iPhone App Reviews

Song Info

Michael (Admin) | Aug 25, 2009 Music

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Ok… first of all, “LOL” at Song Info’s icon! I know it has zero impact on the app’s functionality, but based on the clip art icon and the screenshots you’ll see at the end of this review, it’s abundantly clear that design and aesthetics weren’t part of First Option Solutions Ltd.’s gameplan when they produced this app.

At least the icon tells you what the app is for… song info! Oh yeah, the name does that, too. If you’re obsessed with a certain song or artist or album, Song Info will help you find stuff out. Lyrics, Wikipedia entries, YouTube videos, album reviews, artist bios and photos, you name it and it’s in here. Kind of.

I say “kind of” because nothing’s actually “in” Song Info; the whole app is more like a music trivia gateway that takes a song name, album title, or artist and plugs it into a whole bunch of different websites that may or may not contain info on what you’re looking for.

The only two functions built into Song Info are “Get Current Song” and “Manual Input”. I love the Get Current Song button (press it to get info on whatever your iPod is currently playing) and I think every single music lyrics app should have one, so kudos to First Option for including this feature.

Manual Input might sound less dry if it had a crazy name like, I dunno, “Search” or something but it serves its purpose when Get Current Song isn’t what you’re looking for.

Outside of these two buttons everything else is done through third party websites that are presented via an in-app browser. Depending on what you’re looking for, Song Info may be serving up pages that range from smallish lyrics sites like Lyrics Mode and Absolute Lyrics to bigger commercial sites like Artist Direct, RollingStone, BBC Music, and even MySpace.

Having so many sites living in one app isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not what I’d call great either because it means a lot of waiting. Some of the sites have a mobile-friendly version that you’re presented with, but in a lot of cases you’re getting full web pages with all the ads and other crap that surrounds the content you’re digging for, plus the quality of info from source to source can get pretty spotty. This definitely has an effect on what kind of experience you’ll have with this app, and when you have to constantly pinch and scroll to get what you seek the whole things loses some luster.

According to the iTunes description, Song Info lets you plug your query into 21 different websites. Does this excite you? It doesn’t really excite me because the app makes no attempt to present the info in a digestible form, but I suppose it’ll do the trick if you’re simply too lazy to google whatever music is on your mind.

iTunes Link – Song Info
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0.1