App review: Pyro by Serato

The new music playlist app, Pyro.

These days everyone is a self-professed DJ - make up a playlist, plug speakers into your iPhone and press play.

However, the downside is that you always have that one friend at the party who insists on becoming a DJ-half-track, shuffling through songs randomly, cutting them short, with awkward pauses of dead air as they try to find that track with the "killer drop".

The new playlist app Pyro is a solution to this.

For Apple users, Pyro pulls your entire iTunes music catalogue over into the new app, including already compiled playlists.

The advantage of Pyro is that you can easily select your favourite songs and press play. You'll then see the songs in a line-up of coloured blocks - red at the top graduating to lighter shades of orange. You can easily move the songs around in order of what you want to play next. The app takes you through instructions your first time around.

Not happy with a song choice? Pull the song block to the left to remove it completely from your playlist. Pull the song to the right slightly and move it up and down in the list, while pulling it hard to the right will push it to the top of your playlist.

A really great feature on Pyro is the ability to show each track's BPM (beats per minute) giving more serious playlist makers the option to find a better mix between songs - this makes a big difference to the song transition feature. Some tracks work better than others, with a bit of practice you can find combos that work well together, however, some transitions end up sounding messy or jarring.

If that's a little too confusing, there's the DJ Sort option, which shuffles the songs into matching BPM order.

You can also save your mixes and look at your song history. Coming to the end of the playlist? You can select Matching Songs that are generated at the bottom of the list.

The app is simple and easy to use and for those who aren't fans of the song fade there is the option to switch it off. Aesthetically, the red and orange on black is a nice look, while the burning effect on the Next button as it transitions into the next song is cool.

Pyro takes the hassle out of trying to find the song you're after without disrupting the playlist, keeping your musical choices constantly fluid and changeable.

App: Pyro
Maker: Serato