50under50

The most innovative iPhone app for distributing music I’ve seen this week is a 10-track iPhone app from the Grammy-nominated electronic artist Deadmau5, developed by an Irish company called Future Audio Workshop. It lets anyone with an iPhone, regardless of their level of experience, mix and remix every song in the album. This is only the first step: The company plans to apply the same approach to several other electronica albums as well.

Deadmau5’s iPhone app ($3 on iTunes) lets you load any of 10 quantized Deadmau5 tracks into its dual-track playback engine, which works pretty much like professional DJ software while being easy enough for anyone to experiment with.

You can change BPM, control up to four concurrent effects, skip to the next phrase or back to the last one, loop a phrase, and cross fade between the two tracks, or from one to the next. When some albums cost $18 on CD, a $3 album that includes the ability to remix it each time you listen seems like a pretty good deal. And since the tool is so easy to use, it lets anyone DJ a dance party by plugging their iPhone or iPod Touch into a stereo and letting ‘er rip.

Granted, a remixing approach like this works best with electronic music. But for music of any kind, the mobile phone app offers versatility that can make other portable formats look like wax cylinders by comparison.

The A track in the Deadmau5 iPhone app is displayed above; here’s the B track, where I have Flange and Delay effects activated. By sliding the Effect Control to the left or right, I can tweak each effect (works particularly well with Flange and Filter):