Loop Buddy vs Tape Death
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Loop Buddy
Practice music sections repeatedly by creating custom loops. Slow down playback to learn difficult passages and memorize entire songs more effectively. Ideal for musicians who need to rehearse on the go.
- Create custom loops from music library
- Set start and end points for loops
- Adjust playback speed of loops
- Slow down music without pitch change
- Memorize song sections easily
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Can’t rehearse at home? Rehearse in the car, on the train, in the bus, or on a plane! Identify sections of the music you want to learn, like a guitar solo or some tricky phrase, then create a looping pattern that you can play over and over again. Slow down the loops you create in order to memorize them easier! Create a whole series of loops for a given song in your music library, and become familiar with an entire piece before your plane lands! Features: - Create loops from any song in your music library by identifying the start and end loop points for any section of the song: a guitar solo, a fast-paced rap verse, a drum fill, and so on. - Listen to that loop section 10 billion times until you have it memorized. - Change the playback speed of your loops. Slow it down without changing the pitch of the song in order to hear each note more clearly!
Tape Death
This app is a unique four-tape looping instrument that degrades over time, creating evolving, decaying sounds. Record audio, manipulate tape characteristics like warmth and wobble, and share your sonic creations.
- Four decaying tape loops
- Record from microphone
- Overdubbing
- Forward, reverse, and ping-pong playback
- Adjustable tape wear
- Character-based sound shaping
- Global reverb and echo effects
- Export audio and save sessions
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Tape Death is a four-tape looping instrument that falls apart while you play it. Record a loop onto a cassette and it plays forever — but it never holds still. Every second it runs, the tape wears: the highs fray, dropouts bloom, the pitch begins to sag. Nothing you make will ever sound new again. That's the point. This isn't a clean, non-destructive studio — it's a machine for sounds that rot beautifully. Four tapes, each aging on its own. Layer them, warp them, drown them in space, and bottle the decaying mix to share. FOUR TAPES • Record straight from your mic — a voice, an instrument, the whole room. • Overdub to build layers onto a single loop. • Play each tape forward, in reverse, or ping-ponging back and forth. • Every tape keeps its own character and its own state of decay. DECAY IS THE INSTRUMENT • Tapes wear permanently as they play — the heart of the whole app. • Dial each tape from "eternal" to "dying," or age them all together. • Begin the disintegration again whenever you like — your settings stay. CHARACTER, NO NUMBERS Shape each tape by feel, not by figures. Every control is a drag between two words: • WARMTH — clean to melted tape saturation • DUST — quiet to snowy hiss and grit • WOBBLE — steady to seasick wow & flutter • TONE — dark to bright • SPACE — each tape's own echo and reverb (spring, hall, cathedral, shimmer, void; standard, ping-pong, and granular delays) THE ROOM A shared space every tape plays into — one reverb, one echo, one bus compressor to glue the whole mix, and a global decay to age everything at once. BOTTLE IT Capture the living, decaying mix to an audio file and share it anywhere. Save whole setups as sessions and return to them. Tape Death records everything on device. No account, no sign-in, nothing collected, and it works fully offline. It keeps playing in the background, too. Make something. Let it die.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Tape Death at 5.0 against Loop Buddy's 1.8. Loop Buddy's advantage is iOS requirement (9.0 vs 17.0). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Tape Death holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 1.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 6 and 3 respectively.
| Parameter | Loop Buddy | Tape Death |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.8 (6 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 33.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | 3 |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Clear Blue Media | Colton Harker |
In-app purchases
Loop Buddy
No in-app purchases
Tape Death
No in-app purchases









