Daniel Hruska I dare say that for most iPhone users, the native Music application is sufficient for listening. It has not changed much in its basics since the first version of iOS (then iPhone OS). It offers basic music library management, sorting (artist, album, tracks, genre, compilations, composers), home sharing with iTunes, and in the US includes iTunes Radio. However, navigating through Music requires concentration on small controls. In contrast, the Listen app, similar to CarTunes, focuses more on the actual listening and gesture control than on the music library as such.
The starting point of Listen is the currently playing track. In the middle is the album cover in a circular cut-out, the name of the artist at the top and the name of the song at the bottom. In the background, the cover is blurred, similar to when you pull the notification bar across the screen in iOS 7. When playing each album, the application always gets a slightly different touch. When you rotate the iPhone to landscape, the cover disappears and the timeline appears.
Tap the display to pause playback. A wavy layer animation serves as feedback for this action. If you grab the cover, it shrinks and buttons appear. Swipe right to go to the previous track, left to go to the next track. Swipe up to start playback via AirPlay, add the song to favorites or share it.
By swiping down, you move to the music library, which, like the cover, is represented by circles in playback. You will find playlists in the first positions, then albums. And here I clearly see the biggest shortcoming of Listen - the library cannot be sorted by performers. I simply got lost in the number of albums. On the other hand, if I go for a run, I swipe down and immediately select a running playlist. And that's apparently the goal of the app - not to select specific music, but to rely on random listening and simply slide songs.
Conclusion? Listen offers a slightly different perspective on music selection and playback. Nothing lags, the animations are tasteful and fast, everything runs smoothly, but I personally did not find a use for the application. However, it is free, so anyone can try it out. Maybe it will just suit you and you will replace Listen with the native player.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/listen-gesture-music-player/id768223310?mt=8”]
For a library where I have ten albums maybe, but for larger ones unusable