Nigeria's online music space is seeing more than its fair share of activity. One time, it was iRoking (http://techloy.com/2012/03/03/iroking-music-app-photos/). Next it was Gbedu.fm (http://techloy.com/2012/02/22/is-gbedu-fm-just-another-music-platform-heres-why-its-not/). Now, it's GbeduMobile (http://gbedumobile.com)!
Update: The app is in private beta, but you can request to test it on their website.Yesterday, I spent some time with this new music app that wants to afford music lovers access to a rich library of music and music-related content directly from their mobile devices via their free GbeduMobile application.
(http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedumobile.jpg)
The app, which is currently in beta, will enable music enthusiasts to search for music, buy premium content, download free content and share with friends via social media. Artistes and record labels can promote their work(s) as well as reach a global audience.
GbeduMobile sure has big plans for their service. Is their new app up to the task? We'll find out after the break.
First Impressions I demo-ed the Android version of the app. The app's first screen held no surprises, showing most of what you would normally expect from a mobile music app.
Wait, I actually expected some kind of signup/login screen, but didn't get any and was taken right into the app. Whether this will be put in before the app officially launches remains to be seen.
The app's general colour scheme is certainly inspired by current music app design trends, dark and grey with blue accents. The user interface feels kinda flat though, and I think the Gbedumobile creatives might want to pay closer attention to certain details, like the track thumbnail alignment and image proportions.
Aesthetically, the app still needs work. To its credit, it loaded quickly enough, even with the dodgy Glo connectivity in my office.
The Interface (http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedumobile-home.png) (http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedumobile-home.png)
The app's design is minimal with just four navigation options, right under the app's logo at the top left and a search icon at the top right corner.
The option categorise the apps music into four main headings –
Featured,
Songs,
My Downloads and
News. Users will see the featured category first and can then navigate to the others.
It's not clear what don't know what criteria is used to determine the music that falls into the Featured and Songs categories – Views? Popularity? Sponsorship? The My Downloads section will definitely require some sort of sign-up process to be enabled.
We can guess that the news section will feature current industry activity that is of interest to music enthusiasts.
At the moment, only the Featured and Songs categories work.
(http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedu-songs.png) (http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedu-songs.png)
Select a song, and you're taken to what looks like a song screen that shows you a thumbnail of the song. I said "what looks like a song screen" because I thought I'd get a music player so I could stream the music. Maybe it's a giant oversight. Maybe they haven't gotten round to that yet.
Maybe *gasp* they don't intend to feature a music player at all! We'll find out in due course. For now, all I got were three options. To get a trailer, download the full song or get a callertune. As of now there are no indications as to which of these options will be free, paid or based on a subscription (if that is what it turns out to be).
Another user interface/experience issue becomes apparent at this point, it needs to be more intuitive. I had a bit of trouble with some of the buttons because the visual differences between when they were active or not were too subtle to be easily distinguishable. That definitely needs work.
So far, the app hasn't lived up to its promise of social capability, there are no sharing buttons to be seen. Huge question mark there.
(http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedu-mobile-track.png) (http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gbedu-mobile-track.png)
The app is live no doubt, but I kept getting 404 errors for any option I chose, which tells me that the music isn't live yet.
Ready For Primetime? The GbeduMobile App is obviously still in beta, so I'll go easy here.
I'm sure that a lot of effort has gone in to get the app to where it is right now. But is it ready for primetime? Not for a while no, at least not until all its functionality becomes functional...pun intended.
If it wants to compete with the likes of iRoking and Gbedu.fm, GbeduMobile needs to up its game before launch.
The app's current iteration, in my opinion, is a user interface preview, and like I said earlier, some parts of the user interface/experience still need work. I don't doubt that the app's developers are working on it right now to bring it to launch ready status.
Until then, we'll continue to watch this space.
TechLoy