I’m sure you are well aware of the fact that the music industry has changed quite a lot over the recent years. The industry had to adapt to the rise of the Internet as music fans flocked together on social network sites and started posting video, photos and information on their blogs and MySpace/Facebook/YouTube accounts.
Atlantic Records now takes full advantage of all that content in their Fanbase application. This free application puts the latest information from artists/muscicians on to the fans’ desktops. The app features an audio player (powered by imeem), chat room (powered by Meebo) and a continuous feed of all the official and ‘unofficial’ news, photos and videos aggregated from all over the web. With one download, music fans now have access to all available information from one application. The application is built on top of AIR and thus runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.
Just this week, Atlantic Records launched a mobile version of the application. While some of you may already be reaching for your iPhones, Atlantic Records chose to built the app for the widest possible reach by picking Flash Lite as the platform. The mobile version has the exact same feature set as the desktop version. I recorded a quick demo of the mobile application this morning. I also included the install process so you can see that it’s not that hard to install the app on your Flash Lite enabled phone.
The Adobe TV team recently recorded a video with the people behind the Fanbase application.
Give Fanbase a go and get it on http://www.getfanbase.com/
Please note that Flash Lite 3.1 is currently available on these devices: Nokia N78, Nokia E65, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N95, Nokia N73, Nokia N81, Nokia 6120 Classic, Nokia E51, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia E71, Nokia N96, Nokia N82, Motorola Q Norman(9h GSM), Motorola Q, Motorola Q9m, Samsung SGH-i607(BlackJack) I, Samsung SGH-i617(BlackJack) II, Samsung SGH-i780, HTC Touch, Diamond P3700, HTC-Pro S621(Same as T-Mobile dash), Palm Treo 700wx, Palm Treo Pro, Palm Treo 750. For more information on device compatibility, please visit Adobe Labs.
‘widest possible reach’ – I’d be interested to see that quantified in terms of “users who download flash content vs users who download iPhone apps” whilst they may have the ability to do so I’m not sure many actually ARE doing so. iPhone users are already conditioned to downloading apps and new content whereas I’m sure many (most?) Flash Lite enabled users aren’t even aware they even have a Flash Lite enabled phone or what it is.
However, apps like this will go a long way towards that conditioning so I hope it does well and many others jump on the bandwagon as the prospect of the potential reach of Flash Lite as well as potential developer base is much more exciting to me than iPhone.
@Danny: I think the fact that Flash Lite run on multiple platforms and phones validates the user of ‘The widest possible reach’. I agree with you that some users may not even know that they have Flash Lite on their phone. However, with our new mobile packager and Flash Lite 3.1, they don’t need to know if they have it. You just download the app from a (mobile) website and install it.
Sorry Serge, didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t a valid statement, I agree it is (I read the stats: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/pdfs/flash_lite_forecast_installed_base_jan09.pdf). I just feel there’s such an opportunity not being taken full advantage of because so many users are ignorant to whats at their fingertips and so many companies not aware of how in-reach that audience is.