iOS: The stock music player in iOS is functional, but it definitely has room for improvement, especially in the looks department. Track 8 is an alternative player that takes a few design cues from the Windows 8 Metro UI, and manages to be elegant, attractive and fun to use.
Currently playing songs are superimposed over beautiful high-resolution images of the artist or band that change with each track, and album art is automatically downloaded and added so you can enjoy it offline. Oh, and the app sounds great too.
Track 8 is $1.99 in the iTunes App Store, which is a small price to pay for an app which is this much fun to use. It’s designed for the iPad’s large display, and the layout is well-spaced and open so you don’t accidentally tap anything you didn’t mean to. Your playlists, artists and albums are all caches in the app’s database, so searching through them, even if you have tons of songs in your library, is super fast. The app even supports iTunes Match, so you can pull down music from iCloud to play when you’re on the go.
As you play songs in your library, the app downloads and displays band photos and stills behind the player, offering an even more immersive listening experience. If you don’t like the default colours or wallpaper Track 8 uses for its interface, you can change them in the settings and clear out the image cache whenever you want to save space. All in all, it’s a much better experience than the stock player. If you love really interacting with your music while you listen, you can’t go wrong with it.
Track 8 [iTunes App Store]
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