Share What's Playing On Your iPhone With NowPlayer
NowPlayer ($0.99) by Misecia allows you to play your music and share what you're currently listening to with your friends, all wrapped up in a beautiful and customizable interface.
Everyone loves music, and sharing it with friends is a great thing. As I like to put it, music makes the world go round. So how about a beautiful app to let you do that? That's what NowPlayer is for.
The first thing you'll want to do is start importing songs from your iPod.app into NowPlayer. I currently only have one playlist on my iPhone, so I just dumped all the songs into the "Music Library" of NowPlayer. When they're in this list, you can remove songs if you desire by tapping on the "x" on the item. Tap a song to start playing music.
You'll see that NowPlayer will give you a playback screen. You have the standard playback buttons (previous, play/pause, and forward). There will be an audio scrubber at the bottom, underneath the artist and song information.
NowPlayer also uses gestures to control playback and navigate between songs. Tapping on the screen with two fingers will play/pause the song, swiping left and right will take you back or forward. There is also a customizable three-finger tap gesture, that you can use to Auto Tweet, go to Music Library, or a Twitter client, or none if you don't want to use it.
The great thing about NowPlayer is the ability to customize the appearance. You can do this from the device Settings.app, though I wish that the developers could just integrate settings within the app itself. It can be tedious to switch back and forth between the app and settings.
Customization options for the player include: the UI Style (Light or Minimalist), Theme (seven total), Background (nine total), Notifications (Default, StatusBar, Info Bar, or None), and Fullscreen Transitions (five options). Each one brings a unique look to NowPlayer, and there's sure to be one that you like. Tweak it to your heart's content! There are plenty of combinations that may suit you.
Gestures can also be customized in the Settings too, if you aren't satisfied with the default settings.
When you share a song, you can send it to Twitter, Facebook, or send it by email. You can include an iTunes or Youtube link to your tweet as well, which is nice.
I have noticed that during prolonged use of the app, if I try to go back to my Music Library, the songs I imported earlier aren't there anymore. I'm not sure why this is, but it would be better if the app just integrated with the iPod.app fully anyways. Hopefully the developer can plan that in a future release.
NowPlayer is a beautiful little app that gives the user a lot of customization and sharing options. It could still use a bit of work with keeping all the songs in the Music Library after an extended period of use though.
It currently serves as a skin for the default iPod app, though it's not fully integrated (you have to add songs). Maybe in the future it can be a standalone player like My Artists is, with complete multitasking support.
The app is currently only 99 cents though, so I'd recommend grabbing it before the price goes up. If you're unsure, there is also a free Lite version available to try before you buy. It's just a beautiful little music player.
