KCRW Music Mine Review

If you live in Los Angeles, chances are you're familiar with KCRW and its eclectic sounds. KCRW is an Santa Monica-based public radio station that is most noted for its unique sounds, news, and talk segments. If you're not from LA and have a valid excuse for not having listened to KCRW, it's not too late. (If you are from LA and have yet to listen in, shame on you.) In either case, I urge you to give the station a shot next time you're eager to discover new music or immerse yourself in delightful beats. Fortunately, you don’t even have to leave your precious iPad thanks to KCRW Music Mine.

KCRW recently released Music Mine, a music discovery app for the iPad platform. Music Mine offers a gorgeous interface that can be viewed in portrait or landscape mode which features music tiles that can be navigated and zoomed in and out of effectively. The app displays up to 100 artists at any given time, which are chosen and updated on a daily basis by the station's fabulous DJs. Much like Aweditorium which I previously reviewed, Music Mine enables quick access to many tiles containing info about artists as well as their awesome music. If you find an artist you enjoy, you can access a detailed view that enables you to browse through and play more tracks by the same artist, view photos and video, access the artist’s bio, and read any relevant blogs. If you click on the bottom-right buttons, you can quickly share your newly-discovered music via Facebook, Twitter, or email. You can also be directed to the artist's iTunes page to purchase music. While playing songs, you're able to visit the main interface where you can continue searching for more music.

While the features are fairly simplistic, they're implemented extremely well and the overall user experience is remarkable. It's great that the developer enabled the music to run in the background so that you may listen to your newly-discovered tunes while browsing via Safari, or running other less audibly pleasing apps or games. The sound quality is great and the app never crashed on me. Within minutes, I was able to identify new artists that I have since fallen in love with.

For those of you familiar with KCRW's programming, the app is a wonderful way to tune into KCRW's Eclectic 24, which is a 24/7 streaming music channel dedicated to amusing you with unique beats while you carry on your daily routines. In addition to showing the current song, the Eclectic 24 view shows the latest played songs and links them to their respective iTunes page for quick purchasing.

My one gripe is the large ads that appear at times when playing music. Typically, the ads are cleverly tucked into a corner of the screen where they do not interfere with the user experience. However, during a song, the ad can take a full-screen form which may feel a bit invasive and remove you from the otherwise entrancing experience. It is also worth mentioning that that the app can lag at times when loading the Eclectic 24 stream but I suspect that this has to do with KCRW's live online stream and I cannot fault the app developers for this.

All in all, the app is phenomenal way to discover new music or listen to the Eclectic 24 live stream. At no cost to you whatsoever, there’s truly no reason not to give Music Mine a shot. There’s a great chance you’ll find it as magical as I have.