Developer: JAS Applications
Price: $0.99
Version: 1.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 3GS
 
Music has been a cultural “thing” for pretty much as long as human existence. By the same token, the inexplicable desire to tell anyone who won’t ignore us about the music we’re currently listening to has been a kind of secondary mainstay. First, people would simply tell their friends. Then they moved on to constantly posting their playlists onto their favorite internet forums. Social media outlets were a natural progression. And just as it was only a matter of time before Facebook became filled with “Now listening to” messages, it was also only a matter of time before someone found a way to streamline the process.
MusicStatus for Facebook takes the task of keeping Facebook friends informed of musical selections and dilutes it down to pretty much two button presses. Users simply have to tap the little speech balloon button to generate a Facebook message, add some extra words if they so desire, then tap Send. The app handles everything else, including generating the message and inputting the correct artist, album and song information.
This ease of use is a major part of MusicStatus for Facebook, but it does more than streamline a process. The app itself functions much like the iOS device’s default music player. Users can browse through their library, select playlists, adjust volume, swipe through their songs and ogle album covers just as easily as they can with the pack-in app. The key difference is that speech bubble, which will take all the pertinent info from whatever is currently playing and turn it into an update message automatically.
One major drawback to MusicStatus for Facebook is that it’s made for a rather limited audience. I know a lot of people can’t get enough of letting everyone know what songs they like, but I’m having a hard time imagining there being a huge market for people who want to pay for the ability to do it a bit faster. Then again I’m not a big music tweet-er, so perhaps I’m underestimating the draw of something like this. I encourage anyone who’s more into this kind of stuff than I am to speak up and share their thoughts.
MusicStatus for Facebook may not be as universally helpful as JAS Applications’ (a.k.a James Shaw’s) other apps, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. It’s certainly bound to make music loving Facebook fiends’ lives a little easier.