New App Brings Album Sleeve Into the Digital Era

By The Next Web March 13, 2012 3 minutes

iAlbums - Technology News - Israel

iAlbums is a new iPhone app which aims to enhance the music-listening experience on your iPhone. For any audiophile who wants to know more about who’s behind their favourite songs, look up lyrics, read artist interviews, bios and more, iAlbums is a must-have. And it’s also a great replacement for the native iOS music app to boot.

iAlbums plugs right into the music that you’ve already got on your iPhone or iPod, and brings you a wealth of information about those tracks. The app is currently available in an Alpha version, with the full version hitting the App store this summer.

When you first load the app, you’ll be met with a grid of album covers, displayed in alphabetical order. If there are album covers missing from your collection, iAlbums will find them for you. Opening up any given album will display the tracks you’ve got on your device. You can choose to change the display, sorting your musical content by artists, songs, playlists, date or genre.

Opening up any given album will display the tracks you’ve got on your device. You can choose to change the display, sorting your musical content by artists, songs, playlists, date or genre.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP27R_nQTsg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

iAlbums gets all of its info on your favourite artists and songs from over 20 different sources. Information includes stories, bios, quotes, and reviews, giving you a full picture on any given artist. iAlbums pulls information from Wikipedia, Google News, Wikiquote, and even the band or artist’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts. It also provides users with images and video from the likes of DeviantArt and YouTube.

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iAlbums also provides users with the ability to easily look up lyrics to any song, with the service powered by LyricFind. iAlbums’ database currently features over 1 million albums, 10.5 million songs and over 2.3 billion content items about its 600,000 artists.

Information provided by iAlbums

The app is a standalone music player as well, and could easily replace the native app in favour of the wealth of information it provides. You can play, pause, and skip songs, as well as access your playlists. The only feature that appears to be missing from the music player is the ability to play songs on repeat.

The full version of iAlbums will also include live show listings and audio streaming, at which point we can also expect iPad and Android versions of the app.

iAlbums aims to bring a little bit of that old school feeling of buying a record, a casette tape, or even CD. Buying a new album involved so much more than listening to the music, with the album cover, art work, lyrics, and so much more featured inside that sleeve. iAlbums aims to be an all-in-one digital album sleeve of sorts.

iAlbums is also going straight to the source, collaborating with artists, in order to showcase their work using the app. The launch of the app coincides with the release of a new album by Balkan Beat Box, expected on March 6th. iAlbums will be featuring a manually curated feed for the album, including rare pictures, videos and material exclusive to the app. And we can expect more of these partnerships from iAlbums in the future.

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Via The Next Web
Photos by iAlbums