If Ke$ha can claw her way up to the number one spot on the Billboard charts with a song like "TiK ToK", it would stand to reason that Billboard.com could easily serve up an iPhone app capable of rivaling such wicked overnight success. But that's just not the case with this $2.99 app that fails to deliver a show-stopping experience for the investment.
While the user interface here is clean and zippy there are a few key buzzkillers that will cause this first attempt to be less than a hit with iPhone faithful. After launching several artist searches I found that the app delivered sketchy results at best. The individual artist search was the least of this app's usefulness, so let's move on.
The other buzkilling moment kicks in when you hit the "Listen and Buy" button which immediately spits you out of the app into iTunes. Getting back to the charts takes relaunching the app, which makes the process very cumbersome. Especially if you're an avid music user who likes to play seek and buy multiple times. Even though this may be a limitation imposed by Apple, it's still painfully annoying none the less. In addition, the loading of some album art kept stalling even after several launches.
Where this app does excel is that it provides users the ability to instantly search the Hot 100 along with nine other Billboard charts with the greatest of ease. Once you've accessed a chart, tapping the search button let's you browse the hits as far back as 1955 in the case of the Hot 100. Having handheld access to that kind of archival music data is definitely a badass feature, but hardly worth the full price of admission.
If Billboard offered this app at $.99 it would be a much more tempting buy for the casual iPhone music consumer. I found $2.99 to be a bit excessive until the chart guru's can add more bang for the bucks.
On the other hand, if you're a charting artist, DJ or music industry professional, there's no question you'll find this Billboard.com app to be a friend with benefits. If that's not the case, I would hold out for the remixed deluxe version that just may arrive with a future update. I hope it does.
We are putting a new version out mid Nov - updated and better for less money
Posted by: MDog | October 18, 2010 at 07:53 AM
WHAT A BUNCH OF BS!!!!!
Posted by: ME | July 17, 2010 at 09:13 AM
Isn't working for me, either. What gives??
Posted by: Russell | May 10, 2010 at 05:13 PM
Looks like they pulled the app in the US store. The app is also no longer working for me? Anyone else?
Posted by: Steve | May 05, 2010 at 10:44 PM
No Canadian version, drag!
Posted by: [email protected] | May 05, 2010 at 10:06 AM
I like the app, the charts are fun and bring back lots of memories.
Posted by: Kathy | April 25, 2010 at 06:34 PM
i like the app, i love the charts and I am not in the music biz.
Posted by: jerry king | January 05, 2010 at 07:04 AM