Hardformat

Artist: Snow Patrol
Title: A Hundred Million Suns
Label: Polydor
Year: 2008
Designer: Unstated
Type of music: Indie
Notes: The possibility that I would be doing a post about Snow Patrol here on Hard Format had never crossed my mind – they’re just not my kind of music. However, the About page we wrote at the start of this website ended with “Oh and who knows, perhaps at some point in the future we may even need to set up a parallel site to celebrate brilliant virtual design…” and this iPhone app is an interesting glimpse of the possibilities of new media.

Potential:

• It’s interactive – you pinch and drag your fingers to open each of the paper stars
• You don’t know what you’re going to get when you first open the app – there’s an attractive sense of discovery about it all
• The graphics are beautiful
• Each star ties into either lyrics or videos displayed with the iPhone’s YouTube app, one of the last stars contains links to the band’s presences on the web – MySpace, etc.

Pitfalls:

• Platform dependent – iPhone/iPod touch only
• The pinching and dragging feels a bit clunky
• There doesn’t seem to be any music at all! A real missed opportunity – couldn’t they have included at least one song?
• The videos are dull.

Ultimately, this is a toy (it is free after all), but there’s no reason why another group shouldn’t go all the way by releasing a paid-for album, single or EP in this format. Rune Grammofon, Spekk, Warp, Ghost Box, Raster Noton? All of you, c’mon – what are you waiting for?

PS, at time of writing there’s one other iPhone app like this one – it’s by Pink. Though less interactive, it does provide 30 second music previews, the ability to buy tracks, pictures, news, discography and biography.

Link: download Snow Patrol app from the iTunes Music Store.