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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
SPIN on iPad Mixes Print With Musical ExtrasWednesday, March 16, 2011 Music mag SPIN takes a novel turn in its new iPad app SPIN Play. Users not only get a nicely .PNG) re-engineered digital version of the current issue of the magazine but also enjoy up to 30 streams of full-length tunes as part of the app experience. In fact, SPIN has mixed things up in a good way across several fronts in this release. SPIN Play offers a full year subscription to the digital mag for a mere $7.99 (single issues for $1.99) via Apple’s new in-app subscription model. And the app also pulls into the experience current Web based news and album reviews. The digital version of SPIN is itself a novel format, using more of a side-scrolling motif than a page metaphor to explore a table of contents and link to stories that are designed exclusively for landscape mode. In many cases large splash image fills much of the screen and a scroll of text is read along a side rail. Some of the layout can get too clever for itself. The feature on Sean Lennon, for instance, gives us a wonderful oversized image of the musician’s room (and a video tour of it) but the text of the article gets squeezed into a tiny scrolling box as a result. Generally, however, the SPIN magazine layout on iPad does a good job of emphasizing the visual and aural dimensions. Media mavens will appreciate SPIN Play’s generous helping of multimedia, from film trailers accompanying reviews to lengthy music samples and even full tracks streamed in for the music features. There is even a Playlist button that aggregates all of the tunes. Staying true to the musical roots, the app has a player toolbar ever present atop the screen so you can play the large collection of songs as you read and buy any one of them instantly with the iTunes link. SPIN has taken the full advantage of the iPad's multimedia features and linkage to iTunes to create an experience that is considerably different from print and well-aligned with the interests of it readers. We are not entirely happy with the navigation in the magazine portion of the app, however. Backing out of an article requires popping back into the TOC pages. Absent in this design is the now commonplace drop down TOC or bottom rail scrubber to navigate across sections more efficiently. In addition to the much enhanced magazine content the home screen of the app has a bottom rail of dynamically served music news and the latest reviews from Spin.com. Here, too, the layout of the small pieces is well calibrated with touch interfaces and the landscape mode. There are content sharing links throughout as well. The Web based content works well in concert with the magazine because they are formatted similarly yet occupy different areas of the app. Developer Bottle Rocket designed the app for SPIN. To the credit of everyone involved, the SPIN Play app addresses a number of challenges the magazine brands have faced in developing tablet apps. First, the digital version of SPIN is priced very attractively and with flexible terms. Moreover, the tablet experience with the magazine feels much different from the print version, and the innovation of streaming in full musical tracks is a tremendous value add. It is hard to imagine readers complaining about the price of entry here, either for the subscription or individual issues. For years music magazines (especially in the UK) have polybagged CDs with the issues. SPIN Play puts the music where it should be, integrated with the magazine content. Bottle Rocket and SPIN have advanced both the magazine brand and art of re-thinking magazines for tablets.  If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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