Stereomood (for iPad)

The new trend in the streaming music services space is serving up tunes based on very personal user criteria—your mood. We saw Songza and its  deftly deliver such tailored tunes, but now Stereomood walks a similar path with a website and iOS app of its own. The free Stereomood app delivers quality mood-based playlists, but it's easily one of the most baffling iPad apps I've reviewed as it does so many things right—and so many things wrong, too.

Putting Wax to Needle
You log into Stereomood using your Facebook credentials or a dedicated Stereomood username and password. A black wall of flowing tags greets you when you reach the home screen; the most popular ones (such as "Happy" and "Beach Party") are in bright white text which stands out from the gray text that are the less popular tags. Advertisements rotate at the top of the screen, which you can remove with a $0.99 in-app purchase. I didn't find the ads particularly intrusive, but at least the option to ditch them is there.

Tapping the "Epic" tag that flowed across the home screen launched a playlist featuring the likes of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," and The Jezabels' "Hurt Me." The two songs have absolutely nothing in common (the former is classical, the latter is rock), but that's the risk you take when you allow the community to tag tracks. Besides, what exactly does "epic" mean anyway? A cool songs? Sweeping musical scope? Hard to say.

The Stereomood Musical Experience
Like other streaming music services, you can purchase music, share (via Facebook, Twitter, email), view artist information, and favorite and ban songs. Unfortunately, the apps lack song lyrics. Stereomood supports AirPlay, so you can wirelessly beam tunes to a compatible device. Tapping a small arrow in the main content area opens a new column that displays recently played tracks as well as several upcoming songs. You can jump to those songs at any time, which is a feature I really appreciated.  and the like let you skip only to the next song; I skipped half a dozen songs with Stereomood, which was very cool.

In my time using the app, I didn't recognize a single music artist outside of dead classical music composers. Searching for Michael Jackson didn't return a single official result—I found a few remixes of varying quality. That's not to say that the music is bad—on the contrary, I discovered many excellent songs—but the lack of big names may explain the ability to jump between tracks at will (there are typically licensing deals in place with major labels that prevent such actions).

In terms of audio, Stereomood gets the job done. All but the most hardened audiophiles will enjoy crisp audio that it delivers; the highs and lows sounded good through a Razer headset. A tool bar on the left column presents a few options. You can view tags in a straightforward list that's functionally easier to read (but decidedly less cool looking), view tags using the Mood, Users, Popular, and Random filters, and create a profile with an avatar, personal phrase, zodiac sign, and country. As with Songza, you can't use the app to create new playlists—you can only add new tags. Stereomood also lacks recommendations.

The Verdict
Stereomood, functionally, isn't bad—it simply lacks well-known artists and features found in competing iPad apps. If you don't mind diving into a world of indie artists that may not be household names and a barebones listening experience, give it a download.

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