We’ve been banging on about iPhone applications for a while ago, and in last week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, we covered some of the ways iPhone apps are coming onto the music industry’s radar. But which apps are we actually using on our iPhones, hmm?
We thought we should tell you. So, here’s a dozen of the best iPhone music apps, complete with links to buy them.
1. Guitar Rock Tour (£4.99 - right)
A music game that pretty much swipes the Guitar Hero formula and runs off with it cackling. You have to tap the frets at the bottom of the screen as notes travel down a guitar, with an array of proper songs including Beat It, Smoke On The Water, Heart-Shaped Box and - yes! - Rock You Like A Hurricane. Get it
Polydor’s head of digital Paul Smernicki says the label is pleased with the success of its Snow Patrol iPhone application, which was launched last month to promote the band’s new album.
“We’re relatively pleased with the results,” says Smernicki. “We gave away more than 30,000 of them in the first week. The next step is to figure out what it’s added to the campaign, but the initial download numbers would suggest that it’s added quite a lot, as well as the buzz around it ahead of the album release. Of course, we won’t get that buzz every time.”
One thing the app ISN’T is an interactive album, as reported online earlier this year when details first leaked out. In fact, the blogosphere was buzzing with claims that Snow Patrol had signed some kind of deal with Apple to become the first artist to release an album through the App Store rather than iTunes.
“We were quite surprised by the level of interest,” says Smernicki. “The product manager mentioned it in an interview quite vaguely as one of about ten points of the album campaign, and those quotes turned into huge online buzz and speculation about it being an interactive album. We never said that, although we were pleased to be getting that kind of online buzz.”
He’s hugely enthusiastic about the potential of iPhone applications, while stressing that it’s early days to figure out whether they deliver a decent return on investment for labels. He’s been combing the App Store for interesting examples.
“There’s a lot that we can learn from non-music applications,” says Smernicki. “There are some really clever things going on with stuff like GPS. You could follow bands on tour, map their tour around the world, and make live video or audio from gigs available. You might have interaction from the artist too, creating video diaries and reviewing the shows. There’s potential to create something that has a real function.”
Smernicki was talking to Music Ally for a feature in this week’s Music Ally Report, which is published today. For more details on our premium service, click here.
One of the things we’re tracking at Music Ally is how artists and labels are using mobile and online to promote music. And since we’re tracking it on an ongoing basis, we thought it was worth rounding up some of the notable campaigns for last month.
Not all are straight digital marketing campaigns – some are more distribution deals – but we think they give a snapshot of what companies are up to. See what you think.
1. AC/DC Excel video (above). Sony BMG turned the new video from the Aussie rockers into an ASCII-art video, embedded into an Excel spreadsheet. The idea: fans would be able to email it round workplaces without fear of getting carpeted by bosses. Watch It
Sonos has launched an iPhone application (pictured) allowing users to control its wireless multi-room music systems from their handset. It’s available on the App Store today, and is free to download, allowing users to navigate their digital music collection, control playback, and change the volume.
Sonos is flagging the app as “the only iPhone controller app that provides multi-room music control for the entire house and direct access to an infinite world of music including Last.fm and Napster”. It’s certainly a niche, although Apple’s own Remote app is a more restricted version, allowing users to stream their iTunes library from their computer to their iPhone.
Hang on a mo, Last.fm? Ah, yes, that’s today’s other announcement from Sonos. The company has just released version 2.7 of its Sonos System Software, which now includes support for Last.fm, allowing people to stream tracks from the popular music service.
It also lets them scrobble the tracks they play on their Sonos system to their Last.fm profile, to improve the recommendations offered by the site. So far, companies like Sonos have been more known to audiophiles and tech-heads than mainstream music fans, but this kind of multi-room music system will become more widespread in the coming years.
With that in mind, the fact that they’re signing these kinds of deals with online music services now is fascinating. We met Sonos CEO John MacFarlane in London last week, and he told us that 70% of Sonos users pay for a music subscription service, and that 60% of the firm’s customers are outside the US.
Sony BMG has launched a branded iPhone application for `Funhouse’, the new album from Pink. It went live on Apple’s App Store at the end of last week.
The app has 30-second previews of songs from the album, as well as photos, news and a discography. This being an iPhone app, there are also direct links to buy Pink’s back catalogue from the iTunes Store.
It’s called P!nk’s Funhouse (we think that’s deliberate, not iTunes going off on one censorship-wise), and is free to download. Could this be the start of a trend? There’s proven demand for free iPhone apps, although they have to offer something more than pure marketing, of course.
Generative music applications for iPhone are one of the more interesting trends on Apple’s App Store, with Bloom at the forefront. It’s the work of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, and lets you tap at your screen to create wibbly ambient soundscapes. Check our video hands-on above. The app itself costs £2.39, and can be bought from iTunes by clicking this link.
It’s been a pretty good week for music ID service Shazam. Not only did it announce a new preload deal with Samsung and T-Mobile, but it also trumpeted the fact that its iPhone application has now been downloaded by more than 1.5 million people, tagging over 20 million tracks between them.
We caught up with Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher to talk about these deals, and how they affect the company’s wider strategy.
So, iPhone has been a success for you?
Usage is ramping up really nicely, with more than 1.5 million people downloading the application and becoming active users. And the 20 million calls to the service are a real testament to the fact that this is maturing as a whole consumer experience. It’s not just about ‘name that tune in the pub quiz’ any more’.
It’s richer: you can buy songs on iTunes, watch the YouTube videos, or use the camera to capture who you’re with at the moment of hearing that track, and create your own music memories. And on the music sales side, the good thing is that on iPhone, you’ve got pricing parity with the web, so there’s nothing to inhibit people from buying a song once they’ve discovered it. There’s no price disadvantage to them for transacting on the mobile.
How big is the iPhone App Store for music firms? Well, Shazam has just announced that its iPhone application has been downloaded by more than 1.5 million people in the six weeks since it launched.
What’s more, its users have tagged more than 20 million tracks using the music identification app. The 1.5 million iPhone users already make up a healthy chunk of Shazam’s overall 20 million-strong userbase.
Shazam says it’s now working on a premium version of the iPhone app with new features and functionality. However, the big question is how else it plans to monetise those 1.5 million users of the free version.
Mobile advertising will soon be introduced, says Shazam, while presumably it’s also making (small) commissions for sending users to the iTunes Store to buy the songs they’ve tagged.
This afternoon, Apple released the latest firmware update for its iPhone, which promises to fix the device’s bugs, improve its battery life, and also includes the company’s new Genius recommendation technology.
We’ve been having a play, and it’s fairly simple on the device, since it isn’t tied into the iTunes Store like its desktop equivalent. Instead, you go to the Playlists option in the iPhone’s iPod application, and choose ‘Genius’, then select a track from those stored on the iPhone.
The software then auto-creates a playlist of similar songs from those stored on the phone, and starts playing it. The idea, presumably, is that you tell the iPhone ‘I’m in a Fleet Foxes’ kind of mood, and it then ensures you don’t get any Sven Vath techno workouts. Or something.
Some last odds and ends to mop up from Apple’s Let’s Rock product launch tonight, although we’ll spare you our thoughts on Jack Johnson’s guest slot.
Steve Jobs announced version 2.1 of the iPhone firmware, which if you’ve been struggling with a crashing 3G iPhone, is a pretty big deal. Jobs stressed it was a major update, fixing “lots of bugs”, sorting out dropped-calls issues, and improving the device’s battery life.
It’s available for download this Friday, which should give Apple’s servers another decent stress-test. There was no mention of the Genius music recommendation technology debuted earlier at tonight’s event. But given it’s being built into the new iPod Touch and iPod Nano, it would be strange if it wasn’t also in v2.1 of the iPhone firmware.
Meanwhile, Jobs revealed that more than 100 million applications have now been downloaded from the App Store, for iPhone and iPod Touch. He didn’t break down that figure into free or paid-for apps, or by genre.
However, it’s fair to assume that games were a big factor, since the only two iPhone apps to be demonstrated on-stage at the Let’s Rock event were games. Indeed, Jobs claimed the iPod Touch is now “the best portable device for playing games on”.
Apple clearly now wants to do to Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP what it did to the latter company’s Walkman in the portable music space. Intriguing times.
We’ve been banging on about iPhone applications for a while ago, and in last week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, we covered some of the ways iPhone apps are coming onto the music industry’s radar. But which apps are we actually using on our iPhones, hmm?
