If you’re looking for the perfect music playlist for the holiday party, NuTsie’s Christmas Music app ($1.99) aims to satisfy with preselected playlists stocked with thousands of holiday hits. While this app is the perfect accompaniment to the holidays and can simplify that moment when it’s time to bust out some Christmas music, the price is a little steep for an app you’ll only use a few days of the year.
Christmas Music is a streaming music app (no music is stored on the iPhone, so it requires an Internet connection) that includes 16 playlists, including Top 100, Christmas Oldies, Rockin’ Christmas, Country Christmas and Classical Christmas. There’s also a playlist of children’s holiday songs.
The app streams mostly classic artists with a few modern artists thrown in via the Pop Christmas playlist, which features tunes from Jessica Simpson, Rihanna and Clay Aiken. The other playlists include artists like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and The Beach Boys. The app includes all of the standard holiday songs, and some of the most popular Christmas songs are available from multiple artists.
The app works well and I didn’t observe any noticeable glitches. Buffering times are a bit on the slow side, but not much lengthier than most streaming music apps. Sound quality is very good, even for the older songs. There’s a pause button and a link to buy the song from iTunes or watch the video on YouTube. The biggest bummer is the lack of a search function, so you’ll have to browse through each playlist if you are looking for a particular holiday song.
Conclusion
Overall, Christmas Music is a simple app that works well and provides easy access to loads of holiday music. Instead of wasting time creating an individual playlist, you can launch the app, plug it in to some speakers and forget about it. However, $1.99 seems a little expensive for an app you won’t use much during the other 11 months of the year. Many popular streaming music apps, including Pandora and Last.fm, include Christmas music. Both of these apps are free and you’ll use them throughout the year. Overall, we recommend the Christmas Music app, but only if you know you’ll use it enough to justify the cost.
