New Mad Genius Radio App Blends Some of the Best Features of Pandora and Spotify

Mad Genius Radio is the latest music player to try to tackle the tricky balance of playing the songs you want to hear along with new ones you'd be interesting in.

OCT 28, 2014 - Mad Genius Radio is the latest music player to try to tackle the tricky balance of playing the songs you want to hear along with new ones you'd be interesting in.

The app's approach incorporates adding up to seven genres of music to a single playlist (called "presets"), which then let the user control how often those genres are played by adjusting DJ-style sliding controls from 1 to 10—the higher the number, the more frequent the genre will be played. If a user wants to hear a song or artist more often on the playlist's rotation, there's a separate 1 to 5 scale that controls it. There's also a "Request" section that lets users look up an artists' catalogue and choose how often they want to listen to a song or album, and a "History" page that collects every song that's been played in one place, so you don't have to worry about adding that song or artist to a playlist if you're hands are full.

It seemed unwieldy at first, but when I gave the app a spin and got the hang of what the sliders did—and the genres and subgenres of music I wanted to listen to—I had fun. If you're anything like me, you double up on both the Pandora and Spotify apps because, one, you'd like to have a playlist ready on Spotify with just the right songs in case there's a special someone in the car, and, second, you want a few stations on Pandora for when the playlists on Spotify get tiresome. Mad Genius feels like a blend of both, a combination of the music discovery that comes with Pandora with the customization of Spotify. (Though, when I added Led Zeppelin to my preset with the max rating set, it took about 10 songs for me to hear one song come on rotation.) Depending on your listening tastes, it might not be enough to replace your given music player, but it certainly is worthy enough to complement it.

The app is free to try during the trial period, and subscription prices will kick in to $5 a month or $48 for an annual membership once it ends, which is more affordable than Spotify Premium ($9.99 a month) and the same price as Pandora One. The app is available today oniOS and Android.

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