Audium Review

Friday, November 11, 2011

Audium Review

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Audium Review

By Jennifer Allen on November 11th, 2011
Our Rating:

:: ATTRACTIVE
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

A simple and minimalistic way of playing music albums.

Developer: Michael Pringle
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4

iPhone Integration Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 4.33 out of 5 stars

Audium is both wonderfully simple and visually appealing. It’s a music playing app that’s quick and easy to use. So what makes it stand out from the competition, most notably the Music app already included with iOS devices? The fact that it’s just so darn elegant.

Using it doesn’t require any time spent figuring out complex controls or unintuitive displays. Instead, Audium displays the covers of each album, showing off the splendor of music artwork. Behind the albums is a wooden backdrop on the bottom of the screen, with the top simply displaying black to ensure that the artwork is most clearly viewed. Swipes to the left or right scroll through the albums with swiping downwards displaying the album name.

Controlling playback is just as simple yet effective with a double tap playing the album or pausing it. Swipes to the left or right move from track to track while a swipe up or down adjusts the volume.

Audium is as simple as that and highly effective due to its simplicity. There’s no sign of playlist options or anything complex like that. The experience is all about listening to albums easily. That’s not to say that there aren’t subtle nuances. The album cover fades to black & white when paused, for instance.

The only problem lies with the album art itself. For those who are very unorganized such as myself, it can create problems if not all the albums are well arranged with the appropriate artwork attached.

It’s a forgiveable flaw, though, as overall Audium excels at providing a minimalist music playing experience that still provides everything a user could want. In a world where everyone is so obsessed with personalized playlists, it’s nice to have an app that goes back to the whole point of albums: starting at the beginning and taking in the full experience. For this very purpose, it’s an ideal solution.