Some people like to share what they are listening to with others. You might see a half-dozen tweets in an hour from a friend, but then nothing for the rest of the day. What gives? Did he stop listening to music, or just forget to share it?
Plaaying for Mac is a third-party music player that has a customizable auto-sharing feature so you can let your friends know what you are listening to without having to actually share it manually. We’ve got a full app review of Plaaying for Mac for you today.
Concept
The app is specially designed to make sharing on Twitter a no brainer. However, there are also some sweet control features that add a little extra something to this media player, including keyboard shortcuts that work with iTunes, Spotify, or Rdio.
Design
There are two different viewing options for the Plaaying window. You can choose a small, rectangular mini window that shows a picture of the album art and the song details right beside it, banner style. If you’d like to get a closer look at the artwork, you can select the larger window, which plants a decent sized picture on your screen with the details listed below. When you hover your mouse over the album, the playback controls appear.
App Use
If you are big on sharing music on Twitter, the first thing you will want to do is open the preferences panel and customize your sharing features. You can share music by song and band or album and band, and you can choose to automatically share what you are listening to every time the song changes, once per hour, or for the first song of the day. You can also customize what you want to share, whether it is music, TV shows, movies, Podcasts, and more. Presumably, the non-music sharing options are specifically for iTunes.
Speaking of specifically for iTunes, when you are listening to music from Apple’s media player, your social sharing posts will include a link to the song in iTunes.
Aside from the music sharing features, you can also customize keyboard shortcuts that will work for playback and sharing features for iTunes, Spotify, or Rdio. The shortcuts will only work with one application at a time. You can’t “Command +” to play music for all three services at the same time (because that would just be annoying).
Another useful item, especially for me, is the Intermission feature. You can set up Plaaying to automatically play after a designated amount of time. So, if you pause a playlist to watch a YouTube video, it will continue playing after a designated amount of time that you select in the preferences panel. You can automatically start the music again after one, five, and up to 30 minutes.
And finally, there is a useful button right on the Plaayer window that, when you click on it, takes you directly to a Google search for the lyrics of the song that is currently playing. So, if you are trying to figure out what Michael Stype is saying, you don’t even have to type a single word.
The Good
I love the Intermission feature. I regularly pause my music to watch a video, or take a call. However, I rarely remember to hit the play button again when I am ready. I might go hours without listening to tunes because I’ve become so immersed in writing (or whatever) that I don’t notice the silence. I will use this feature all of the time.
The Bad
I’d like a few more shortcut options. The available shortcuts focus on playback with our without an Intermission and social sharing. I’d like to be able to skip, or replay tracks, and maybe adjust the volume of the player I am controlling. The ability to “like” a song in iTunes Radio would also be a sweet bonus.
Value
Plaaying for Mac costs $3.99, which is an average price of a quality music player. If you are a regular tweeter of music, this is an excellent option for your social media needs. The sharing feature is better than any music player for Mac I’ve come across so far.
Conclusion
The key to what makes this third-party music player stand out is its social media feature. If you like to tweet or share what you are listening to on Facebook, you will love how easy it is to do so in Plaayer. If you don’t use social media to share your music, this may not be as exciting for you, but the keyboard shortcuts and Intermission feature still make it a stand out player, in my book. Download it in the Mac App Store today.
Related Apps
Simplify for Mac has playback options for multiple music players. Spotify4Me is a widget that you can add to your Mac’s Notification Center
What do you think of this music sharing app? Let us know in the comments.