By: Matt Wright
Exciting news from those forward-thinking purveyors of all things Avant-Pop and SMM, Ghostly International. This morning Ghostly released a free iPhone app, Ghostly Discovery, which lets you discover music based on mood, tempo and texture. I got my hands on the app earlier today, and I am happy to report that it really is something special.
As you can see in the video above, the main screen of the app consists of a color wheel surrounding the classic Ghostly logo, and two sliders. Slide your finger around the color wheel to select your current listening mood (energetic, introspective, etc), and use the sliders to select tempo and digital/organic sound texture. Once you’ve got things where you want them, hit the “Discover” button, and you’ve got your own custom playlist streaming full-length tracks from the Ghostly and Spectral (that’s their dancefloor sublabel) catalogs.
From the playlist screen you can view artist bios, mark a track as a favorite, and link to iTunes for purchase. Streaming was seamless and sound quality was great over the IODA wireless network this morning, but I haven’t had a chance to test it on 3G/Edge yet.
The only thing I’m a bit confused about is the “favorites” functionality. As I understand it, if you register your email address in the app, you’ll be able to access these favorites playlists later via the Discovery site, but I couldn’t figure out where to find them. [UPDATE: Rob Gorrell explains in the comments: "To visit your favorites, just tap the "i" button on the bottom-left, where you'll be given the option to email it to yourself or visit your Discovery page." So that explains it! Also, looks like you can give your favorites a custom title, and share them with whoever you like on the web. Pretty awesome. Check out my favorites here.] That said, I did find a cool section featuring favorites playlists from Stones Throw, RCRD LBL, and others, which is definitely worth checking out.
That very minor issue aside, I am super impressed with this thing. Whereas most of the label/band apps I’ve seen have essentially been mobile skins of the existing website, Discovery is truly an app in it’s own right, with unique funtionality that’s particularly suited for iPhone listening. What’s more, it does a great job of helping the listener (surprise!) discover new music that they might not otherwise find, using an intuitive, even playful interface. I personally found myself bookmarking a bunch of new songs, and that definitely seems like a good sign. Kudos to Ghostly and developer o2 Creative Solutions on a job well done here — I’m looking forward to playing with it some more!
Click here to download Ghostly Discovery from iTunes. It’s free.
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Tags: Ghostly International, iPhone App
