Favorite Apps: Recollect

I love music, and I love Twitter, so naturally I love to share music on Twitter.

The thing is, you can’t just tweet a lyric, because people won’t know what song it’s from, and they won’t get to hear it in the context of the song, which is often what makes a lyric great. For me, as per Crush On Radio episode 4, it’s often not the lyrics themselves, but how they are sung. People need to hear your music if there’s any hope of them liking it.

With that in mind, the most effective way to share music on Twitter is using a song preview.

I’ve tried a few different apps for tweeting song previews, including Soundtracking and Path. Both apps do music fairly well.

But I’ve found a new favorite.

Recollect bills itself as “the best way to recommend and discover new music on Twitter”, and I’m inclined to agree.

Unlike Soundtracking, Recollect is beautiful, and unlike Path, it’s specifically designed for tweeting music. It does one thing well. In short, “choose a song, write a brief recommendation, and tweet it.”

Recollect has a news feed where you can view everyone’s recommendations, featured users, your friends, or trends in list or shelf views. These feeds make it very easy to discover new music, and you can “collect” (similar to a Facebook Like) any song to bookmark it for later. Recollect also lets you flip through any user’s recommendations in a record bin style view, which is well done. You can also retweet and reply to people’s tweets, or buy the song in iTunes. Your own profile shows your recommendations, collected songs, and your friends and followers.

At any time, you can compose a new recommendation. There are three options for doing so: search for any song by artist and title, use the song currently playing on your device, or choose a song from your device’s library.

I usually tweet the song I’m currently listening to. If you don’t have album art for the song, Recollect will offer several options and let you pick the best one. Finally, you can include a message, or just use the buttons to automatically input the artist, album, and song. Tap Send, and you’re done.

Besides its speed and ease of use, what makes Recollect so great is the web page it uses to present your recommendations to others. It displays high quality album art, all of the songs information, your message, plus the preview and “Buy on iTunes” buttons. It looks wonderful in mobile view, as well as on the web. I haven’t found an easier or more attractive way to share music on Twitter.

Overall, Recollect might be my favorite app in a long time. It’s beautifully designed, fast, easy to use, and does one thing well. I wish there was a desktop version so I could easily tweet music from my Mac, but that might be on its way.

Recollect is free on the App Store, so there’s really no reason not to check it out. Go get it.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed or benefitted from this article, please consider sharing it with the button below. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.