Apps
8tracks is the Best iPhone Music App You’ve Never Heard of
There’s no shortage of iPhone music apps, but odds are you haven’t found one of the best iPhone music apps out there — 8tracks.
The 8tracks iPhone app and website stream Internet radio, but instead of relying on algorithms like Pandora, it relies on people like Songza.
Unlike Songza, the playlists are created by anyone using 8tracks, not just musical experts. If I want to hear music based on my mood or time of day I still go to Songza, but when I want to listen to new music in a specific genre I turn to 8tracks.
8tracks delivers user-created playlists across a variety of musical genres.
8tracks covers all genres of music from Country to Indie Rock and Jazz, but I keep coming back to 8tracks for the mashups. Despite the name, playlists aren’t limited to 8 tracks. Many of my favorite playlists sport over 50 songs, for hours of music.
Mashups are mixtures of two or more different songs into a single cohesive piece. Mashups aren’t new, but grew in popularity thanks to Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album which mashed up Jay Z and The Beatles and others like Hood Internet, DJ Riko and others.
Because the original musicians don’t normally license music to mashups I can’t listen to them on Rhapsody, Songza or Pandora. On 8tracks, mashups don’t just exist, they thrive. User em-H14 curates a number of amazing mashup playlists, earning a constant spot on my musical rotation.
8tracks isn’t just about mashups. These user-created mixes remind me of the variety and music depth found on turntable.fm, without the incongruity that comes from listening to multiple DJs at once. When I find a user who creates great playlists I can follow them for easy access to their future playlists.
The 8tracks app streams songs over 3G and WiFi, but doesn’t offer an option to save songs for offline playback. For a free app we can’t fault this omission too much.
In short, 8tracks is a great place to discover new music in any genre. It’s as close as I can get to forcing my friends with great musical taste to create playlists for me.
8tracks also offers an Android app free in the Google Play store.
Robert Campbell
08/18/2012 at 4:02 pm
It’s a pretty good Android app, too.
Anthony Capariccio
09/06/2012 at 7:02 am
8Tracks is a really cool app, I didnt know until your article. Horn by Zynga is awesome. I also love playing FlySmacker and Singing City and my kids love Toy Store Delivery Truck and Guess Who Silly Shadows which they play for hours.