Death Cab for Cutie iPhone app
Posted on Sunday, February 01, 2009
If you like Death Cab for Cutie, or even just think you might, or are simply curious about a very cool iPhone app: check out the free Death Cab for Cutie app. Like I said, it’s free and it includes a few songs & videos along with stuff like lyrics, news, tour dates, etc. And you don’t even need an iPhone/iPod Touch to get to the songs.
Here’s what it looks like:
This is such a cool idea and is very well executed. Of course, bands have been putting content like this on their websites for awhile now, so there’s really nothing groundbreaking about the content here, but the breakthrough is recognizing that an iPod is so much better suited to trying out a band’s music (I mean, of course, bands have known this for awhile, but record labels…not so much).
I have a long list of bands I’ve been told to check out by friends (such as Matt), and I’ve gone to band websites, listened to about a minute of a song and closed the window. For me, sitting at a computer staring at a browser window is just not a good way to get into new music. Putting it on my iPod and listening to it while I work or on the commute home…that works. Using an iPhone app also has some cool future applications: I assume the next time Death Cab releases a new album, they’ll release an “app update” that will automatically push one of the new songs to everyone who downloaded the app.
As for the actual band, I’m somewhat surprised to say I’ve become a fan in recent months. They’re not the kind of band I usually get into, and on first listen I wasn’t crazy about them, but awhile back a friend gave me a copy of one of their albums (Transatlanticism). After giving it a few listens, I found I really liked it and I’ve now purchased nearly all of their other albums. Music piracy in action. (Transatlanticism, by the way, is still my personal favorite of theirs. It’s one of those great, cohesive albums you can listen to front-to-back: every song flows into the next and there’s no filler.)