musx app makes for a truly social music experience

musx 2When Beats launched its Music service, the company executives called their streaming music different because it added a human touch to the playlist element. Nothing is more human than having your friends tell you about new music. Even if your friends aren’t around, music recommendations shouldn’t be based on algorithms. They should be from real people.

musx is a streaming music app that is completely social. Find curated playlists from people just like you. Connect with your social networks to find out what your friends are listening to. Be the deejay and recommend music to others…

Design

When you first open the app, you will be asked to connect to either Facebook or Twitter to access all of the features available to you. You don’t have to connect your account right away, though. Tap the “later” button to check out whether you like the app enough to invest your social life.

Starting from the list of the popular feed, you will see YouTube videos that have been posted by musx users. Songs range from hip-hop from the early 1990s to current day emo. There is no limit to the type of music you’ll be able to check out.

A song’s main screen shows the video on the top half with the app’s features below it. You can “like” songs, add a comment, reshare someone’s post, and send a link to the YouTube video through Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS.

Tap the musx label at the top of the screen to access the app’s other features, like your song queue, playlists, and profile.

When you connect to your social networks, you’ll be able to see which friends are also using the service and start following them to keep track of their music-listening activities. None of my friends are using musx yet, but that didn’t stop me from being able to check out music that I like, follow other users that have similar tastes as me, and create my own playlists for others to listen to.

musx 1App Use

Similar to Musi, musx uses YouTube as its music player. However, what makes this app different is that it is heavily based on user activity. So, you can follow others, connect with friends, and recommend music.

Get started by finding a song to listen to. Tap it to begin playback. Tap the plus (+) button to add it to your queue. You can also add songs to your queue from feeds and searches without having to play them first.  Wherever you see the plus symbol, tap it to add the YouTube video to either your playlist or your queue.

When you add songs to your queue, they will play automatically, one after another. You don’t have to curate a list, just add songs to your queue to play them back. You can organize your queue by holding down one of the YouTube videos until it hovers above the others. Then, drag it to the new location.

Playlists are similar, however they are customized. For example, you could create a playlist of songs from Disney movies (which I did) and another with electronica music.

If you don’t find music that interests you, you can search on YouTube for it. I think I’m the only person who likes listening to the soundtrack to Mary Poppins, so I searched for it and added it to my Disney movie playlist. You can share music with the public feed by tapping the “Share” button. Then, others will be able to listen to it, too. They will be able to reshare your post with others, comment on the post, and “like” the song.

I should note that you can’t download any of the videos for offline listening. It is 100 percent online and will use up your cellular data if you are not connected to Wi-Fi.

musx 4The Good

As you can see, you don’t need to have a bunch of friends using this app for it to be useful. You can find songs by searching, by seeing what others have posted to the public feed, or find other users with similar musical tastes to you.

The Bad

When you tap a song or video clip, it automatically plays it. I accidentally tapped songs often and had to go back to the song I was listening to previously to replay it if I wanted to hear it again.

Whenever I closed the app so it would run in the background, there was a pause in the music and the volume went down slightly.

Value

musx is free to download and there are no in-app purchases or advertisement banners. You don’t even have to connect your social network accounts in order to listen to music. Although, you will need to do so in order to use the features. There is a lot of value in being able to listen to music for as long as you like for free.

Conclusion

If you want streaming access to a plethora of music that is already available on YouTube, there are plenty of apps for that. If you want to experience music in the most social way possible, musx is the app for you. Download it in the App Store today.

Related Apps

Musi is very similar to this app, but without the social aspect. MxTube is a popular YouTube streaming app.