When I first heard about Ecoute through a recommendation, I didn’t think much of it. “Yet another iTunes Controller” I thought. Anyway, the site looked slick and a few minutes later, I had the app installed on my Mac. It has changed the way I listen to music on my Mac.
Created by French developer Louka Desroziers1, the name Ecoute roughly translates to Listen (I take his word for it). Ecoute is a music player that uses the iTunes database to play songs. Sort of like an extension that’s independent of its master’s control.
This means that Ecoute can start over, on a light Cocoa base, bringing only those essential features that make for a good music player. It does not have any of the chores that iTunes is required to do. At any given moment, the memory footprint of the app does not exceed 50MB, which is what iTunes uses up when it’s idling away in the background.
Ecoute — is beautiful
In a weird way, Louka has implemented the iPhone’s ‘iPod’ user interface on the desktop. And even weirder, it works! One can easily browse through artists, songs, playlists, and using the keyboard or mouse to play tracks. Everything is fluidly animated, extremely clean, and is packed in with beautiful pixels.
Tap the album button and you can choose other songs from the list. You can even set stars from within the app, which are reflected back in iTunes (as are playcounts). Oh, and for the sake of mentioning it, Lyrics are overlayed on the window, just like on the iPhone. Lucky for most, and sad for me and internet deficient Mac, the lyrics are pulled from the internet so it doesn’t matter whether your songs have lyrics embedded.
Most of all, the interface is speedy. Everything from scrolling, clicking around, to switching tracks is snappy. Admittedly, it does freeze up once in a while, but that seems more like a bug than Ecoute having performance issues.
Ecoute — has features
Ecoute can with one click post the song you’re listening to, to Twitter or Facebook. You can check out a list of videos on YouTube for that particular song. And you can copy the iTunes Store url to the currently playing song.
In terms of a regular iTunes controller, Ecoute has the necessary shortcuts (except for adding rating), and has the ability to display an HTML+CSS controller on your desktop, much like Bowtie. In fact, there’s a way to quickly convert existing Bowtie themes for the Ecoute format.
I’m afraid that the developer will continue adding features in the name of progress, inevitably landing this little app into the same monolith that iTunes has become. Ecoute has stability and performance issues (a few crashes and freezes) which need to be addressed much before adding gimmicky features. Ecoute needs to better its already fantastic keyboarding support. And most importantly, Ecoute needs to stay true to its purpose—a lean, fast, beautiful little music player. Thankfully, with the latest update Ecoute has the option of knocking off the ‘social’ features—very reassuring.
Ecoute — recommended
At $10 I’ll give it my full recommendation, especially for those who love listening to music while working on heavy projects in Photoshop or Final Cut Pro. And even if you’re not concerned about the memory footprint that iTunes demands, it’s a cute little player that you will find yourself draw to for playing music. With the latest update, Podcasts and TV shows have resume support, so it’s fairly good for those tasks as well. I personally haven’t used iTunes to play anything other than podcasts—where iTunes totally wins out—for the past week or so that I’ve had Ecoute installed; I don’t intend on changing that. There’s of course a healthy 15-day trial waiting your approval.
[Huge thanks to Matthew for the recommendation!]
Ecoute — The giveaway
An app so good can’t escape the SA labs without a giveaway attached to it. We’ve got 3 potential licenses for 3 potential winners. To win:
1. Leave a comment with a screenshot of Ecoute playing your favourite track. Since my tastes in music are highly questionable, I’ll ask Brandon to be the judge of the best artist. If you’re unsure of how to upload images, attach it in an email to our PR address after leaving your comment.
2. Send out a tweet with a link back to this page.
3. Standard giveaway rules apply.
Update: As judged by Brandon from the team, Marcus Ting and Dorian Grey win out over the rest for their screenshots. Andrew Wendt wins out for the twitter retweet. We’ll get in touch soon.
Ecoute — The video walkthrough
Just so you can see what the app feels like. It’s just 2 minutes long.
- Well, Oliver Charavel designed and even thought of the app, but he’s not involved with the app or company anymore ↩
