Aweditorium was a music discovery app that gained notoriety on the iPad, hailed by many as a revolution in listening to music. While this was at one point the Aweditorium official website, that is no longer the case, as this address is no longer the official website. The history of Aweditorium was a brief one, but one that left a positive legacy, and acted as a precursor to many of the most popular music streaming acts that are still in use today.

Perhaps the biggest draw of Aweditorium was how easy it was to use. When you activated the Aweditorium app, you were shown a grid of thumbnails depicting a number of different musical artists. These artists came from thesixtyone's library of musicians, a group that acted as a massive collective of independent musicians. As a result, it was incredibly likely that you had never heard of most of the artists that you were hearing music from in a given session using Aweditorium.

From there, users would tap a thumbnail to hear music from that artist. Having never heard of most of the artists depicted within the app, it truly was anyone's guess as to whether or not a user would like the music of one of the artists they chose. But the great thing about Aweditorium was that even if you felt like you didn't enjoy one of the artists you chose, you had the ability to immediately switch to another by tapping another thumbnail.

Aweditorium Benefits

One of the nicest features of Aweditorium was that users didn't have to do any searching to get to the music that was available on the app. Whereas other music streaming apps require you to start by putting in a specific artist or genre, Aweditorium just gave you a large screen full of artists to choose from, allowing you to try a little bit of everything before finding things you liked, which you could listen to on your own at your own pace.

In addition to simply listening to music, Aweditorium offered so much more to its users who found the app through the Aweditorium official website, whereas this address is no longer the official website of the Aweditorium app. Users of the app could also get visual content that really enriched their experience, including the ability to read details about each artist, watch interviews with each artist, the ability to view other songs from that artist, and the ability to share a song that you really enjoyed to social media platforms including Twitter. Aweditorium described itself as an immersive music experience, and it was correct on that front thanks to these features.

Of course, the best part of Aweditorium was that all of these features were free. With music subscription services like Apple Music or Tidal being so expensive, the thought of a virtually endless library of new music coming for free and with all of the added content bonuses that Aweditorium carried is impressive.

Aweditorium's Legacy

Aweditorium was largely well received by those who downloaded the app, with the app receiving an 8/10 average rating on Softonic. Users loved the large selection of music and the exploratory nature of the app itself. These positives have been the lasting legacy of Aweditorium, which has stood the test of time even as the app is no longer usable.

None of this was to say that Aweditorium was the perfect app. As this is not the Aweditorium official website, it can be said that the app wasn't without its flaws. Being unable to search for any of the artists within thesixtyone's network was a bit of a drawback, as you were unable to track down something you were interested in even if you knew you wanted to listen to it ahead of time. Also, critics of the app were less than thrilled with the fact that the music was mainly indie rock music, which was great for fans of that genre, but made it less than accessible to people who had different tastes.

Aweditorium had a Twitter account that was active up until 2011. It frequently retweeted compliments from users of the app who expressed that they were enjoying their experience with the app. The account also dedicated itself to updating users on the status of issues with the app, among other updates that allowed users to find out what was going on in real time.

In 2013, after nearly a year and a half without sending a tweet, the Aweditorium Twitter account announced an app called Dinorama from the team at thesixtyone, where users could download an app for $2.99 that was supposed to teach children how to manage money. It was a dramatic pivot from the music-focused Aweditorium, and was the last anyone had heard from the Aweditorium Twitter account.

In 2017, thesixtyone announced it was shutting down for good, with thesixtyone.com becoming inactive at that time. Before the shutdown, the site was still featuring independent artists from around the world, and ensuring that they were being paid for their work, although by then there arose a number of other ways for independent artists to get their work out there and monetized to where thesixtyone became obsolete, so to speak. And while thesixtyone is no longer here to highlight indie artists, their impact via Aweditorium was a memorable impact, which is more than many can say in the music industry.

Today, music streaming apps like Pandora and Spotify are still around to carry the mantle that Aweditorium did in slighly different ways. Pandora lets you choose one artist or genre and feeds you songs that are similar to what you selected, while Spotify tends to be more playlist-based than its contemporaries. Both of those services also have paid options. While both are good, they don't offer the exploratory nature that Aweditorium carried, and Aweditorium surely didn't think to charge its consumers at any point in time, as simply getting the music out there and allowing users to choose to buy it on their own was the goal.