A super-hip Netflix for concert films and music documentaries, Qello-which YouTube recently added as a paid subscription channel — scans a user’s iTunes library and queues up band DVDs he or she may want to watch but never buys. Qello is free for seven days on iOS, Android, Kindle and Internet-enabled TVs, then $4.99 per month. The year-old, New York-based app boasts the “world’s largest library of streaming HD concert films and music documentaries,” and that promise doesn’t disappoint. Qello took less than a minute to download on Wi-Fi, and seconds to scan a full iTunes library. It then produced a tantalizing list of must-see DVDs from Radiohead, Wavves, Nirvana, Jay-Z, Air, the Black Keys, Metallica, Daft Punk and Dr. Dre’s vintage “Up in Smoke” tour DVD. Less than 10% of the library is available elsewhere, the service claims, and Qello now has the imprimatur of being one of YouTube’s first paid channels. Critics focus in on the $4.99 fee, but it’s a small price to pay to binge on a never-before-collected record store’s worth of music-related video content. Thirty preset channels facilitate discovery, so one can stumble across a beautiful Django Reinhardt doc after digging into the Doors’ related catalog. Rolling Stone writer Ben Fong-Torres contributes to Qello’s blog, recently pointing out some vintage Tina Turner. The app holds up on an iPhone 4S, but a loss in service usually means that Qello forgets where one is in a film, which is frustrating. There’s also a bug in the iPad2 app when plugged into a TV-the touch-screen controls on the “Recommended” page sometimes stop responding. Such blemishes are trivial, though, and Qello is zapping bugs as fast as it can find them. Music doc lovers: Commence binging.
