Music Hunter

With millions of songs available at our fingertips (especially with services like Rdio and MOG), it can be tough to sift through it all. There are some awesome radio solutions, like Pandora and Last.FM, to help with music discovery. But what if we want an experience that's more interactive? Let's take a look at Music Hunter.

When I first read the app description, I was immediately turned off when I noticed that it plays music samples. If you're expecting something like Pandora, this isn't the app for you. After I used the app for a while, I realized that samples are all that's really necessary.

To start, pick a genre and type. I started with Alternative/Low Energy. Immediately, I was blown away by the interface. It's not often that an app that focuses on audio is so visually pleasing. The buttons at the bottom are simple and perfectly sized to avoid tapping the wrong one. The screen isn't cluttered: a gear to change settings and music, simple buttons in the bottom-right corner, artist and song in the bottom-left, which all allows for the majority of the screen to be taken up by album art of the suggested music.

Genre and type aren't the only ways to go about finding new music. After hitting the gear, a tab appears labeled Search. Type in an artist and receive recommendations for similar music (Pandora-esque). Both options work great but I found songs that best fit my own taste when using the artist search system. If an enjoyable song is found, click the circular arrow button at the bottom and the app refreshes with music similar to that band. The experience was similar to going from artist to artist with the "Listeners Also Bought" feature on iTunes. While similar, the Music Hunter experience was much quicker and presented more artists at once.

Sharing discovered songs, on Facebook and Twitter, is done by clicking the speech bubble button. While I would like to see more options, sharing is snappy and easy. And, something important to me, the sharing allows you to edit the tweet/status. Tagging the songs as favorites is also as quick and simple as tapping the star button. My problem with the favorites is that it doesn't seem to allow deleting just one of your favorites from the list. There's a clear all favorites option, but no option for each individual song. While this would only be a problem if someone accidentally favorites a song, which I did, it should and probably will be fixed in a future release.

Music Hunter will be my go to app for finding new music in the future. Music Hunter is NOT a radio app and should not be treated as such. It's a visually pleasing, interactive music discovery app. And for that particular niche, it excels.