There are a ton of music-related apps in the App Store. If you sift through the thousands of stupid music apps, you’ll find a few gems worth mentioning. The goal of this roundup is to showcase 5 awesome music apps for the iPhone.
These 5 apps all deserve to be called awesome. They each serve a specific purpose, and they all offer something special to the App Store’s music app catalog…
1. Pandora
Pandora is the reigning king of music apps. You’ve probably used Pandora on your iPhone at least once, and it remains as one of the most popular music apps of all time.
Pandora paved the way for internet radio, allowing you to create custom “radio stations” of your favorite artists and genres. Although you are restricted to a certain amount of skips per hour (there’s actually a jailbreak tweak to circumvent that), you can edit and skip through your stations to find the song you want.
Music apps don’t get much better than this. Pandora is available for free in the App Store.
2. Shows
Shows is a concert tracking app that analyzes your favorite artists, and shows you when and where they will be performing. The first thing I noticed about Shows was how pretty it is. The app is very slick and responsive.
Shows is great because it automatically integrates with the artists in your iPod app for concert listings. You can also filter by date, and set the radius of how far away you are willing to travel for a concert. There is also support for sharing through social networks, and push notifications so that you’ll be the first to know when your favorite artist is performing.
Shows is easy to use and incredibly effective at finding concert details for your favorite artists. Shows is available for $2.99 in the App Store.
3. OnCue
OnCue is one of the best iPod enhancements available in the App Store. The app acts like a DJ enhancement to the native iPod app.
OnCue adds queuing functionality to your music and podcasts. The iPod app does allow for the creation of playlists on the go, but you can only do so much with a pre-set playlist.
OnCue allows you to queue and manipulate your song/podcast lineup in a more friendly and easy way. OnCue looks a lot like the iPod you’re already familiar with, only with added settings and management options.
OnCue is a great addition/replacement for the iPhone’s native iPod app. It’s available for $0.99 in the App Store.
4. Nomis
Nomis functions as a reminder for when your favorite artists have new music releases. Like Shows, Nomis automatically pulls information from the artists in your iPod.
Think of Nomis as your own personal iTunes. If you love your music but hate having to look through all of the other releases on iTunes or Amazon, Nomis is perfect for you.
There’s no setup with Nomis. When you launch the app, it automatically finds new releases from the artists in your iPod app. You can listen to previews of new music and download music from iTunes. The app also supports badges so that you know how many new releases are waiting for you in Nomis.
This app is perfect for those of us that like to stay on top of our favorite artist’s new releases. Nomis is available for $1.99 in the App Store.
5. Dring
Dring is a beautiful ringtone creator for the iPhone. The design and layout of Dring is gorgeous and easy to use. Ringtones are created by pulling songs from the iPod app and editing inside the scrubbable timeline.
Dring allows you to add fade-in and fade-out effects to your ringtones, as well as audio from your iPhone’s mic. You can also share your ringtone through email and social networks.
Check out our full review of Dring to get a more comprehensive look at the app. Dring is available for $0.99 in the App Store.
Do you use any of the apps in this list? Will you be downloading any of them? Let us know what some of your favorite music apps are in the comments below.