Current - A Detailed Review of the iOS App
My previous post was about a blockchain based Multimedia content aggregation and streaming platform known as Current. In this post, I'll have a detailed look at their iOS app which has been available in the Appstore since March 2017.
So the App is titled "Current - Music Video & Radio" and supports both iPhone and iPad. The current version is 2.0.7 and by the look of things, the Current team has been releasing new updates every 2 weeks on average. This is a very good thing as it shows that the team has been doing continuous iterations and bug fixes. The app size is around 94.9 MB which slightly on the higher side for my liking, but not that unusual for content/streaming/entertainment apps. To put things into context, Spotify app is 150.5 MB MB, while Youtube is 186 MB, so to be honest, Current does fairly well. The app icon follows a simple minimalistic design and focuses on the Current brand and logo, which by the way is pretty awesome. The Screenshots on the App home page are well designed and look catchy. I haven't had the chance to do a research on the Title and Keyword Rankings, but all in all, the Current app scores well in basic App Store Optimisation (ASO) benchmarks.
Moving on, let's look inside the Current app. The app opens with a personalized feed titled "For You" which is the first tab of the 5 segment menu (or tab bar) at the bottom. The "For You" feed displays songs, radio and video recommendations (It's very likely that is based on the proprietary algorithm that I discussed in the previous article). The carousel layout allows you to scroll through different items and select them. There is a section called "Your Daily Six" which lists six tracks that have been curated for the day. Then you have the "Recent Releases" that lists the latest songs and videos. Towards the bottom of the feed, there is this "All Genres" section where they have classified content into different genres such as EDM, Hip Hop, Pop, Indie. Tapping on a content (Music/Video) brings up an intuitive playback interface with all the controls. I personally loved this "floating player" design.
The item on the menu is a "Search". The good thing here is that you can search within a specific service such as Youtube, Spotify or Soundcloud. Once again tapping on a Music or Video search result will bring up the player with interactive controls. The next section is "Create" and here you can create "Channels" and add streams. After you name and create a Channel, it would bring up the same search control that you saw in the previous section. To top everything off, there is a "Library" section where you can add media songs, videos, radio stations or playlists. The transitions between screens are smooth and overall user experience while using the app is very good.
Download Estimates - https://sensortower.com/The Current app user base seems to be growing swiftly as per the data from renowned app intelligence platform - Sensortower. In February 2018 alone, the Current app has been downloaded 20k times according to their estimates. Also, the app has got a very high rating in the App Store (4.5 out of 5).
User Geography Source - https://sensortower.com/As I understand, the app hasn't been localized to other languages such as Chinese, Portuguese, German and so on. So understandably most of the audiences are from English speaking countries. Once localized, one would expect the download numbers to go higher. Also, please be mindful of the fact that the current version does not have any blockchain based incentivizing mechanisms for the creators and consumers or any CRNC wallet functions.
I really enjoy using this app and having all of my feeds funneled into one beautiful and easy to use application. I do feel like there is too much of a push to create channels and not enough of a push to explore content but that may be just because the app is new. I hope more social media platforms are added in the future and I hope I can someday create a wall to explore all my channels at once.
A user review as seen on the App Store
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To learn more about the Current Platform visit the website