The release of the Apple Music service has gotten us using this Music Launcher widget a lot. It provides a quick way to start playing music without even opening an app. Music Launcher is made by the same fine folks that brought us the Launcher widget. Music Launcher takes the same idea and applies it to your iPhone music library. So now you’ll be able to directly launch your favorite songs, albums, artists, and playlists right from the Today Screen! Inside the Music Launcher app you can set whatever you would like to launch. An in-app purchase unlocks the ability to create more icons and even control your music from the widget.

Music Launcher is just one of our favorite music apps for iPhone and iPad. We’ve collected all of our favorites here. And if you’d like to see more of our top app selections in different categories, just head on over to our Best Apps Series.

Music Launcher with WidgetCromulent Labs, IncMusicFreeDownload

Here are a couple of our other picks of the best music apps for iPhone and iPad:

WhoSampled for iPhone – Discover the history of your music

Have you ever listened to a new song and asked yourself, "Haven't I heard this before?" You very well could have! For years, music artists and producers have "borrowed" parts of other songs and recycled them into there own creations. This is called sampling in the industry. It's easy to ...

Albums (feat. Louie Mantia) – Listen to your music the way it was intended

Whatever happened to listening to albums as they were meant to be listened to? These days, we find ourselves shuffling through thousands of songs and artists all mixed together. Let's listen to our iTunes music library the way the artists intended us to, one album at a time. Thats exactly ...