TopJam
Michael E. | Mar 20, 2010 Music
(4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
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TopJam, from Ole Gammelgaard Poulsen, is one of those apps that make you wonder why no one thought of creating it before now. It’s not a revolutionary concept and certainly won’t change the world as we know it, but it’s still pretty neat. What exactly does TopJam do? Its primary function is to pull up the 100 top US iTunes music videos from YouTube so that you can watch them on your iPod Touch or iPhone.
Cool, huh?
It’s a great concept. It looks good, is simple to use, and provides the user with yet another means of purchasing music through iTunes. When the application is able to locate the actual music videos from the actual artist, it’s definitely worth the $1.99 price tag. And even when it cannot- which is most of the time- it can still be quite entertaining. I wound up watching a bunch of user videos created by boys and girls with WAY too much time on their hands. I found funny videos, strange videos and some that were just pathetically sad. I’m sure more than a few of these folks singing or dancing or just posing thought they were the next hot thing, that if they posted enough cover songs, or wore the right wig, they might be discovered and end up on American Idol. Maybe even land a record deal. There were the rare few who were talented, although most weren’t. Still entertaining, though.
And sometimes, I was able to watch real music videos from the artists themselves- not those faux “music videos” you find on YouTube where someone’s got a static pic of the artist’s CD cover or a photo slide show of the artist in various random pictures that slide or fade in and out while the song plays. There were several times when I would come across a performance on a morning or late night show or even find shaky footage of a bootleg concert video. Most of this is entertaining stuff, too. But be forewarned that if all you want to see, that if all you’re really looking to watch are music videos, it can be a hit or miss venture with this app. This is not the fault of the developer, however. It’s an issue of YouTube’s in general. Fortunately, TopJam has features that permit users to indicate whether the suggested video that appears is video by the artist him or herself or if it isn’tl. In that respect, the app should get better over time as more people use the app and determine which videos are authentic and which ones aren’t. It will make for a good experience.
Version 1.0.1
Tested on an iPod Touch 3.1.3
Tags: $1.99
