Beats by Dre is already legendary for their headphones, but today there’s some really unexpected news—they’re launching a streaming music service called “Beats Music” that truly promises to shake up the competition!
Today there are a ton of ways to get music streamed on any device that you own. On radio-style music streaming services like Pandora and iTunes Radio you can create your own radio stations based on artists, songs or genres that you like. With subscription services Spotify and Rdio, you have access to millions of albums and can play them whenever you want. One neat feature both of those services share is that you’re also able to create and share playlists of music, as well as discover exciting playlists of things you haven’t heard before.
Needless to say, paid streaming music services is a crowded space and for a competitor to succeed they’d have to seriously innovate on these existing (and successful!) formulas.
Enter Beats Music.
On January 21, AT&T and Beats will officially launch Beats Music, which innovates in the streaming music space in three key ways. The first is that it does personalization in a totally new way with a feature called “Right Now.” Unlike Pandora, which can only start a new station based on existing music you like, Beats Music Right Now asks you for a bunch of information: where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with, and what your mood is. Based on those factors, it creates an mix for you to listen to that should match what you’re doing at that exact second.
When I visited the Beats Suite at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, they told me about how Beats Music is all about capturing the context and the emotion your are in at the moment. Unlike other services where you’re constantly rating tracks and skipping ones you don’t like to get the songs you’re looking for, Beats wants “Right Now” to be your go-to music service when you don’t want to fiddle with anything. Instead, Beats are betting that their Music app will become the one you launch when you just want to let the music play.
Because Beats is a huge brand and you know that Dre is working his industry connections, it shouldn’t surprise you that the second big feature of Beats Music is that there are curated playlists brought to you by top musicians and industry publications exclusively available to Beats Music listeners. While we don’t know too many details yet about exactly who is going to be curating these playlists yet, a few details have dropped. Skate fans will be excited to learn that Thrasher Magazine is involved, and electronic/industrial heads couldn’t hope for anything better than NIN frontman himself Trent Reznor curating a playlist.
Finally, the pricing is the last piece where Beats and AT&T are really innovating with this offering. If you’re got 3 devices you want to listen to your music on, you can try Beats Music for free for 30 days, and then pay $9.99 a month after that to continue the service. While I think that’s a good deal, the amazing pricing comes when you sign up for a family plan. For $14.99 a month, a family of give can use Beats Music on up to 10 devices—that’l unlimited steaming, playlists and tons of devices for a price that’s a fraction of what you’d pay if everyone in the family was picking and choosing which streaming services they personally subscribed to. On top of that, you get a 90 day trial of the family plan, so you can really take the time to set it up, test it out, and see if Beats Music is the right service for your family to stream their music.
Ahead of the launch, you should head over to the Beats Music siteand claim your username today.
Beats Music will be available for download by AT&T customers no matter what devices they use, and the apps for Android, iOS and Windows devices, as well as a way to play your music on a PC, will all become available next Tuesday, January 21st.