Noon Pacific takes the best part of radio and isolates it into a brilliant web app. Every week, it will put 10 of the hottest new tracks into a playlist for you to listen to. There's nothing more to it and it's absolutely free.
I love the idea of a radio show — someone with good taste in music playing cool new tracks that I can listen to for free. But I also hate listening to radio — it demands that I tune in at a certain time, I can't stand the ads and the RJs are annoying.
Enter Noon Pacific.
Note: This app does not work with Mozilla Firefox and some other browsers yet. You'll need Google Chrome to run it.
What's Noon Pacific All About?
I'm a big fan of hand-curated blogs. With art, whether it's a movie, a book or a song, I have always had better luck with recommendations from reviewers and experts who share a similar taste than with some of the best music discovery engines. Musical taste is a personal, subjective element and so it isn't surprising that technology hasn't managed to crack it as well as someone you know, saying, "Dude, you have to listen to this song, you'll love it!"
On Monday at noon, Pacific Standard Time, this playlist will drop in your inbox like clockwork. You can listen to the songs via the web app for free, or download the iOS app for a one-time cost of $1.99.
Merits Of Noon Pacific
- Listen Any Time: You get to decide when to listen to the Noon Pacific playlist, so there is no reason to tune in at a particular time. It's quite convenient.
- Minimalist And Beautiful: I love the interface of the app. Dinnison chooses each cover art and you have the playback controls below it — simple and sweet.
- Free Archives: At any point, you can browse through the archives of the app and find more new songs to listen to. It's hard to do that with even some of the best sites to check new music releases.
Demerits Of Noon Pacific:
- Lack Of Artist Info: If you like a song, Noon Pacific can be frustrating because there's no way to find out more about the artist, the album or any other information. Usually, the first thing I'd do when I like a track is look up more songs by that person—but Noon Pacific has a stonewall there.
- No Genre Sorting: You won't like every genre of music out there. But Noon Pacific has no apparatus to enable or disable certain genres, so you often waste time listening to tracks you won't like. If you are sure about the genres you like, then I'd suggest you take a look at Tina's Sound Sunday column here at MakeUseOf.com for some excellent selections and recommendations.
- No Equalizer, Sharing Or Settings: Noon Pacific is just about listening, not about customizing. Like a song? You can't favourite it. Want to change the equalizer settings? Nope, can't do that. Share this song with friends on Facebook? Sorry, no go. It can be a bit frustrating.
Bonus: Noon Pacific Blog
Some songs don't make it to the final list. Some songs get missed out on, since it's a weekly hand-curated list. Where do you find those? Head to the Noon Pacific blog, where Dinnison posts some brilliant tracks which aren't featured in the weekly mix tape for whatever reason.
Noon Pacific is free for the Web and available for iOS as an $1.99 app on the iTunes App Store.
Image Credit: Planet of Success