Music

Celebrating 40 years of synthesizers, 8 Yamaha music apps go free

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

Good news for all of you aspiring musicians out there. In celebration of 40 years of Yamaha synthesizers, the company is offering a number of its iOS apps for free. This includes some smaller titles, like Set List Organizer, and more prominent ones like Cloud Audio Recorder.

We've listed 8 of the apps below (there may be others), which are normally priced between $1.99 and $15.99. Admittedly, many of them were built to compliment actual instruments, but some, like Mobile Music Sequencer, are fun to tinker with on their own as standalone apps...

Novation Launchpad is a simple but powerful music maker

Jake Underwood ∙ Updated March 17, 2019

Let's cut to the chase: creating music on an iPhone or iPad isn't as easy as it should be. The gold standard, GarageBand, almost requires some knowledge of an instrument, which drastically whittles down the amount of users that can create on the platform. However, the complexity of the music-making process isn't specifically limited to GarageBand, as it is something music-creating apps have struggled with throughout the history of the App Store. Wouldn't it be nice to just press buttons and watch a creation form in front of your very eyes?

Novation Launchpad sure would seem to think so. The app, created by developers Novation, is as simple as it can get, but the results don't suffer from the ease-of-use. Read on for a full Novation Launchpad review...

BookSong: make the Music app remember where you left off

Jeff Benjamin ∙ July 15, 2014

BookSong is one of those jailbreak tweaks that sounds a bit silly in description, but turns out to be fairly interesting when you begin using it. It's a tweak that allows you to automatically reestablish the spot where you left off on a song even if you kill the stock Music app or perform a respring.

Without this tweak, iOS will not remember where your song left off, regardless of where you were mid tune. With BookSong, iOS remembers exactly where you left off, and picks up the jams from that exact spot. Have a look at our video walkthrough after the break to see BookSong in action.

OneThumb: a universal thumbs up/down tweak for Spotify, Pandora and iTunes Radio

Jeff Benjamin ∙ July 11, 2014

OneThumb is a unique new jailbreak tweak that works with Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes Radio. It allows you to use a universal Activator gesture to input thumbs up or thumbs down ratings across all eligible apps.

Instead of having different manners and methods for curating radio stations, OneThumb brings it all under one umbrella. We've tested it out, and we can vouch that the tweak works exactly as it is described. Take a look at our video inside for all of the details.

Apple caught cutting some iTunes song previews down to 30 seconds

Cody Lee ∙ July 11, 2014

A few years ago, Apple extended song previews in iTunes from 30 seconds to 90 seconds, for tracks longer than two and a half minutes. The move pleased users, as it enabled them to listen to a large chunk of the song before purchasing it.

It appears, however, that Apple has recently changed its policy regarding music samples, reverting some track preview times back to 30 seconds. The change has been reported by several users, on both mobile and desktop versions of iTunes...

Capo touch review: learn to shred like the pros to your favorite tunes

Lory Gil ∙ July 10, 2014

Anyone who has tried to learn how to play their favorite Megadeth song on the guitar knows how hard it is to hear every note of Dave Mustaine’s shredding solos. Even without the annoyances of rewinding and fast forwarding on tape, it will still make you want to pull out your well-maintained metal length hair.

Capo touch makes it possible for even the newest shredders to be able to get their licks down from their favorite songs. Slow down the music without changing the pitch, find out what chord is playing without having to look up tablatures, and make your cover band sound like the original. We’ve got a hands-on app review of Capo touch for you here…

Rdio gains revamped station artwork and Station Pages

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

After receiving an update a little over a month ago that has enabled push notifications for various social activities going on in your stream, the popular Internet radio service Rdio today issued another minor update to its free iPhone and iPad client.

A pair of new features included in the new Rdio version 2.5.10 focus on improving the design of your radio stations: revamped station artwork for a cleaner look and all-new Pages for Rdio's endless stations...

Readdle updates Documents with background music, e-book reader, iPhone add-ons and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Back in February, Ukrainian developer Readdle gave its Documents for iOS app a thorough makeover, adding features like a much polished iPad interface with iOS 7-friendly styling, in-app integration with other Readdle apps, a brand new file manager and much more.

Available today, the free Readdle Documents 5.1 download expands on the app's features set with further improvements.

If you import audio files into Documents, the app now lets you play music in the background so you can, say, read a PDF document as the music plays. Speaking of PDFs, the new Documents at last includes a full-featured e-book reader...

Google Play Music now supports gapless playback, playlist downloading and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 7, 2014

Google's Play Music client for the iPhone and iPod touch recently picked up some useful new capabilities such as the ability to filter Downloaded Only tracks, edit playlists on the go, Shuffle Artist and more. Today, Google has pushed another update making the application even more useful than before.

The new Google Play Music version 1.3.0.2190 includes a few bug fixes and improvements, as well as three new features. For starters, you can at last enjoy albums such as Pink Floyd's "The Wall" precisely the way they were meant to be heard - with gapless playback...

n7player is a music player with an interesting twist

Lory Gil ∙ July 5, 2014

There is no short supply of third-party music players for iPhone and iPad. Considering most of them do little more than just look good while playing your music, it is always nice to see one that does something different.

n7Player Music Player specializes in offering a unique looking design, but it also features a few cool EQ controls and playback features to add to your music listening experience. It has been available for Android since 2012. This past week, it finally made its way to the App Store…

Spotify updated with new sorting and filtering options, prompts for playlist duplicates

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 3, 2014

Monday, Swedish music startup Spotify has updated its app with the ability to search your downloaded music while offline. Today, Spotify has received another update which adds an additional few long-overdue capabilities.

Now live in the App Store, the new Spotify version 1.4 offers the ability to view your Play Queue on the iPhone, apply actions to your songs and playlists by taping the ellipsis icon, avoid adding duplicates to your playlists and more.

Jump past the fold for the full reveal...

SoundCloud for iPhone receives stunning facelift, removes Record feature

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 2, 2017

Berlin-based SoundCloud is a popular service to upload, record, promote and share originally-created sounds and they've long had a decent iOS app on the App Store. Today, the company has issued a major iPhone-focused redesign that focuses on much simplified one-thumb navigation through the use of gestures to seek and skip tracks.

The new SoundCloud for iPhone version 3.0 also brings the ability to open another user’s profile straight from a track or playlist and includes other enhancements, detailed after the break...