Skip to main content

Hands on: Songdrop knows you’ve been listening to music for free and wants to help

Screen shot 2013-03-04 at 5.25.43 PM
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For all the crap people generally give the music industry – usually rightfully so – it has done a decent job of adjusting to a new landscape over the years. Artists have embraced new means of distributing their music, a change ushered in heavily due to the popularity of the iPod and iTunes. The industry is at a point where you can pay a monthly flat fee and stream all the music you want without having to buy albums or download and upload songs between multiple devices. And yet the majority of us still have YouTube playlists of music we like to listen to reguarly. We have those playlists for two reasons: It’s easy and it’s free. The folks at Songdrop are onto that game. In fact, they want to make it easier.

Screen shot 2013-03-04 at 4.59.38 PM
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The concept of Songdrop is simple and not altogether unique. It’s essentially a bookmarking site for music with the added bonus of allowing users to walk around the pay wall that accompanies most streaming services. You create playlists that consist of music you “drop” from various media sources like YouTube, Soundcloud, Vevo, and others. Those playlists live within your account so you can crank whatever fits the mood wherever you may be. That’s the theory of it, at least. We’ll get back to the execution.

One of the big selling points on streaming options like Spotify is the social aspect, a way to share tracks with friends who have similar taste or just show how much indie cred you have. SongDrop is no slouch when it comes to social, giving users standard Facebook connectivity, but also making it easy to share playlists and tracks via social networks. Adding another layer to the social aspect is the ability to follow both friends and artists. Following ‘friends’ gives access to their playlists and activity, and following ‘artists’ will let you know when someone has dropped a track of theirs so you can add it to one of your playlists.

Screen shot 2013-03-04 at 5.01.16 PMAll of this is great, so far. Easy access to music with no fee (for now), and a way to organize all the music that you’re using in a bunch of normally walled-off services is wonderful. But Songdrop struggles when it comes to actually using those playlists you put together while on the go. At the moment, it is a Web-only app. It works great in your standard browser on a computer and features a Google Chrome extension that makes adding music and tagging it correctly extremely easy. Playing music from your computer browser is also really well done, with a simple bar brought up to control the track. If there’s a video accompanying the music you can choose to watch it but the standard controls focus on the music.

The problem is that this cohesiveness breaks down when trying to access the site via mobile. Using Firefox and Dolphin on an Android phone, the website was glitchy and unresponsive. Adding music was essentially impossible as was playing already dropped music. Accessing playlists was doable, but we could never get to the page to play that music – it would constantly return to the playlists page. The site was also very touchy on the mobile Web browser and had some odd glitches while browsing. 

The glitches went away on a tablet-based browser as the site loaded and was easy to navigate in both Chrome and Dolphin on an iPad. Listening to music – the whole reason for visiting the site – still wasn’t working, though. Tracks appeared playable unlike on the phone browser, but the songs never loaded or played. This is a bit of a deal breaker for a service like this. Organizing music into playlists and being able to listen to them without having to deal with the blockade that is a pay wall is great, except that’s not the fun part. If you’re really neurotic and into putting things in cubbies or proper drawers, this is probably fine with you. But if you want to, you know, listen to music, this is going to need some work. 

We’d hate for personal experience to stop you from trying out Songdrop. The service is interesting and enticing. It seems like it has quite a bit of potential to give a functioning infrastructure to the scarcely regulated and freeform market of music posted on the internet. Songdrop realizes it’s all about the music and knows where people are going to get it, which is a great step in the right direction. It’s making that music accessible on the go where it’s currently struggling. The Songdrop team seems like it is intent on regularly making improvements and a recent round of funding should help with that. We’ll check back to see.

Editors' Recommendations

AJ Dellinger
AJ Dellinger is a freelance reporter from Madison, Wisconsin with an affinity for all things tech. He has been published by…
Spotify app update finally lets you separate your music and podcasts
spotify app home page music podcasts separate tabs reorganization

Spotify is giving the Home page of its app a major makeover by creating separate feeds for music and podcasts. The audio streaming company announced the changes on Tuesday, and the new feature is starting to roll out to Android users, with the iOS app set to receive it soon after.

The revamped Home page will have two separate tabs on the top left corner of the screen labeled "Music" and "Podcasts & Shows." Tapping on the Music tab will take you straight to the music you've been listening to and give you playlist and artist recommendations based on the genres you hear the most. The Podcast & Shows tab will immediately show you the latest episodes of your favorite podcasts, as well as give you suggestions for new ones.

Read more
Don’t buy this new Motorola phone — get this other one instead
Renders of the Moto G 5G (2024) and Moto G Power 5G (2024).

the Moto G 5G (left) and Moto G Power 5G Digital Trends

Budget phones can slip under the radar when shiny, powerful flagships launch. But if you're in the market for a smartphone that gets the job done and won't blow a four-figure hole in your bank balance, then a great budget smartphone is the way to go.

Read more
Get 32% off the cellular model of the iPad Pro 12.9 this weekend
The iPad Pro on a desk next to a stylus and AirPods.

If you've been thinking about getting the iPad Pro with cellular connectivity but you've been hoping to buy the tablet from iPad deals for a discount, this may be what you've been waiting for -- a 32% discount from Amazon's Woot on the 12.9-inch, Wi-Fi + Cellular model of the 2021 Apple iPad Pro with 128GB of storage. From $1,199, it's down to just $810, which is a steal price for this device with savings of $389. However, while there are still several days left on this offer, it's highly recommended that you proceed with the purchase immediately because there's a chance that stocks don't last that long.

Why you should buy the 2021 Apple iPad Pro 12.9
It's not the latest version of Apple's top-of-the-line tablet -- the honor goes to the 2022 Apple iPad Pro -- but the 2021 Apple iPad Pro is still a pretty powerful device by today's standards. That's because it's equipped with Apple's M1 chip, which promises fantastic speed and excellent graphics when you're working on your multimedia projects, multitasking between several apps, or playing console-level games. With its 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR touchscreen, you'll enjoy high-brightness and high-contrast content, and its mini-LED display provides deeper black levels and more vibrant colors.

Read more