Microsoft and its upstart search engine Bing have partnered with mobile music system developer Melodeo to bring iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users 100 great songs from every year between 1947 – 2009 – for free. Since coming out earlier in April at $1.99, the app Top 100s by Year has taken on sponsorship by Bing, been transformed into Top 100s by Year by Bing and is now free “for a limited time” on the iTunes App Store.
The app allows users to pick any year from ’47 – ’09 and hear 100 “songs that have stood the test of time to become the greatest songs for any given year” (according to the app description), streamed in random order over WiFi, 3G or Edge networks. Users can view a list of songs for any year and listen to a short preview of each, as well as buy the song on iTunes — but listening to songs in their entirety requires listening to the randomized stream. If a distasteful song comes up in the stream users can tap to move on to the next tune.
Bing, of course, offers up ads promoting its search engine every four or five tunes, though ads can be disappeared with a tap.
Another downside is that, unlike listening to songs from an iTunes library on the iPod app, Top 100s won’t permit other apps to run on a user’s device while it’s playing, at least not until iPhone OS 4.0 comes out and Melodeo upgrades the app to take advantage of the new OS’s multitasking functionality.
But hey, what do you expect for free?
