8tracks - A Mango app review - Thomas Himageary

As described over at the Windows Telephone Market place, 8tracks is a handcrafted cyberspace radio for your Windows Phone. The Mango app offers a simple way to discover and share music through an online mix that contains at least eight tracks of music. The eight is actually the infinity symbol ( ∞ ), representing infinite music but "eight" is easier to type.

The 8tracks concept is rather interesting. Yous sign up for a free membership (here's their website), upload your favorite tunes in mixes (playlist for usa old timers), and add together them to 8tracks collection for all to relish. The Windows Phone app, taps into this collection and brings the mix to your phone.

The 8tracks app lays things out rather nicely with the ability to listen to established music mixes, create your own mix, also as search the online library by artist or genre.

To run across how well 8tracks performs, hit the jump past the break.

8tracks Main pages

8tracks master hub is laid out with:

Home Folio: Here's where you lot can browse the mixes, login into your 8tracks business relationship, view your mix feed and read about the app. Your mix browsing will pull upwards pages for the popular mixes, hot mixes, and new mixes.

History Page: Here's where you'll meet your mix listening history.

Featured Folio: 8tracks will pick half a dozen mixes they like and recommend them to you.

Genre Page: If you want to browse the mixes past Genre, this page offers 21 genres ranging from country to reggae.

For those wanting to search past keyword or genre, there is a search push button at the bottom of the screen to pull up a search field. Each mix will accept a description (sometimes rather colorful), tags describing the content, and a page of listener comments. You can "similar" the mix or add your own comments also.

8tracks Mix Pages

At the bottom of the mix page, a three button menu volition display your track history for that item mix and mix author credits. In tapping a specific runway, you'll launch your browser to Amazon.com where you can buy the track. Shame information technology couldn't send you to the Zune Marketplace where y'all could employ your ZunePass (hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

I've tinkered with 8tracks for near a day at present and have to say that I'g impressed with the apps design and content. Music is a wide mixture of artists from local talent that not many have heard of to headlining artists that are well known. Artist such equally Pinkish Floyd, Alan Jackson, Stevy Ray Vaughn and the Beatles. I think everyone can notice at least i mix that fits their music tastes on 8tracks.

8tracks search and track history

The app has the power to run in the groundwork and under a lock screen. 8tracks also has Zune integration in that player controls (pause/play only) appear on the lock screen. Music streaming was very smooth and the quality of the music was very adept from the headsets likewise as from the Windows Phone speaker. The only downside that I can notice and then far is that while y'all tin advance to the next track in the mix, I didn't run across any controls to replay a track in the mix (hint, hint). In that location is besides a skip limit but the quality of the music helps yous forget well-nigh that limitation.

Oh, one more thing. While you tin can view a rails history equally yous play your fashion through the mix, I couldn't find a way to view the tracks in advance. It adds a footling suspense into the mix but it would be nice to preview what tracks are in a detail mix. Still, while I'd like to see some changes to 8tracks, as is the app ain't bad at all.

8tracks is a free, Mango app that does have some ad back up. If you lot're looking for a very nice streaming music player for your Windows Phone and are running Mango, 8tracks is worth a look. If you're not running Mango, write the apps name down for futurity reference.

You can find 8tracks here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.

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