Songza (for iPad)

Songza?(Free, 4 stars), our recent Editors' Choice pick among free streaming music sites, brings its playlist-based service to Apple's tablet. The free iPad app presents music as themed playlists that you can discover by searching for artists, rifling through genres, or using the extremely cool Music Concierge, which serves up tunes based on your mood, time of day, and popular genres. The app offers a simple and unique way to discover artists you may not have known existed, but it lacks a vital feature found in the browser-based Songza: playlist creation and editing. Songza's iPad app is a solid offering, but it can't displace Slacker for iPad (Free, 4.5 stars) as our Editors' Choice on the iPad.

The Songza Experience
You begin by either signing into Songza using your Facebook credentials or by creating/signing in with dedicated Songza credentials. This brings you to the Songza Music Concierge, whichprompts you to select music based on your mood time and time of day. I selected "Still Waking Up," which gave me five playlist options for "bright, easy" music: pop, indie, hip hip/r&b, oldies & classic rock, and country. I chose "indie" and Songza presented three playlists that fit that criteria, "Coffee Shop Indie," Sunshine Indie Pop," and the category I selected, "Retro Indie Rock." I wasn't familiar with any of the bands in that playlist, but I discovered a few that provided mid-tempo songs that were perfect for my 8:30 AM office start time.

Tracks within playlists have the expected album art, artist, song, and album titles, but Songza also displays the playlist creator's username and the number of songs within the collection ("Ozzfest Through the Years" contains nearly 500 songs). You can also share playlists using Facebook, Tweet, and email.

A toolbar housing several categories resides to the left of the main content area. It features Popular (both trending and all-time hot songs), My PlayLists (recently played playlists and favorites), Explore (which lets you search for songs by genre, mood, culture, and more), Search, and Settings. There's also a section that displays "Similar Playlists," song collections that are similar to what you're playing. Its recommendations are excellent; it displayed "Essential Funk" and "Soul Glo: The Best of Jheri Curl Funk" while I listened to a James Brown playlist.

The Songza iPad app, despite carrying over many of the browser-based version's capabilities, has one glaring flaw: It doesn't let users create or edit playlists. That's one of the Web version's more attractive features?especially if you make a playlist editable by the entire Songza community, which results in intriguing mixes?so it's a disappointment not to see it here as well. Songza states that playlist creation and editing is a feature that will be a Web-exclusive feature for the foreseeable feature.

Singing the Songza
Songza may lack the ability to create and edit playlists, but it's still an excellent streaming music app. Music discovery is effortless, and there are many entertaining playlists, too. Slacker for iPad remains the Editors' Choice pick as it's a more comprehensive streaming audio service that carries lifestyle content and live ESPN. But if you're looking to sample interesting mixes, give this app a spin.

More Music Players and Services Reviews:
??? Songza (for iPad)
??? Slacker Radio (2012)
??? Spotify 0.5 (for Android)
??? Rdio
??? Spotify (for iPad)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/iQD0n05eqQI/0,2817,2407527,00.asp

cmas cmas tcu dr. oz heart attack grill las vegas the heart attack grill joe kennedy iii