Top 5 Music Apps for iPhone

There are over 170,000 apps available for your iPhone. Sorting through the crowded App Store to find the best downloads for your iPhone or iPod Touch is time consuming and fraught with the risk of dropping good money on a bad app. Because even though most apps cost just a few dollars or Euros, that still was your hard-earned coin. So, IGN is starting a series of Top 5s for various genres and categories in the App Store to help you make the best download decisions. If you're new to the App Store, we hope to make the discovery of new apps and games more fun. And if you've had an iPhone for years, perhaps you'll find something new and fun. Because that's what makes the App Store such an exciting place: there is always something new behind each click.

Because the iPhone was born out of Apple's revolutionary iPod line, it includes all of the functionality of those successful music players. But thanks to the cleverness of developers, the iPhone and iPod Touch can do so much more with music than just replay it. Now you can interact with your music, create your own sounds, and play rhythm games. Our inaugural Top 5 charts the best music apps in the App Store, ranging from a brilliant little puzzle game to a voice-altering app that turns you into the next hip-hop star.

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Pandora Radio
Publisher: Pandora Media
Price (as of 2/26/10): Free
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Pandora is an unparalleled music source. This Internet radio service is one of the world's most popular music destinations for good reason. It's easy to set up your very own personalized stations so you listen primarily to the bands and music genres you like, but Pandora's smart DJ pulls. I cannot tell you how many forgotten songs and new bands were introduced to me by Pandora. The free iPhone app works just as well as the website, easily streaming music through your device (as long as you have a connection) and its integration with iTunes right on your handset means you can buy new tracks with just a few taps.

Beat It!
Publisher: Glu
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
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We named Beat It the best iPhone music game of 2009. And unless somebody steps up their game, it might end up coasting through 2010 as a top choice, too. Beat It is a rhythm-puzzler. You must recreate music on a grid, tapping in notes and beats until you successfully mirror the sample track. Over time, tracks grow more complex, adding new instruments to the mix. As you match the music, the backgrounds explode in color and light with a distinct 16-bit aesthetic that will please classic gamers or any fan of cubism. Glu recently updated Beat It so the music making mode now lets you share created clips with friends and other players, which was our lone sticking point with the original release. So now, it's pretty much perfect.


Shazam / Shazam Encore
Publisher: Shazam Entertainment
Price (as of 2/26/10): Free / $4.99
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Many of the best apps are those that offer a solution to a problem that wasn't exactly pressing, but present all the same. Shazam identifies music. We've all caught the back half of a song on the radio, loved what we heard, and then screamed at the DJ for not telling us what it was called or which band performed it. Quickly fire up Shazam, point your device at the speaker, and within seconds, the app tells you the name of the song and the band, as well as offering links for buying the track or sharing it with friends. Like Pandora, Shazam is about exploration. As you tag songs you like, Shazam starts offering recommendations. The Encore edition of Shazam will cost you, but it offers increased speed and additional features, like a car mode that monitors the radio and keeps a running playlist.

RjDj
Publisher: Reality Jockey Ltd.
Price (as of 2/26/10): $1.99
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Your iPhone or iPod Touch is already loaded up with your music, but why not make a little of your own? RjDj is a reality mixer of sorts. Though there are a number of downloadable songs to pull into RjDj, the thrust of the app is to using the noises around you to affect the tracks. You can also move your fingers around scene to change the song, creating new sounds. It's a trippy little app and one that is easy to sink a lot of time into if you connect with it. You'll bust it out when you go to new places to see how the ambient sounds of that environment affect the music. You can save the music you make with RjDj and either listen to it later or share it with friends via the usual social networking suspects. This is precisely the kind of crazy-cool app that makes the iPhone such a unique experience.

I Am T-Pain
Publisher: Smule
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
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Auto-Tune is everywhere now, for better or worse. Smule's I Am T-Pain lets you use a simple version of the voice-altering software that defines hip-hop artist T-Pain's sound. Using the iPhone mic or an mic input on a Touch, you record your voice (either by itself or over a backing track) and then run it through Auto-Tune. You select keys to determine the results. Using freestyle mode over no backing track is a fun way to make little messages for friends, but I Am T-Pain is much more engaging when you sing over a backing track, really experiment with the Auto-Tune settings to create something unique, and then share it via Smule's global network. (Really, there is a globe you can spin to select I Am T-Pain creations from all over the planet. And this app is indeed global.) Oh, and lest we forget: shawwty.


Although we intended to just highlight the absolute top five, we cannot help but steer you to one more music game that is also worth your attention. Though not the best in class, it has all of the elements to be one of the best rhythm games on the App Store with revision and the addition of new artists:

Riddim Ribbon feat. Black-Eyed Peas
Publisher: Tapulous
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
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Tapulous is the most successful music game publisher on the App Store, thanks to its catalog of Tap Tap Revenge games. However, the Guitar Hero-like gameplay of just tapping notes as they stream down the screen is just no longer fresh. That's where Riddim Ribbon comes in: this is a cool riff on the rhythm game. Instead of touching notes, you tilt to steer a marble through lines that represent the song. Depending on which route you take at branches, you mix the song. PlayStation 2 gamers will see hints of Frequency and Amplitude in Riddim Ribbon, but considering those were the first music games by Harmonix (inventors of Guitar Hero and Rock Band), that's pretty good inspiration. If you don't like the Black Eyed Peas, there are additional tracks to unlock in Riddim that may be more to your liking. Plus, Tapulous has franchise plans that will branch out into other genres and artists.

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What are your favorite music apps and games for the iPhone? Share them below because these lists are not static. With thousands of apps dropping into the App Store every month, the next great music app could displace one of these five in the near future.

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