Discovr – An Interactive iPad Map for Music
We recently wrote about Aweditorium, which is a great way to discover interesting independent artists and bands from around the world. The app brought us a way to listen and discover bands we’ve never heard of before, and also a way to check out bios, interviews and lyrics while listening to newly discovered tunes.
However, Aweditorium will not display your favorite artists all the time, since the app is entirely based on music you’ve never heard of before (most likely). This is what music start-up Jammbox has set out to resolve with their new app Discovr for iPad.
Discovr is a new music discovery app for the iPad that will show you connections between bands. It’s a discovery tool that with a double tap, allows you to discover musicians and your favorite artists and their videos on YouTube and a lot more.
Discovr for iPad is similar in some ways to Pandora and Last FM. For example, you can visually read about all your favorite artists and study the relationships between them. If you search for a favorite band or artist, the app will display a diagram of that band or artist depicted as a hub, with related artists connected as circular pictures. But, unlike Pandora or Last FM, instead of linking bands and songs together through radio stations, Discovr enables you to visually find bands similar to those that you already follow and love.
Discovr was released a few days ago, and I can describe the app as a very engaging interactive music map for your iPad. All you have to do is simply type in the name of a band or artist that you love, and the app will show you some similar results. Bands that are similar are connected by lines to show their relationships. Just tap on one you like and the map will grow organically to show other similar artists. You can continue this process for a while, and any bands that are similar will link together.
If you double-tap on one of the bands, the app will display tons of information about each band, including places to buy the music, a biography, links to blog posts, and YouTube videos related to that specific band. As expected, as you make progress down to third-tier (unknown) bands and musicians, the biographies and videos are not quite as frequent. In addition, when you find a band or artist you like you can also share it with your friends via Twitter and Facebook or save it to your favorites.
Discovr for iPad works very well at finding new music. The app design and bubble system is very dynamic and fun to use. You can learn the user interface quite easily. If you’re a Pandora or Last FM fan, you will like this navigation system to discover music and artists.
Editor’s Note: The first release of Discovr would crash quite frequently. With the latest release (version 1.1) the application stability has improved. We still experienced some crashes, but it was very rare.
