Released last week, Neil Diamond’s official app for iPhone and iPod touch claims to keep fans up-to-date on the singer-songwriter as he promotes his new holiday album, “A Cherry Cherry Christmas.” However, there’s virtually no information about “A Cherry Cherry Christmas” and little content in the app overall. For example, the photo gallery offers six photos; the video section, one clip.
“Coming soon” seems to be a theme in the app, appearing in both the “community” and “more” sections. Unfinished apps are a pet peeve of mine, and Diamond’s camp clearly rushed this into the iPhone App Store for the holiday season.
Under the “music” tab, you’ll find Diamond’s last five albums (but not “A Cherry Cherry Christmas,” which was released before this app). Selecting an album brings you to a list of tracks. This would be a perfect opportunity for the developers to include song clips, but they didn’t. Instead, the only option is to buy now — which doesn’t work. Tapping “buy now” launches the Safari portal to the iTunes store, resulting in an error because “too many redirects occurred.” (To be fair, I’ve experienced this issue with other artists’ apps as well.) Diamond does update his Twitter on occasion, so easy access to it for non-Twitter using fans is a nice feature.
I wish this app lived up to its description. I’m curious about Diamond’s “party-time version of Adam Sandler’s ‘The Chanukah Song,’” which appears on “A Cherry Cherry Christmas,” but this app is clearly not the place to go for more information. I think Diamond’s app developers will be getting coal in their stockings this year.
