I'm the most opinionated person about music that you'll likely ever meet. So when I first heard about the Pocket Hipster App for the iPhone, I thought, "finally, something that may make my musical critiques sound as pleasant as a child's laughter."
Once you enter Pocket Hipster, you're greeted by one of two shameless, British-accented animated hipsters - either Sebastian Fowler or Delilah Delavigne (the app hints at more characters coming soon). The benefit of multiple characters here is that as soon as you've heard enough smack-talk from one of them, just hit the shadow-figure button on the bottom right corner of the screen and make the switch.
Now that you've chosen who will insult your phone full of music, hit the music symbol icon (also on the bottom right corner). A song will be selected at random, and Seb or Del will use disgusted body language and lines like "your music makes me want to cry, and not in a good way," or "yeah, yeah, I hear what you're hearing man, and it pains me."


By the time you have the chance to dry your tears, the character will then direct to a screen where alternative, seemingly better, songs can be streamed or purchased.
Upon my initial travels through this app, I didn't really find a discernable correlation between the songs that are dismissed and the ones that are recommended to take their place. Largely, it appears as if the app has just tapped into a new way to expose the masses to more music. To me, that in itself is an important and useful feature.
Pocket Hipster is not without flaws, though. Right away, it seems like the dialogue provided is limited, which means the novelty is liable to wear off quickly. If more genius lines like "that was so lame, I almost found myself displaying emotion - please move on," were included; even better, lines specifically targeted to the song that you thought was the hippest tune in your collection; the entertainment value of this app would grow. Additionally, you must click out of the iTunes Store to get back into the app, which could get annoying. It also only works with iPhones with the 4.2 operating system and higher as well, which means your device will require the latest upgrade before enduring the creative criticism.

As I was writing this review, the app crapped out on me. I now just see a white screen with music playing in the background. Glitches like this were eluded to on the iTunes Preview page, and the app is brand-spanking new, so bug fixes are inevitable in the near future. But still, I think I need to take this opportunity to dish out a little something back at Sebastian and Delilah.
And it goes a little something like this,
Your app has temporarily failed me. Perhaps our office music is too terrific for you hipster avatars to handle. Please stop snickering at the radio and fix this glitch. Tallyho!
Pocket Hipster was developed by indie music Website We Are Hunted, in association with Australian creative agency Josephmark, and music intelligence platform The Echo Nest. It is available for $0.99 (CDN) at the iTunes Store. I like it for its originality, but beware of potential technical glitches for now.





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