First look: Aweditorium brings indie music discovery to iPad (the Flipboard of music)

There are a number of ways to listen to music on the iPad, but I've been waiting for the killer app. Aweditorium just might be it.

"What is the modern digital music experience like? It feels like a spreadsheet," says James Miao, co-founder of thesixtyone.com and Aweditorium. He argues that all of the extra stuff that used to come with record albums has been lost with the digitization of music—and that it's time to bring back those trappings. "We think of Aweditorium as reimagining the feel of experiencing music on the iPad."

Thesixtyone is an indie music community that encourages people to explore new music, and it was built as a web app, because as Miao explains, "that was the platform of choice for a small startup." But times have changed, and Miao's new venture, Aweditorium, uses the iPad as an amazing canvas to discover and enjoy music.

"We think of Aweditorium as taking all of the disparate content surrounding an artist—hi-res photography, artwork, lyrics, hi-def video, interviews—and tying that all together into a single, intimate experience on a multi-touch display," says Miao.

Aweditorium hasn't launched publicly yet, but it will be a free app available through the iTunes store. At least at the beginning, the only monetization will be through sales of songs through iTunes.

Miao says he was feeling frustrated, designing interfaces for web browsers. "As my designs evolved and matured, I realized that I was actually no longer designing for web browsers," he says. "I was designing for something entirely different. So it was very fortuitous for the iPad to come along. For me, it was that a-ha moment: this is the device that I was born to create experiences for."

More info:
Aweditorium web site: http://www.aweditorium.com/
Aweditorium on Twitter: http://twitter.com/aweditorium
Thesixtyone web site: http://www.thesixtyone.com/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Aweditorium
• James Miao
• music
• iPad
• iTunes
• indie music

[mlehnen27]

The people that developed this app will go down in history one day...

[SambodhiPrem]

Finally he divorce of music and its context is over! Music loves visuals and a sense of place. Since the demise of the compact disk music has been degraded to look and feel like a spread sheet, Aweditorium for the iPad is going to change all that.