League and in need of a good wash.
It only remembers tracks that you listen to in full (even though they aren’t full tracks) and the app only loads successfully about 50% of the time.
Not bothered.