After more than a year in development and over 1 million downloads, MTV's answer to music discovery has emerged from beta.
MTV Music Meter 2.0 launched Wednesday with support for not only the web browser but also iOS and Android platforms.
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The Music Meter is designed as an entry point for finding out more about bands and artists you don't know yet. When you initially visit the app, you'll get a list of the top 100 trending "Up & Coming" artists based on an algorithm developed by data partner the Echo Nest. Because the Music Meter wants to help surface emerging artists, you won't see Kanye West and Adele -- rather, a look at the top 5 today shows Gotye, Greyson Chance, Casper, Graffiti6, and Chelsea Grin.
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One of the updated features of the new release is that you can now sort by genre. This lets you find the trending artists in rock, hip-hop, indie, electronic, and interestingly, mainstream. Again, the emphasis is on rising artists, so when you narrow by hip-hop, for example, you'll find artists such as Tyga, Plies, and The Cool Kids as opposed to Jay-Z or Lil Wayne.
However, that doesn't mean that you can't find Jay-Z or Lil Wayne. You just have to search for them. The app delivers 30-second song previews from music partner Rhapsody, as well as biographical information, news (aggregated from sources like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, MTV itself or even much smaller blogs), and photos.
Also specific to the 2.0 release is a partnership with Songkick, which allows you to find tour dates and purchase concert tickets directly from the app.
The goal of the service is to provide what senior director of product development Mark Mezrich called the "artist snacking experience," which he defined as offering just enough for you to know if you want to dig deeper. Indeed, by offering just 30-seconds of each song you can only get a taste of the music. However, you can easily jump from the app to iTunes to make a quick song purchase.
Perhaps most impressive is MTV Music Meter's database of music. It isn't surprising to see acts like Gotye and Ellie Goulding, who have substantial backing from record labels. But when I search for one of my favorite local bands, Fort Lean, who self-released their EP last year, I find their music, including their new single and the dates for their upcoming tour.
For that reason, this app could be perfect for finding out about that opening band you saw and want to know more about.
In its current state, the Music Meter is somewhat limited. There's no social integration, meaning you aren't sharing and you aren't getting what your friends are listening to. It would be interesting to be able to find artists on Twitter and Facebook directly from the app, which Mezrich said is in his team's product road map.
Also of note is that Rhapsody is the sole music provider. "Our hope as the music streaming services evolve is to give our audience the option of what service they want to use in the app," said Mezrich. One can imagine being able to preview a song in the app and then if you like it, choose to share to Twitter and then go directly to your Spotify account and listen to the whole thing.
MTV Music Meter isn't quite there yet, but the early emphasis was on music discovery. Credit MTV for not trying to do too much. Even better, because of its partnership with 5 gum, the entire thing stays free. It will be interesting to see whether MTV turns this into a more social tool, but for now the interface is simple and effective.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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