MUSIC & VIDEO

Entertain yourself (as well as friends and family) with these killer apps.

NOKIA MIXRADIO

Price: Free / Premium ($7.00/month)

Personalized music, all day long, with no advertising. If that sounds good to you, then the Nokia MixRadio app is all you need on your Nokia Lumia smartphone. Available exclusively for Nokia Lumia devices, the free version lets you save up to four offline mixes for playback without an internet connection. Of course, you can conveniently subscribe within the app (for just $7 a month) to enable unlimited offline mixes, higher quality playback, and more.

PLEX

Price: $4.99

Designed for the home entertainment geeks, the Plex app for Windows Phone lets you conveniently stream your videos, music, photos and home movies to your Nokia Lumia device from your home computers running the Plex Media Server (which happens to be a free download at www.plexapp.com). Yes, this can work even if you’re halfway across the globe. In addition, you can also queue online videos from websites like Vimeo and YouTube, for watching at a later time.

SPOTIFY

Price: Free / Premium ($9.90/month)

Forget buying CDs every month when you can simply search, browse and play from millions of tracks available via Spotify. The app is free to download, though you’ll need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber to take full advantage of the app on Windows Phone. With a Premium account, you can create playlists and save them for offline playback. On Windows Phone, the Live Tile will update with the song or album currently being played, while users can also quickly pin favorite playlists to the Start Screen.

SHAZAM

Price: Free

Listening to the radio during the commute to work, a common problem is hearing a catchy song, and then totally forgetting the singer or band name. The Shazam app for Windows Phone aims to solve that problem. Tap the Shazam button to tag and explore music, with the option to purchase songs you like. Live Tile integration with the app displays your most recent tag, as well as the ability to tag songs straight from the Start Screen.