Spotify Apps: Pitchfork, Songkick (Review)

By Ryan G

Continuing with my assessment of the newly integrated Spotify apps, I picked two of the better known and most straightforward apps.

Pitchfork.  No, not the haystack handling thing.  The online webzine.  Who would have thought that a simple indie music blog would one day become an entity capable of putting on music festivals headlined by Fleet Foxes and Animal Collective or break an artist like Arcade Fire?  And now they have their own app on the breaking music streaming service (how appropriate).  Unfortunately, its simplicity is both its downfall and its strength – probably its purpose as well.  Basically, all the Pitchfork app is is a grid of recently recommended artists from the website, now available for your use in playlist form.  It saves you the trouble of having to click back and forth between windows, I suppose but beyond that I don’t really get it.  It seems ironic that an entity with an elitist rep would jump on the next music distribution trend.

SongKick takes the sometimes trying job of making a concert calendar and just about does it for you here.  It looks at your Spotify and iTunes playlists and assimilates a list of recommended shows in your area.  Click on each recommendation and a list of the top 5 most played songs on Spotify come up as a mini playlist in the window to the left, just in case you weren’t sure you wanted to go to that show.  The app isn’t foolproof, but it is fun to use.  The main flaw is that it isn’t absolute in recognizing all of your tastes and the live show ramifications.  For example, lately I have been listening to a lot of The Head and the Heart on Spotify and yet it somehow neglects listing their upcoming show at the Newport Music Hall, despite being right on the money for other shows at the same venue.

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1 Comment

  1. Michael Meeze

    I love SongKick. It helps organize my very hectic concert schedule. The problem I have with it is that it takes too much effort to stop an artist/band from showing up. I have been using it for four years (whether solely online or on my iPhone) and I’m sick of seeing Sum41 pop up. Just because I reviewed one of their albums four years ago does not mean I want to even attend their concert!

    *done rant*

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