Time magazine published an article earlier this week that looks at Auto-Tune and its use in popular music. 

Buried in the article, though, the mass-market future of Auto-Tune is revealed:

T-Pain and Auto-Tune’s parent company are finishing work on an iPhone app.

“It’s gonna be real cool,” says T-Pain. “Basically, you can add Auto-Tune to your voice and send it to your friends and put it on the Web. You’ll be able to sound just like me.”

Asked if that might render him no longer unique, T-Pain laughs: “I’m not too worried. I got lots of tricks you ain’t seen yet. It’s everybody else that needs to step up their game.”

Yep – now everybody with an iPhone will be able to create their own version of T-Pain classics, like I’m In Love Wit A Stripper. 

There are now hundreds of iPhone music applications. Few of them are more than sample-based gimmicks, and it’s rarer still for an iPhone music app to be a really interesting musical tool. 

Does the world really need an iPhone Auto-Tune app?