Even in the overcrowded online music streaming game, SoundCloud has managed to carve out a niche for itself — super long DJ mixes and cover songs. And that’s allowing the service to spread its wings and to become the YouTube of free music streaming. Lately, you’ll find official and exclusive tracks from many top musicians like Daft Punk, Coldplay and Wiz Khalifa on SoundCloud. If you like, you can also stream podcasts.
SoundCloud 3.0 is a completely reimagined update for the iPhone app. The app has removed recording and uploading functionality, it’s just for listening now. There’s also a whole new UI that’s different from most music apps out there.
SoundCloud 3.0 is lean and clean. You’ll find a stream of updates from people you follow in the Stream pane, your likes and playlists on the Profile pane and then there’s a pane for searching. The biggest redesign in the app is the Now Playing screen. SoundCloud 3.0 still has the normal album art, seeker and play pause buttons but the layout has been customized for one handed use. Although, the annotated comments are missing.
Imagine if you will, a normal Now Playing screen cut off by about 70% diagonally. The album art is zoomed in, even SoundCloud’s signature waveform seeker only takes up half of the screen at the beginning. I like how the waveform seeker moves forward physically as the song progresses and so does the album art behind it. It all looks very cool, especially because the animations are smooth. Just tap the album art to pause the song, swipe left or right to move to a different song in the playlist. Swiping down will bring you back to your Stream. The new update is also making big strides towards discovering new content. From the homescreen, tap the Stream button up top and you get options to discover trending music or to browse the best tracks in a particular genre.
SoundCloud 3.0 is fast — not just the navigation and animations, but also the streaming. The app’s interplay with physical UI elements also makes it beautiful. It might not be as intuitive or as feature rich as Soundflake, the third party client that had to shut doors recently, but I hope the 3.0 update is just the foundation on which new features will be built upon. I’m also looking forward to the iPad app redesign. If you use the SoundCloud mobile app for streaming music and just for streaming music, you’ll love this new update. It’s available for Free on the App Store.