Music Ally

2009 was the year of the App Store, as Apple passed the two-billion downloads milestone for its store, which now has more than 100,000 apps available. The year also saw labels and artists jumping onto the bandwagon with their own branded iPhone apps.

The most successful, like Smule’s I Am T-Pain (pictured right) sold tens of thousands of copies a day. It’s only fair to point out that the vast majority sank down the app charts fairly quickly though – proving that iPhone apps provide a return on investment for the music industry wasn’t a huge priority this year.

Even so, there was plenty of creativity being put to work. To highlight it, we’ve chosen a selection of 40 branded music apps that we thought were innovative this year – which were all covered in the Music Ally Daily Bulletin.

They’re all based on artists, labels and other music brands – the list doesn’t include apps for music services like Spotify or Pandora, nor does it include pure music games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge (although one of the latter’s artist-branded spin-offs is included).

Read on for a snapshot of what was released this year, and let us know your thoughts on the best and worst of what the App Store had to offer. Oh, and yes, we’ve put them in a rough order reflecting how much we liked them, starting with the best.

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We’ve been fans of the RjDj iPhone app since it launched: it turns the ambient noises of the real around you into generative music, using the iPhone mic as an input. Now the company behind it has launched a branded version for UK electro-pop artist Little Boots.

The app – Little Boots Reactive remixer – includes three ’scenes’ based on songs from her debut album: Meddle, New In Town and Remedy. Each scene lets you hear the song in different ways depending on what noises are around you, and how you move your iPhone.

On the branding side, there are also preview clips of other songs from the album, access to Boots’ website, blog, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter pages, and some of her videos. There’s no shortage of iPhone ‘remix your fave artist’ apps, but we like the twist that RjDj’s technology gives this one.

UPDATE: Boots herself has been talking about the app. “its something we’ve been working on a long time and has developed into a lot more than I ever dreamed of at the start,” she says. “I hope in the future we can take it even further and build a great community through it.”

Max Lousada, chairman of her label Atlantic Records UK, is also pretty chuffed. “By continuing to refresh the application’s content we’re fostering her following’s on-going engagement with the album as well as offering an evolving product through which new fans can discover this remarkable talent,” he says.

Artists have always had opinions about what music (other than their own) is great. But in the digital era, there are far more chances to trumpet those tastes to their fans. The idea of ‘artist as curator’ is gaining currency, with a variety of examples.

Usher’s Top 100 iPhone app

R&B star Usher is the star of Melodeo’s latest streaming music iPhone application. It’s a playlist of 100 songs apparently hand-picked by the man himself from his favourite ever tunes. That means Arethra Franklin, James Brown and Michael Jackson among other artists.

The app – powered by Melodeo’s NuTsie service – then streams the songs to users, who’ve paid $3 for the privilege of downloading it. Melodeo has released a number of generic streaming compilation apps like this, but Usher is the first big star to put his name to one.

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Sorry, you can stop reading now if you don’t like Little Boots, or Nokia, or roller discos. Because if you do, then the Nokia Skate Almighty event in London next month will be right up your street.

It’s all happening at Potter’s Fields near Tower Bridge from 5th to 9th August, with other artists appearing including Calvin Harris and The Rakes. It’ll be open all day for kids and families, before turning into an over-18s roller disco after 6pm. Nokia is getting people to sign up for one-hour slots at its Nokia Music site.

That’s as in people who want to go along, not artists, obviously. Tickets will be sent out as mobile tickets, with people’s phones then scanned on entry. As part of the event, Nokia has kicked off a joint marketing campaign for Comes With Music and Little Boots’ new album, co-inciding with it becoming available on the Nokia Music Store. Nokia has also bagged an exclusive ‘A1 Bassline remix’ of Boots’ new single Remedy.

“Our broad reaching partnership means we’re able to consider all the ways in which we can reach her fan-base and develop activity that combines digital music, live gigs and traditional advertising,” says Noel Penzer, director of business development at Warner Music UK.

We’re getting our skates on now…

I’ve abandoned Spotify and iTunes this morning in favour of MySpace, listening to pre-release streams of the new albums by Kasabian and Little Boots.

A few plays later, and I’ve got a pretty good idea which tracks are great and which are fodder. Come next Monday when the albums come out, I’ll probably be buying 4-5 tracks from each album.

As a consumer, the ability to listen to albums before their release is a huge benefit, letting me figure out before buying whether Kasabian’s new psychedelic direction means they’ve ditched the tunes, or whether Little Boots is style over substance (in both cases, the answer is ‘not entirely, but a little bit’, since you ask).

But what’s the effect for an industry that’s trying to encourage fans to buy more digital albums rather than cherry-picking the tracks they like?

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