Discovr Music

If you’re like me, you’re perpetually sick of your music collection. The way I listen to music is actually pretty dumb—in iTunes on my Mac I sort my music by date added. I only listen to the latest 10 or 15 tracks that I have recently added. I figure that I’m only going to add music that I like and want to listen to (this is mostly not true).

On my iOS devices, I listen exclusively to my 5 star Smart Playlist—anything I’ve ever given 5 stars in iTunes automatically goes into this list. My method relies on me constantly finding music so that I don’t get bored. Meanwhile there’s 50GB of music sitting in my collection, most of which I’ll never listen to again (if I’ve ever listened to it).

How I discover music varies; I tend to pick up on things that get tweeted, I listen to the Colette podcast, I take recommendations from friends, I browse through sites like Soundcloud and Youtube or I hear a song on the radio in a cab at 3AM and drunkenly text my friend Joel a few lines of the chorus hoping he knows it. Music discovery for me is mostly passive and rather unstructured.



This is where I stop writing about myself and start telling you about Discovr Music, an iOS app for iPhone and iPad that does just as it says it does on the packet. It’s not new—it came out earlier this year, so maybe you’re cooler than me and you’re already all over it, but so far I think Discovr Music is the best (read easiest) music discovery tool I’ve ever used. It works elegantly—all you have to do is think of an artist you like, type them in and they seed a handful of similar artists. The interface is quite visual and ultra intuitive, seeded artists pop out of your initial selection in a flowchart and continue to do so the more you click.

Eventually, you have a web of connected and interconnected artists that have something (or nothing) in common with your initial search. The recommendations seem to go on forever, I’ve tried to exhaust it a few times and none of my attempts have been successful. How it makes these links is the black magic behind it all. Here’s an example for you, using bands you might know:

1. Grizzly Bear
2. Animal Collective
3. The Flaming Lips
4. Modest Mouse
5. Death Cab for Cutie
6. Guided by Voices
7. Sebadoh
8. Half Japanese
9. Psychedelic Horseshit
10. Meth Teeth
11. Lovvers
12. These Are Powers



With the exception of the first four bands I have no idea who the rest are, but hopefully the later recommendations are still relevant. Double tapping an artist takes you into their biography (sourced from Last.fm) and lists their tracks that you can preview and buy via iTunes. There are thumbnails of Youtube videos, which you can watch within the biography page as well as links to relevant blogs. It’s all a wonderfully convenient ecosystem.

Don’t be surprised if someone buys out these developers… maybe Apple should. This kind of interface would be pretty awesome in the iTunes store and even better within iTunes player to help people like me to discover new music within their 50GB collections.

The app is $1.19 in the App Store, so even if it only helps you find one or two artists, then I’d say it has paid for itself. They also have a new app called Discovr Apps... can you guess what it does?

Here’s a video (unfortunately it's Fox News):