Do You Want to be T-Pain? I Don't! - The UpStream

There are two things I despise: an overabundance iPhone users and the overabundance of Auto-Tune users. Fortunately, media company Smule has teamed up with Antares and T-Pain to create a duet from hell with the new app, I Am T-Pain. The app allows you to plug in your iPhone to a set of speakers and sing along to your favorite T-Pain hits and then send the sorry excuse for a song to your friends. Sounds exciting, right? It gets better! It comes with several of the Top 40 hits along with 3 original beats for you to get your off-keyness on.

For those who are unaware, Auto-Tune is a feature that corrects, or tunes, your voice to the correct pitch if you wind up flat or sharp during singing. The more corrections you hear on a song typically correlates with the talent of the artist. Currently there are thousands of young artists with aspirations to make it big who are using this software thinking it will launch them to the top just because T-Pain did it. However, they fail to realize that a singing ability is still required to not make the correction software overwork itself into oblivion on the track.

While I love T-Pain and commend what he has done and the true talent he possess, it's unfortunate seeing this app make the light of day. Smule has released several other applications that actually are quite fun and interesting to use.

"Smule is a premier developer of interactive sonic applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Smule's applications, including Ocarina, Leaf Trombone World Stage and Sonic Lighter, have been described as "magical", "addictive" and "instant classics" and have topped numerous iPhone app top-10 lists. To date, Smule apps have been downloaded more than 2 million times."