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MusicID with Lyrics

App & Developer Details
App: MusicID with Lyrics
Developer: Gravity Mobile
Website: www.musicid2.com
iTunes Link: itunes.com/app/musicidwithlyrics
Price: $2.99¢

Sorry, late review again, got a little busy in my personal life, anyways, here we go.

Review
When Shazam became available for the iPhone, I quickly went to the iTunes App Store to download it. The first thing that surprised me was it’s price, free? Cool, I thought, and quickly downloaded it. Of course, like the many others, I fell in love with it, pretty quickly. One of the first things I did is show it off to my friends, who were amazed. Then whenever I heard a song I didn’t recognize, I pulled out my iPhone & loaded up Shazam, life was good… for awhile.

Then came the infamous update that limited you to 5-tags per month. It was around this time I realized it was smart to keep previous versions of apps or back them up. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this until it was to late regarding Shazam. Ok, so then “Shazam Encore” becomes the replacement, claiming improvements, something along the lines of: “new design, layout and speed improvements, unlimited tagging (wasn’t that already available in  the free version before the crippling update?), tag chart, track recommendations, car mode option, plus many additional features”. Well, those sound great and all but as far as my needs are concerned, I just want to be able to tag any song I want, at any time. Well, the speed improvement sounds nice but I don’t care about the rest. So what’s the new unlimited version going to cost after being free? Is it $0.99¢…, maybe $1.99…, nope, $4.99, OUCH!

Well, instead of dishing out the $5, I decided to look around a bit to see if anything else was available. Good thing I did! Enter, MusicID with Lyrics.

Identify Song

MusicID with Lyrics has some pretty cool features, along with being pretty fast. For starters, let’s get the obvious out of the way. It will identify a song just like Shazam/Shazam Encore. I’ve had it for a few weeks now and so far it’s only made one mistake, but, when I retried it a second time it was correct.

Analyzing Song

When it identifies a song, it give’s you what you’d expect; Song Title, Artist, Album Title, Artwork, “Buy on iTunes” link and “YouTube Videos” link. Additionally, you also get the Artist’s Biography, Song Lyrics (like the app title states), ID Location and Similar Songs. These features I actually enjoy and make sense to me.

Song Info (Identified Song)

Next up “Now Playing”, I love this feature. It will give you information (i.e. Lyrics, Biography) on whatever song your playing on your iPod and it even let’s you add it to your “My Songs” list or “Email to Friend” option.

Now Playing

Then there’s “Popular”, which show’s you what Albums are currently popular and “Search”, another feature I love. Search for any song (doesn’t have to be on your iPhone) and get the same results as “Now Playing”, which is “Buy on iTunes” link, “YouTube Videos” link, Song Lyrics and Artist Biography.

Song Search

What’s really cool is not only can you search by Artist or Song Title, buy also by Lyrics. And finally, “My Songs”;  a list of all the song’s MusicID with Lyrics has identified, songs you added from Now Playing (if saved) and songs you’ve search for (if saved).

My Songs

I want to note, all the identified music above was randomly chosen for this review.

I have to say, I really love being able to get lyrics for songs identified, songs from my iPod and songs I can search for. Ok, now down to the visual and related details. As you can already see from the screen shots I provided, MusicID looks a lot better then Shazam, at least to me it does. Navigating MusicID is straight-forward, the UI is clean and the controls are nicely responsive. So far all lyrics I’ve search for have been available, to my surprise. The identification time is excellent, I’ve clocked my last five identifications between 7-10 seconds and I love the wooden shelf look of the “My Songs” form (kinda reminds me of all the hype with the iPads iBooks UI… or is that Delicious Library ). Anyways,  this wonderful app and all these wonderful features are only $2.99, $2 less then Shazam. I honestly think your getting more for less in this comparison.

Website
The website is also very nice, clean and very attractive. Using mostly those lovely grayscale colors we all love (well, at least I do), when used properly. MusicID isn’t just available for the iPhone, but also for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java enabled phones or pay-per-use (which is .99¢ per successful ID), nice if you only need it for rare occasions but will add up if your a frequent user. At the bottom of the web page is a video for the app, which looks really cool, but I wouldn’t know what the heck it was selling if I saw it by itself.

Overall Rating
User Interface: ★★★★★
Layout & Design: ★★★★★
Customer Support: n/a
Website Design: ★★★★★
Price: ★★★★★