Crosby, Stills & Nash Release Free iPad App With Subscription Options

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

Maybe people don’t always want to subscribe to all the music in the world. Maybe the superfans among us thirst for something more: a way to subscribe only to the bands that matter most to us.

Of course, we’d want our money’s worth: everything that band has ever recorded, interviews, merch deals, early ticket-buying opportunities, and even an artificially-intelligent radio station, personally curated by the artist (i.e. not some random label minion).

Venerable hippie harmonizers Crosby, Stills, and Nash come close to that vision with what they are calling ”the first subscription-based recording artist iPad app approved for sale in the Apple app store.” Indeed, it lets you subscribe to a single artist: CSN. Developed by Contendis, the free iPad-only app includes plenty of free stuff for the casual fan.

“Use this app as an open door to our music,” said Graham Nash in the announcement. “And, as usual, when one door closes-another one opens… enjoy exploring.”

Paying $4 per month or $40 for a year (it should probably be lifetime for that price) makes you part of “the couch club,” which gets you “regular updates of dynamic and exclusive content, including unreleased videos, music and photos, and discounts on selected merchandise.”

James Raymond, co-founder and COO of app developer Contendis, stated, “We look forward to providing CSN and other great artists with a platform to engage and connect with their fans in a profound new way.”

As such, we expect other apps to do this too. It is a good idea.

Notably, this app-happy trio released another iOS app this week: Crosby, Stills, & Nash (pictured right). It is free, and includes two $10 live sets for purchase. This is the app we reported on earlier that streams music all the way up to CD quality. Listening to it just now, we were amused to watch the bit rate increase, as the app noticed our fast Wi-Fi connection, maxing out at 716 Kbps.

Both apps are quite solid entries, although the true superfan will be dismayed to find that both showed up as “CSN” on our iPad, which is confusing.

Apparently, CSN didn’t wait for their former bandmate Neil Young (a.k.a. the “Y” in “CSNY”) to release his Pono format, although CSN does have high-resolution version of its music on HDTracks.