Relisten — all live music

Screenshots

About Relisten — all live music

The power of Relisten.net in the palm of your hand! Listen to any song from over 100 artists!

- Listen to music in the background, with full streaming capabilities!

- Thousands of concerts and 10s of thousands of songs from the Live Music Archive at archive.org, etree, phish.in and more!

- View taping source and taper notes

- View concert rating

- View shows by venue

- View random show

- Last.FM scrobbling

- Listen to bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead, Dead & Company, Umphree's McGee, String Cheese Incident, Marco Benevento, Lotus, STS9 and more!

Follow @relistenapp or @alecgorge for updates and information!

Version

App Information

The holy grail of free live music (with a catch)

Remember tape trading? Standing in parking lots after shows, swapping cassettes with strangers, hoping that guy from Colorado actually sends you that legendary '77 Dead show? Relisten basically took that whole culture and stuffed it into your phone. For free. Completely free.

I discovered this app after my nugs.net trial expired and I couldn't justify another $20/month subscription. My buddy Jake, who's been following jam bands since the 90s, texted me "dude, why are you paying for concerts when Relisten exists?" Three weeks later, I've streamed probably 50 shows and I'm... conflicted.

Two weeks deep in the archive

Started with the obvious - Grateful Dead, Cornell '77. Sound quality? Surprisingly excellent for a free app pulling from archive.org. The interface felt clean, maybe too clean. Took me 20 minutes to figure out you can actually filter by soundboard recordings (tap the source info, not intuitive at all).

Day three was when things got interesting. Found a Phish show from the venue I saw them at in 2019. Different night, same tour. The setlist feature actually shows what songs were played before you commit to a three-hour show. Smart. But then the app crashed. And crashed again. Turns out if you skip songs too quickly on Android, the whole thing just gives up.

By week two, I'd developed a system. Pick a show, hit play, don't touch anything. The background playback actually works great - survived my entire commute without dropping once I stopped trying to skip around. Even discovered some bands I'd never heard of. Ever listen to Aqueous? Neither had I. Now I've got five of their shows downloaded for offline.

The random show feature became my morning routine. It's like musical roulette - sometimes you get gold, sometimes you get a muddy audience recording from 1983. But that's part of the charm, right?

The pros and cons

How it stacks up

What the internet says

The Phish.net forums are obsessed with this app. Found a thread with 400+ comments calling it "the holy grail for Deadheads." But scroll down and the Android users are losing their minds. One guy said he's gone through three phones thinking his hardware was the problem.

Reddit's r/gratefuldead is more forgiving. They seem to accept the bugs as the price of free. Someone discovered that older iOS devices work better than new ones (weird, right?). The workaround thread has 200 upvotes - basically saying use version 5.9 if you can find it, newer updates made things worse.

Sonos users are straight up angry. Checked their community forum and there's a 50-page thread about how the recent Sonos update completely broke Relisten integration. The developer (@alecgorge on Twitter) actually responds to complaints, which is rare. Saw him help someone recover their favorites list last week.

App Store sitting at 4.9 stars from 36,000 reviews, but check the recent ones. Lots of 1-stars from the past few months mentioning crashes after the 6.0 update. The developer added a migration tool in 6.0.3 but people are saying it doesnt always work.

Why this matters for jam band fans

Here's the thing - if you're used to trading tapes or downloading from archive.org directly, this app feels like magic. The fact that it exists, completely free, pulling from archive.org, etree, and phish.in? That's incredible. The developers aren't making money off this. They literally refuse donations and tell you to donate to Archive.org instead.

But if you're coming from nugs.net or LivePhish, you're gonna be frustrated. Those platforms just work. They're expensive, sure, but they work. Every time. Relisten is more like that friend's car that runs great until it doesn't - you love it for being free, but you wouldn't rely on it for anything important.

The verdict after three weeks

Am I keeping it? Yeah. But I also reinstalled nugs.net for when I actually want to listen to something specific without fighting the app. Relisten lives on my phone as my "discover something random" app. The offline downloads are clutch for flights, and honestly? Finding a random 1972 Dead show while doing dishes makes mundane tasks bearable.

For iOS users who primarily listen to Grateful Dead or Phish: download this immediately. For Android users: maybe wait for version 7.0. For Sonos users: sorry, you're out of luck right now. And for anyone expecting Spotify-level polish: adjust your expectations.

Bottom line - it's free access to thousands of concerts. The bugs suck, but have you seen archive.org's interface? This is still ten times better. Just don't try to skip songs on Android. Seriously.