The app ‘Album Releases’ helps solve this problem by scanning your music library and then fetching the latest content off of Xbox Music tell you what's new. You can then filter by type or release date. What’s more, you can pin the latest releases of just your library to your Start screen where you’ll get a Live Tile with a counter bringing that information right to your eyes along with banner notifications. You can even have it show up on the Lock screen via the notification icon or the detailed notification area.

Digital life sure is hectic in 2014. It’s harder and harder these days to just keep up with what’s going on in the world, never mind tracking the latest album releases from your favorite bands. I can’t count the number of times I find out that one of my beloved artists has a new album out…3 months after the matter. Fact is if you listen to 20 or so different bands, keeping track of their latest releases can be time consuming, assuming you even remember to check.

Album Releases isn’t a new app, as it’s been our since January, but today it has jumped to version 3.0 with some new features and improvements, including:

Album Releases 3.0 (new)

Get artists from your cloud collection

Filter releases by date and type

Faster

More stable

New UI

Better notification support

Less data consumption

Transparent tiles

View all new releases

No ads

The new feature ‘View all new releases’ is handy to browse everything in the world of music, including artists not in your collection. The transparent Tiles should please those on Windows Phone 8.1. Also, the app is completely free with no ads, which makes it even more enticing since there’s no risk here.

Probably the only negative with this app is that it relies on Xbox Music, which on Windows Phone 8.1 is not exactly a primetime experience. Still, that’s not the app’s fault and as Xbox Music gets updated that experience will get better too.

I’m not sure what else to say about Album Releases. It matches the Windows Phone UI, integrates with your music collection, it’s free, it has transparent Live Tiles and notifications galore, and it fills a feature-gap on Windows Phone. All of that makes it an instant add to my Windows Phone since it’s making my life easier. The developer is also in our forums, should you want to chat about requested features or issues you’re having.

Interested? Pick up Album Releases here in the Store. Free. Windows Phone 8.0/8.1

Via: Windows Phone Central Forums