When it comes to music discovery, services like Last.fm and Pandora was often the first that come to mind. They are very popular in countries like the U.S., Canada or Europe, but suffer outside them because of the strict licensing rules that they have to follow. Users from outside these countries have to resort to methods like using proxies or VPNs to access and enjoy them.
A few months ago, I stumbled upon an outstanding music discovery service (of sorts) that not only has a fantastic novel way of helping users find new music – letting you listen to a huge playlist of tracks based on your mood, but also works all over the globe. The service is called Stereomood – we reviewed their iPhone and Android app back in June.
Now, their iPhone and Android app has been updated to support tablets. Check it out after the jump.
The latest version of their app – pushed to App Store and Google Play earlier – includes tablet optimizations.
Using Steremood’s iOS app on an iPad is not an experience much different from their iPhone app. It has the same numbers of options and features: you get your channel view showing different moods available which you can tap to start the music player which plays through a huge list of tracks that Stereomood’s community deems suitable for that particular mood.
There are no playback limitations (like Pandora or Spotify) so you can play the previous track or skip to the next one at any time you want. If you register for an account, you can like and block songs so that they won’t play the next time you go through the playlist.
To our disappointment, the “optimizations” feel a little hurried. While the overall UI and its elements fit perfectly on the smaller iPhone, they’ve wasted a lot of space on the larger iPad. For songs with long names, the music player has to horizontally scroll through them despite there being at least a quarter of the screen estate being available. Maybe this decision was made to make Stereomood for tablets more consistent with the desktop website (Stereomood.com) which also uses plenty of blank space, but it makes for a less than stellar user-experience.
Still, don’t let the UI not making good use of the larger displays on tablets as Stereomood is a terrific service for discovering music. I’ve been using it for many months now and continue to use it despite having access to technically superior services like Pandora.
- Download Stereomood for Android [Google Play link]
- Download Stereomood for iOS [iTunes link]
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