RefreshingApps.com

Atlantic records Fanbase is a new Adobe AIR application that keeps you up to date with your favourite artists right from your desktop. The application features streaming audio and video, photos, a chat room and news.

You can also control how much space Fanbase uses on your desktop and switch between your favorite artists in order to stay up-to-date on all the music you love.

This application is a great idea for a record label to combine the many feeds both official and unofficial for selected artists. Currently the app only supports two artists from Atlantic – Simple Plan and ShineDown. What is great is that the AIR app is built so that you can dynamically add new artists to as and when they come available. Switching between the two is as easy as choosing a selection from a drop down list called ‘Manage Artists’.

First impressions are good, the app feels well designed and built with changing content appearing on the left with a right column of Music, Chat and artist links. The Music player is powered by imeem a social network for fans and artists. The interactive Chat is powered by the cool Meebo Rooms.

Official video is powered by BrightCove which provide video for many top sites. What is good is the incorporation of the unofficial video feeds from YouTube, the interaction is the same. The principle is adopted for the photos too.

The really integrated approach to services provided by third parties makes this app special. It’s done well and provides a useful fun application that is well suited to the AIR runtime.

There are more features that you can explore so download it, listen to some music take in a few videos.

Design eye

What you notice is the nice chromeless design which you can switch between compact music and chat only view to full application view. No full screen option here which is a bit strange given all of the other features. The core app has basic styling features but most are overridden with custom styles depending upon the artist selected, perfect use for that CSS style switching you can do in Flex these days.

The graphic design is well matched to the artists and looks great. Typography is clear, apart from the chat which can be a little unreadable.

One thing that did seem a little out of place is the link off the main menu to ‘Official Site’. This loads the site in your default browser while the other menu options load content directly in the app. WOuld this have been a good opportunity to use the inbuilt HTML browser and display it directly in the app instead of directly opening a new browser window? This could of course be set in the preferences.

Technical eye

Built using many web services and Adobe Flex. As mentioned above the developers have built the app so that dynamic styling can be added depending upon your artist choice.