The Face the Music app allows you to post the song title and artist to your Facebook or tweet it. Not only songs but what I use it for most of all is to tweet out what podcast I am listening to at the time. I usually start the song or podcast and while listening to it launch this app, hit one button and send the info out. However the app does have iPod like controls so you could control what you are listening to from the app. The app also has a feature that will search for the song that you are listening to on Youtube and include a link to that song when you tweet it or add it to Facebook. You can also use the app to send out a quick tweet or Facebook update without having to wait for updates to be loaded. Great for when you don’t want to check what’s going on but simply send out an update. I have never used it for that but for sending out the song or podcast you’re listening to this app works great.

.99 in iTunes

If you like music and going to concerts, this is a must have app. BandMate works in a couple of ways, first if you keep music on your iPad/iPhone it will go through your artist and pull them into the app. If you’re like me and don’t keep music on you iPad you can either tie your Lastfm account in or put artist in manually. After the artists are in the app BandMate then makes a vertical scrolling calendar showing all the concerts these band are playing around you. You can set how far away you want it to look with the maximum being about 150 miles.

BandMate will also suggest other bands that are similar to the bands you have imported. They don’t ask to be added they are just added in and show a percentage of how close they are to the bands you like. It will even tell you what band they are comparing them to.

If you are like me there maybe a few venues that you try to keep up with what bands are playing there. BandMate lets you add favorite venues and shows what concerts are playing there. They do a really nice job of adding a picture if its a band that you are interested in and just list the artist and date if it’s not. This way bands that you like stand out.

There are several other features in BandMate like showing new releases of your favorite bands and bands they rank as similar. You can even choose how closely rated the other bands need to be. Set it low at 10% and get a bunch of bands or set it high at 90% to get bands that are closer to what you like or anything in between.

This app is beautiful and extremely well done. It works great and has a great user interface. It’s $2.99 in the app store and if you like concerts well worth every penny.

iTunes Store iPhone or iPad

When I first heard about Rdio I had my doubts. I’ve tried many different music streaming services, where you pay a monthly fee to stream the music you pick, and it’s never been good. Most of them didn’t have a good selection but not Rdio. I was blown away by some of the artist I was able to find. Not only can you find artist but they have most if not all of their CD’s. So I was impressed before I even installed the app.

The app allows you to search for music from your phone and add it to your collection, look for new releases, play playlists, web queue, see what’s getting played a lot, see what random people are listening to, your history, recommendation based on what you have in your collection, and see what’s topping the chart. Of course it will also let you play the songs in your collection as well. The player works and looks much like your ipod. You can either stream the music or download it on your phone. If you download load it, you can only use it in the app, which is understandable. Streaming work is flawless if you have 3G coverage however over Edge it’s not so good.

The weird think with this service is that they try to make it social but they don’t do it very well. You can follow friends or random people but in the app I don’t see how to do that. I had to go to the website to add someone. Also for a service that was trying to be social it seems that you would be able to post to Facebook or Tweet what you were listening too and you can’t. Not that these are deal breaker or even really matter. Another downside is that it doesn’t appear that you can make playlist from with in the app. That maybe a feature that is coming soon.

Over I think if you are a music lover who buys a lot of CD’s this might be worth it for you. The app is free and you get one week to try out the service. After that if you still want to use it on your iPhone it’s $9.99 a month, which isn’t too bad.

iTunes Store

Rdio’s Website