How I find new music using my iPhone
by leon on March 4, 2009
Over the weekend I updated my iTunes library and I now have over 23,482 songs. Due to my iPhone having only 8GB of storage space there was no way that I could have all that music with me all of the time, but with a few apps I don’t need to physically carry my music with me. The iPhone has opened up a host of ways to find, share and play music while on the move. This post is about some of the tools that I use to achieve musical bliss.
This is a free radio app that features thousands of internet streams. Its works great over wi-fi and 3G and features a good selection of niche stations. It allows you to add favourite stations and also search. At present I am listening to Dubstep.fm and Digitally Imported.fm. The quality of the streams is pretty good and the only drops in connection I have had are due to having a weak 3G signal.
This app needs little introduction. A great way to listen to over five million songs, share music via your phone contacts; purchase tracks and albums from the iTunes Music Store, and much, much more. By using the recommendation feature its a brilliant way to discover new artists. you can even save tracks you like to new playlists on your phone and then access this from the Last.fm app on your Mac or PC.
NoteWorthy allows you to search through Last.fm’s powerfully awesome database of artists with ease and then mark albums and tracks that you want to remember. Select information like biographies and similar artists to download as well. This is great when listening to the Shoutcast as a way to remember tracks as the DJ announces them.
Enjoy songs from home while at work or from any WiFi location. Explore friends’ music while they are online. This app is great as I can stream any of my 20,000+ tracks to my iPhone.
You may be thinking one thing – the above apps are great but what if I want to do something else with my iPhone while using these apps. At present Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party apps to run in the background. This means for example that you can’t listen to Shoutcast and read email or browse Safari at the same time. The answer to this is a tool called Backgrounder. You will need to Jailbreak you’re iPhone to get it, but this is a simple process now. Read here for how to do it. Don’t blame me if you mess things up though!
With Backgrounder you can allow certain apps to run all of the time. This is great as I don’t get interupted from Last.fm each time an SMS comes through. Be careful not to allow too many apps to run as your iPhone will become unstable due to low memory. I have tested all of the above apps with Backgrounder for the last week now without any problems.
Shazam is also another great tool to find music. Create and share music moments and stories. With Shazam you can identify music tracks simply by holding your phone near to the music source, buy them, and share the tags with friends. You can also learn more about artists; keep and grow your music collection and personalise your tags.
One comment
Noteworthy sounds quite good. I must try that…
by Dejinator on March 4, 2009 at 10:36 am. #