Popular music service Shazam has released a free iPhone app today called Shazam Player. The application is meant to serve as a replacement for the stock iOS 5 Music app, and Shazam is hoping to set itself apart with several marque features.
Firstly, Shazam Player brings LyricPlay to your iPhone’s music library, meaning that you can get fullscreen lyrics for tracks as you listen. You can also watch music videos on YouTube in-app, get tour information, read artist bios, and share what you’re listening to on Twitter and Facebook.
Shazam’s new app uses Apple’s Music app API to pull tracks from your onboard library. While the music player itself doesn’t offer anything special in Shazam Player, the added features that Shazam brings to table are worth noting.
LyricPlay is an innovate take on presenting lyrics alongside a song. When you open Shazam Player for the first time, you will be asked to let LyricPlay scan your iPhone’s library to match tracks with LyricPlay for playback. Once this is complete, you should have a decent amount of tracks ready to take advantage of the feature. LyricPlay currently has a growing database of 30,000+ songs.
Tapping the LyricPlay button or the little music note next to the skip forward button will initiate the fullscreen experience while a song is playing. Shazam displays a typographical layout of the song’s lyrics as they are sung, with certain chunks of the text highlighting as the track progresses. Karaoke night, anyone?
Once you’ve connected the app with your Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can share track information with your friends. Shazam wants you to explore your music more, so you can pull up related YouTube videos and lookup tour dates in-app as well. While this app probably won’t convince most of us to switch from the stock Music app, it’s still worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9F3M2eNYiI
Shazam Player is available for free in the App Store.
