When I first stumbled upon My Artists last year, what I found was a great companion for iOS’ native iPod app that allowed users to play songs they had synced on their iPhones with a different interface that, among other things, came with Wikipedia and YouTube integration. My Artists’ main goal, in fact, was to provide users with more information about songs and albums they were listening to, pulling data from the web as a way to showcase videos and songs from the same artist that, however, were not available on the device. My Artists 1.0 was a discovery tool for music already synced on an iPhone; version 1.1 brought several interface improvements, whilst 1.2 focused on Last.fm support as in-app purchase, and made the app independent from iPod.app in that users could see My Artists’ icon in iOS 4’s multitasking tray.
My Artists 2.0, released today, takes the whole concept a step further to become a full-featured music player and discovery system for all kinds of artists, not just the ones you already know and have on iTunes. Thanks to built-in integration with 8tracks, the “handcrafted Internet radio”, users can now listen to a personalized radio station with easy controls to jump through live-streaming songs from the popular online service. Whereas previous versions of My Artists wanted to put more information about your music at your fingertips – by displaying artists’ bios, related music, and videos – My Artists 2.0 brings actual new music to the mix thanks to an 8tracks button that’s always accessible from the main list view, which as usual pulls beautiful and high-res artist pics and album artworks from the web.
The new control bar in the list view has also got buttons for quick play all and shuffle, surely a welcome addition for those who don’t always want to navigate to an artist’s page to start playing music. Once you hit the 8tracks button, My Artists will open a new window, and start streaming a random playlist within seconds. The playlists are user-generated on 8tracks.com, and you can skip and pause songs with the app’s regular playback controls. Tapping on the album artwork of a song streaming from 8tracks will display an overlay with the playlist’s information, although you can also use the sharing button in the upper right corner to open 8tracks’ website in-app. As with older versions, the sharing button has additional options to “explore” (opens Wikipedia, YouTube, or related artists and genres), open an artist’s profile or album details. And when you check out the details for an album you don’t own or have on your device, that’s where another new feature of 2.0 comes to light: native iTunes Music Store integration.
As you can see in the screenshot, alongside a nice inline playing indicator (available both for local and streaming songs) there’s a blue Buy button next to each song belonging to the album you’re listening to through 8tracks. My Artists 2.0 enables you to preview iTunes Store songs without leaving the app or, alternatively, tap on the purchase button to open iTunes and start downloading right away. No matter how you get to an album or song you don’t own, whether it’s an 8tracks streaming session or Last.fm-based “discovery” for related artists, the app will have an iTunes button next to music you don’t have synced.
Speaking of Last.fm: gone is the in-app purchase from version 1.2. Last.fm scrobbling is now free for every My Artists customer, and it needs to be enabled through a login page the first time you hit the Last.fm button. From there on, My Artists will scrobble songs – be them “local” or coming from 8tracks – to Last.fm.
For me, My Artists 2.0 nears perfection. I still miss the ability of displaying lyrics alongside artists’ bios in the now playing overlay, and it’d be nice to be able to “forward” discovered songs to Rdio or Spotify, besides the iTunes Store. But other than that, for someone who listens to music every day, all day (well, almost), My Artists 2.0 offers a fantastic combination of local music playback (enhanced with better, up-to-date artworks and a fresh UI) and Internet-based discovery.
