MTV is delving back to its music roots with MTV Music Meter, a universal app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Through MTV Music Meter, users can discover the daily top trending artists. These aren’t your typical chart-toppers. Instead, the rankings are determined by a complex algorithm, which considers blogs, social media, radio play and other indicators to determine an artist’s daily popularity.
Each artist’s page features song clips (the number will vary) provided by Rhapsody. The clips are all shorter than 30 seconds, a little brief for my liking, but the files will provide a glimpse into the artist’s sound. If you like the songs, you can launch iTunes through the link at the bottom of the page. Music Meter also provides artist photos — which only display slightly larger than a thumbnail on iPhone, strange — recent tweets mentioning the performer, news articles and band bios. Stories available in the “News” section open in Safari, and the bio pages appear as solid blocks of text — not ideal for reading more than a few sentences.
My favorite feature of MTV Music Meter is the “View Similar” button at the top of the screen. If you find a new artist whose sound you like, tap the button, and the app will grab a list of other bands or singers that share a similar sound and style. In this section, I found more “mainstream” artists, but the feature enabled me to quickly seek out new music based on my current tastes.
It’s a change to see MTV promoting something non-reality-TV-related, but Music Meter could use some UI improvements, such as a quick home button, before users will cotton to using the service.
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