We all love music, and because the iPhone is also an iPod, it is a great way to listen to music. If you are like me, you often find yourself singing along with music. If you are like me, you also often find yourself not knowing all of the words (although I can do a mighty fine job of mumbling along as if I do know what I am singing). Wouldn’t it be great if the iPhone could automatically give you the lyrics? One of my law partners in my firm’s Birmingham office, Bob Eckinger, recently told me about a new, free iPhone app called TuneWiki that shows you the lyrics of a song while it is playing. I’ve just started to play with this app, and I cannot believe how powerful it is.
The marquee feature is the ability to show you lyrics. Launch the app and it will show you whatever song you are playing on your iPhone. Or, if you are not already listening to a song, start a song from within the app. You will then see a screen that shows the song information at the top and the album art in the middle, and superimposed on top of the album are the lyrics which, for most songs, scroll along with the music just as if you were watching a karaoke screen.
If that were the only feature, it would be enough for me to love this app. But that is just the beginning. You can also tap a single button to find YouTube videos of the song that you are listening to. I was listening to the Barenaked Ladies song “If I Had $1,000,000” the other day and I tapped on the video tab and suddenly saw tons of different versions, even a live performance with “Weird Al” Yankovic playing along. Here is an example of the music screen (showing synced, scrolling lyrics) and the video screen while I was listening to a fun but silly song from the great Jonathan Coulton—and yes, for the other fans out there, I realize that “fun but silly” accurately describes most of his songs:
The app also includes a directory to thousands of streaming internet radio stations, one for almost every possible genre, so you can easily listen to something beyond the music synced to your iPhone. While you are listening to streamed music, you also can see the lyrics. And even if you don’t have a particular song on your iPhone (or it is not playing on an internet radio station), you can also search for lyrics for a song.
There are also some community features that I have just started to explore. For example, you can see what other people are listening to around the world, or just around the corner from you, on an interactive map. The app also includes lists of the top TuneWiki songs and artists, etc.
Did I mention that this app is free? Run, do not walk, to your nearest App Store and download this one now.
Click here to get TuneWiki (free): 
The technology in apps like this and Shazam is mind boggling to an old man like me but sometimes I wonder what other great apps I’m missing and only coming across because I read blogs like this. I bump into iPhone users here and there who don’t make time to keep up like I try to do and they’re amazed at the basic stuff that’s out there. The iPhone is much more than a fun gadget but even the fun parts are remarkable.
Thanks for you great review. You only missed about 10 more features in the app… here, try to find how to get a pink skin, how to send what you listen to into twitter and facebook or just email it, how to see the lyrics for any song you listen to, in 40+ other languages, how to see what is hot in London or any other ZIP code on the planet, how to search and find any music video on youtube, how to keep your ipod playlist and see them at TuneWiki, how to shoutwall your opinion on any song and any artist, and how to let your friends see the music in your poket as a video link at tunewiki.com, via facebook. And how to pay for it all and make sure TuneWiki brings more of the same magic, by clicking the advertising …