iMusik - All it is cracked up to be? Or just another cydia music app?

Earlier on today, a new app appeared on Cydia and the ModMyi repository called iMuzik.
I usually could care less for music streaming and download services, podcasts and streaming are more my source of audio on my phone.
This app however claimed to be "THE WORLD'S GREATEST IPHONE AND IPOD TOUCH MUSIC APPLICATION!"

That being said, I just had to try it out.

What is iMuzik?


iMuzik is an attempt to offer a free to use download and streaming application for your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Its authors use Cydia to distribute it as Apple prohibits any sort of downloading audio files to the iPhone itself.

After installing, quit Cydia and return to the phone screen and run the application by tapping it's icon. This is not a modification to the phone, just an application for music.

The first thing that you notice is that this app is more hip hop than it is country or rock and roll.
The second thing which you may notice is that this app went from "1000's" of songs in the Cydia description to "100's" in the app itself.

The main screen gives you an overview of how to use the app, where to get music, and twitter links.
Continue to click on the Music tab and get to the music available.

The next screen we see is an alphabetical list by artist. There is no way to tell how many artists are under a specific letter, you have to click on a letter and try your luck. Either the artist you want is listed or it is not.

Clicking on the letter "A" brings almost no music. We are luckier with the letter "E" and get two artists. This is misleading because it looks as though there are three "ALBUMS" from Eminem available.

These album listings look very promising. However when you click an album you find that to the contrary there are no more than a few tracks listed for download or streaming

The rest is logical as can be. Click a song and be taken to a download service where the audio file is located. Assuming that you have the Safari download plugin installed you can download the files and listen to them at a later time.

That requires you to have dTunes or a different media player installed as there is no player build into the application. If you do not have the download plugin installed, the default iPhone quicktime player will stream the song for you. When it is finished playing it will return to the application.

Worth Your Time?

I can see only one case where you would want to use this application. If you were on the road and cannot get to a computer. All you have is a wifi access and do not want to stream music. You can simply download files to your device and then play them later.

As there is no integration with the native iPod, you must have dTunes or a different player installed to listen to downloaded files.

This is a good start and could be a great service if given proper time and the ability to play files from within the app itself.

Other than that, the lack of any search functionality or ability to truly download full albums keeps me from using it as a replacement for streaming music apps such as Pandora and Last.fm

The developers are open to suggestions though, which is a great thing. Given time, this app could be something great. For now, I would sit and wait to see how it develops.