Review: Song Sift
November 4, 2009
Overview
Apparently there are millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users who are having problems locating artists or albums with more than one song on in their music library. Despair no more, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. inedible software has answered your calls for help and now, there is an app for that. Song Sift is a new offering by inedible software and it is here to fix that annoying problem. Color me clueless, because I never knew that the whole locating artists or albums with more than one song problem existed. Now that I know this problem exists I can’t get it off my mind. Why haven’t I had this problem? Maybe seeing how Song Sift works will help. Let’s take a look.
The features
Song Sift is easy to use. When you start Song Sift it tells you it needs to analyze your music library. What it seems to be doing is accessing your music library and caching a list of artists and albums in an area where it can read it. Keep in mind it isn’t caching the music, just the lists of artists, albums, and songs. Before Song Sift starts up the first time it displays the analysis of your song library. In my case 75% of the artists in my library have 1 song. I blame the music industry for that but, that's another post my friends.
When the UI finally displays it reminds me of the regular old iPhone and iPod Touch Artist and Album search pages, the only difference is that Song Sift sports a slider at the top. You use the slider to tell Song Sift how many songs per artist or album you want. You can choose from as low as one song to as high as 10 songs. At the bottom of the page you can tell Song Sift to search by Artist, Albums, or Artist by Albums.
Play along with me while I use Song Sift to search my music library for albums with five or more songs. First, I tap Album at the bottom of the page. Second, I tap and move the slider to the right until it says, “Showing albums with 5 songs or more” and that’s it I'm done, easy peasy in two steps. To view the albums I flick through the list, to view songs on an album I tap an album, and to play a song I tap a song. Song Sift is very user friendly; I dig that in an app.
The breakdown
I’ve asked a few people about the need for Song Sift. I’ve heard that if you have the problem of locating artists and albums with more than one song it annoys you like a bad itch but if you don’t have the problem you wonder what the other people are complaining about. I still don’t get it myself but it doesn’t stop me from looking at Song Sift as an app that can solve your problems. So let’s break it down shall we?
The good
If you have what I hear is pretty annoying problem of locating artists or albums with more than one song on your iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll love this app. You’re probably dancing in your skivvies right now. When I examined the app I was pretty pleased at their design. inedible software made great use of the UI. The slider at the top of Song Sift’s search pages is pretty nice; I give them mad props for that. I also give them props for not over doing it. I can see the potential for a developer to get out of hand with the features in an app like Song Sift. I hope that they include future updates for free and not stoop to the in app purchase for new features.The bad
I hope you aren’t in a hurry for Song Sift to do its thing because it usually takes about 15 to 20 seconds for it to load each time you start it. I’ve also noticed that just after you start it up there is times there is a 5 to 10 second wait if you switch between Artist, Album, and Artist by Album. The wait usually goes away after you activate each search page. The only other issue is that you have to close Song Sift to control the music like you normally would. The developers did not work in any player controls. I’ve seen other developers get around this issue so maybe they can implement it in another version.
