Muse iPhone App Review
Being a massive Muse fan I was naturally very excited when I saw there was a new app to coincide with the release of the single “Resistance”, which incidentally is an excellent song and fully deserving of the massive digital campaign it has been given. Yes the app cost £1.79 but is easily worth it if you are a fan.
It is a clever promotional tool because to access all of the features you have to be signed up to the Muse.mu website, and this is made clear when you load up the app as it pops up saying as much, and gives you the options to sign in or register, so essentially you have to be signed up to the website before using the app. It is a great marketing ploy that gets many more names on their mailing list.
It looks good before you even get into the app, with the “Resistance” brightly coloured artwork as the logo on the main iPhone screen. When you go inside there are 8 sections to the app, and here is a brief overview of what you can do in each:
- Tour – The tour page is a list of all the upcoming tour dates in 2010, ordered either by date or by country. It also says whether the gig is sold out or if there are tickets left. Selecting a date takes you through an information page about the gig, sometimes it is ticket prices, others it is what stage the band is playing at a festival. It also provides a link to buy tickets if there are any left.
- The Resistance – The latest album, and loads of stuff here. There are 30 second clips of all the songs on the album, a really cool “appbook” which has the song lyrics and some artwork, the full video for the “Resistance” single and full song “United States of Eurasia”, both totally downloaded to the iPhone not streamed off the Internet.
- Muse Store – There is a link to a special iPhone optimised version of the Muse online shop, where you can buy all of the band’s merchandise.
- Map – A very interesting feature where you can see where other members of the Muse app are located, and can search via city in list view also. Really cool but I cannot properly work out whether it is showing the cities where there are a lot of fans or whether it is showing all active people on the app at that particular time.
- Feeds/Links – Self explanatory really, links to the Twitter feeds etc.
- Video Player – This is a brilliant little feature where you can link to stream any of the band’s songs, videos or live DVDs over the Internet through your iPhone. A revolutionary concept and the videos come through perfect quality as you would hope.
- Gig Pics – This is where you upload a photo from a gig and then tag it to the specific venue. This ties in with a feature on the map where the photos appear.
- Forum – Another iPhone optimised version of a feature on the website, it gives you a much easier to navigate version of the forum.
Thumbs Up:
- SO MUCH content
- Video for the best song on the album
- Lyrics for the whole album
- Streaming of old DVDs and Music Videos
- The map is immense – am interested to see where this goes in the future
Thumbs Down:
- Absolutely nothing at all
Score: 5/5
Summary: There is so much in this app that they could have chosen to make it more expensive, as the Resistance video alone is worth the £1.79. Very impressed. Muse are the type of band who always go that little bit further to give their fans something different and have done incredibly well again.
Every company/band/team should aspire to have an iPhone app as good as this one.