Running a music hall of fame seems like one of the more thankless positions around. With music tastes as disparate as they are, there’s always someone to tell you that a certain person has been left in the cold, or that another artist shouldn’t be enshrined in the first place.
That said, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame app does a tremendous job of giving listeners a wide variety of styles as it packs roughly 90 years worth of music into more than 600 song clips.
Tracks on the app range from Leroy Carr’s How Long Now Long Blues in the 1920s, to Fats Domino’s Ain’t It a Shame in the 1950s all the way up to Gnarls Barkley in the current decade.
That track list should make it clear that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame app isn’t exactly about getting a glimpse at artists who are already sitting comfortable in the hall, but instead taking a look at songs that have shaped music throughout history.
As the app explains in a few paragraphs, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s curatorial staff picked the songs. There are even short write-ups for each of the tracks included with the app that help explain their cultural significance and why they ended up here.
For a music historian, this app is a little slice of heaven. For a music listener it’s slightly less than that. While each song has an iTunes preview-style sound clip that accompanies it, none of the songs have a full version, so you’ll have to be content to enjoy the free preview unless you start shelling out for the full versions via the iTunes links found in the app.
Easy to use and a dream to thumb through, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame app is an excellent pickup for music fans of all ages. It would be nice if it had some higher quality samples or a full-length song or two, but the clips and accompanying info are still well worth the download.
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