Reprise for iPhone review: fantastic social music player for shufflers, DJs

I’ve been using a new iPhone application called Reprise as my main iPhone music player for the past few weeks, and it makes a fantastic replacement for certain iPhone music listeners. In 2005, Apple took the concept of song shuffling to their biggest extreme yet with the iPod shuffle. An iPod dedicating to shuffling your music. That music player still exists, but the iPod line in general has been caniblized by the iPhone and iPod touch and their iOS operating system. With the iPod shuffle even existing, there is a clear market for music shuffling. Read on for the full review…

Unfortunately, the iOS music player doesn’t cut it with shuffling because the songs are not truly randomized, and the music application does not retain its shuffle memory. Adam Bell has created a nice solution for shufflers with his music playing application for the iPhone and iPod touch called Reprise. Reprise features a great and intuitive user interface that is unlike any other music player for the iPhone, and it is completely based around the concept of shuffling. In fact, users can’t simply pick a song from a list to listen to it – it’s all based around shuffling and “queuing.”

The app features five tabs across the bottom: Queue, Playlists, Songs, Artists, and Albums. Your typical music menus, but in a very atypical way. To start playing music, just tap the plus button to the right of a playlist, song, artist, or album and the corresponding music will be placed into the queue tab. If you want to quickly start playing music – in a shuffled order, of course, the user just needs to tap the audio controls on the top of any main menu. The controls for Reprise are not the conventional back and forth controls, but it is actually a slider; slide right and left to move between tracks, and tap once to pause.

To see a dedicated interface for a currently playing song, the user just slides their finger down the display. From this menu the user can view song album artwork. If the user holds down on the art for about a second, they can quickly scrub along the currently playing track. A great feature in Reprise is social network integration. The application allows you to easily share your currently playing track via Twitter or Last.fm. Of course, Reprise fully runs in the background and works with the iPhone and iPod touch’s native audio controls – both in the software and the physical rocker buttons.

Reprise is a fantastic music player for any user who loves the concept of shuffling music. The social integration and intuitive user interface are also very nice touches that set Reprise apart from the built-in music player and the App Store competition. The application costs $1.99 on the App Store, and our only major gripe at this point is the lack of an iPad version (we’re told it’s in the works, though).