# Play Dead: Grateful Dead App — user reviews > 35 indexed App Store user reviews of Play Dead by nugs.net enterprises, LLC, rated 4.40/5 from 74 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/play-dead-grateful-dead-app/id6747825801/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/play-dead-grateful-dead-app/id6747825801.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 54 · 4★ 8 · 3★ 5 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 5 ## Newest reviews (11 of 35) ### 5/5 — Amazing sound everywhere all of the time *2026-05-16* As a collector who has a lot of HD recordings and a good standalone DAC, these recordings surpass anything I’ve ever heard. The thing is, listening through wired Apple earbuds really blows me away, as well as through my car stereo via usb. Having everything streamable and perfectly organized and available without me having to do anything is great. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 4/5 — Great Music, app OK *2026-05-10* The sound quality and music selection are worth it to me currently plus the two new drops a week. Sure, I could use Relisten and try to find the best recordings and all that but fortunately I can pay and help get more released from the Vault. There’s some other good requests/suggestions on the playdeadapp subreddit but two I’d like to highlight: 1) This day in dead history function/page. Sure, we can search but the search is a bit lacking. 2) Random show/album. Also, we should be able to search for other people’s playlists and not just the handful that were curated by the developers. Thanks for all you’ve done and all that will continue to happen! **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Excellent Sound and Organization *2026-05-09* When will it be able to work on Sonos? Thanks. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. We do not have a timeline on Sonos integration at this time. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 4/5 — Great app, getting better *2026-05-01, version 1.0* I wish there was everything available on Nugs or Spotify or Apple Music on here, even if not in hifi. I wish I could rate each show and mark as played. I wish the cassette UI included shelves for collections like road trips, Dave’s picks, Dick’s picks, etc…. BUT this app is getting better every week, and I truly feel like it’ll be my only music service once it’s reached its full catalog potential, and it’s my favorite interface of any app, music or otherwise. ### 4/5 — Pretty good. Wish the album artwork was bigger. *2026-04-27* Wish the artwork was bigger…especially if the “tape” covers could just be cd artwork. That would be awesome. So we could actually see the artwork. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Excellent Sound Quality *2026-04-23* Was hesitant to download sine this already exists in multiple platforms already. But I heard there were mastering them and figured would give it a shot. It hits on the sound quality, significantly better than the other sources and well if for $5 a month I get better sounding and clearer Grateful Dead, say no more. On another note, who can’t love the design of it having the cassette tape look, is nostalgic and a super cool look. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Love it plus feature request *2026-04-21* Love the format and able to search on anything. Great quality soundboards. Can you add a Mark as Played option. I don’t want to listen again to something I heard before but don’t remember. Thanks. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 3/5 — Why one size fits all? *2026-04-20* Given all the goodies included in the service, a tiered approach could be taken, providing free or very low base cost for simply accessing vault, and charge additional for special features ### 5/5 — It’s got it all! *2026-04-19* everything you could ask for as a dead head plus some really awesome extra features like reviews, playlists, and recording history! **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Really nice *2026-04-18* Excellent quality shows in a nice presentation. It’d be nicer if one could change the appearance in CarPlay, hard to read black song titles against deep blue background. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. This issue with Carplay should be resolved with the next update to our app. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 3/5 — Apple TV app? *2026-04-18, version 1.0* Will this be available for Apple TV? ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work on DAPs *2026-05-15, version 1.0.1* Was so excited when this first came out I bought the yearly subscription right away. I planned on using on a HiBy hi-res Android DAP. Found out the hard way it doesn’t work on Open Android and never will. It does work on iPhone but iPhone doesn’t support the full Hi-Res audio features available. I paid upfront for a year subscription to a service that I was really excited about but can’t use on the device I use for playing music. ### 1/5 — Money *2026-04-26* No subscription = no music. Nothing is free at all. Only thing it’s semi useful for is to look up a date, a song , a show, which is already available for free in many other places. Certain people probably rolling over in their eternal slumber that their free music is not so free. 99$ a year 10$ a month. Whatever. Won’t shed a tear if it loses money ### 1/5 — Too expensive *2026-04-22, version 1.0* Very cool idea but subscription should be $2.99 a month at most. $100 a year or $10 a month for 1 band is overkill ### 1/5 — $$$ *2026-04-19, version 1.0* It says in App purchases but to listen to anything you have to pay. No thanks. There are plenty of places to listen the the Dead shows for free. This is just a money grab. Move on. ### 1/5 — I pay for nugs already *2026-04-17, version 1.0* Love the Dead and have too much money? this app is for you! Real heads Trade tapes! Or at least use Relisten & the Internet archive! ### 2/5 — Required account and tracking? Hard pass. *2026-04-19* Look at the "App Privacy" section and ask yourself do you want to be tracked so your Dead show playlist, along with more personal info, sold to the highest bidder? Most likely not. Also this is streaming only meaning shows can disappear on a second's notice. Thankfully the vast majority of traders don't require an account or "...track you across apps and websites owned by other companies." Please visit them. ### 2/5 — Novel Idea… *2026-04-16* However, why would anyone pay a $100/year for stuff that has been available on Archive for YEARS! And yes, even soundboards!! I am a supporter of the taping community who NEVER charged for their recordings.. I love the GD scene and fam but again, paying for stuff that is available for free is ridiculous. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review. You are welcome to share taper recordings. Play Dead unlocks newly mastered shows directly from the Grateful Dead Vault with new exclusive releases added every week. These new shows are official Grateful Dead releases - curated by David Lemieux and mastered by David Glasser. Play Dead also features CD-only releases like Dave's Picks, Box sets and more, now streaming for the first time, in higher-than-CD quality. Please contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any other questions. ### 3/5 — Content Great App needs work *2026-08-09* The content and quality are great. The app is very buggy. I’ve had it for five days and it has froze up six times. Need to restart phone to get it working. Now I get an error that says ‘Something went wrong’. Restarted phone and it just spins. Support is virtually non existent. **Developer response:** Sorry for the trouble you're having. Please contact us on help.playdead.app if you continue having problems. We provide email support 365 days a year. ### 3/5 — I want to love this app *2026-07-04, version 1.0.2* The Grateful Dead have been arguably the biggest influence in my life. I saw Jerry play 290 times between GD & JGB. I’ve actually fought p people for talking smack about the band. I was really excited to hear about this app coming out. I was a little reluctant to get it just because I’ve had Apple Music for a long time and really don’t need anything else. I could get any GD release there and for any bootlegs go to archive.org. I got it anyway just because it’s an official GD release and I always want to support GD. So, I open the app and see that I can search by year and download everything. I’m immediately disappointed to find some years are nowhere near complete. For instance ‘94 only has 9 shows. Also some shows are incomplete. The final show 7-9-85 only has Standing On The Moon. Very disappointing. Then a really big disappointment was that they don’t include the lyrics with any song. Apple Music gives the option of scrolling lyricswith every song so it can’t be that hard, especially when they’re your songs and lyrics. I’m gonna keep it for a few months and I’ll update my review monthly. Hopefully it’ll get better. ### 3/5 — Constant ipad 6th gen crashing via airplay 2 *2026-05-16, version 1.0.1* Title. Constant crashing from ipad via airplay 2 to bluesound node 130. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — I really love the new search options *2026-07-25* Endless entertainment. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Fantastic app with wonderful quality *2026-07-22* The latest update for mid July 2026 gave all the app UI tweaks that were missing. As a developer I love how the app is navigated. Much better than Nugs. Good job! **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for your feedback. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — This is the best thing since sliced bread *2026-07-07* Kudos as it picked up my complex password from Password / iCloud right away. So now I can run PlayDead and Nugs from one account on AppleTV, iPhone, iPad, MacBook whatever, they got it all to work in the garden the way it should! ### 5/5 — FINALLY *2026-07-05* I’ve been waiting 16 years for this since I first got on the bus after seeing Furthur at All Good 2010. My only complaint is that the chromecast option is hit or miss, 9/10 miss. ### 5/5 — Loving Playdead but… *2026-06-30* When will blusound and other streaming services add natively so we can enjoy the high rez in all its glory. I assume not entirely in your control but how about a nudge ### 5/5 — Rewind *2026-06-25* Amazing app! It would help to have a 5 second rewind feature so musicians can listen back to specific parts. The tuesday drops are godsend! Latest releases have been focused a lot on 89. More mid 80s please! 85!!! Would ### 5/5 — Excellent app! *2026-06-11, version 1.0.2* Great App! When is the iPadOS version coming out? ### 5/5 — Got To Get It *2026-06-04, version 1.0.1* Its just awesome to be able to hear so many great concerts, in very good resolution- if your a Dead fan just get it ### 5/5 — Let us share shows! *2026-05-28* One thing that would be great is the ability to share a show or a track to the web or social media, capped to a couple shows a week or something like that. I want to share the joy! **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! ### 5/5 — Fantastic. Dead forever. *2026-05-28* Just downloaded the app this week and I’m loving it. Such a great selection of music and I’ll be sure to check out the new drops as they come. Would love to hear the summer 1970 Festival Express shows. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to leave a review. Contact us on help.playdead.app if you have any questions or problems. Enjoy the tunes! --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-04.*