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Get an additional week of free tunes if you sign up for Beats Music soon (update: two weeks!)
With just how popular Beats headphones are, we can't say we're surprised that Dr. Dre's similarly named music service has had a hard time coping with a flood of users during launch. As such, Beats Music isn't accepting any new subscribers until the kinks are worked out, but there is a silver lining. So long as you download the app and reserve your username this week, you'll get an additional seven days to trial the service. Once the issues are worked out, you should get an email giving you the all clear -- hopefully that's before its Windows Phone launch in a few days. It's not like you have to live your life in silence until then, though. Last we checked, Rdio, Spotify, Music Unlimited and Xbox Music were all working just fine. Update: CEO Ian Rogers has put out a blog post indicating the issues should be resolved, and that better yet, anyone who signs up before Saturday evening will get two weeks free trial.
Beats Music to reach Windows Phone listeners on January 24th
Beats Music launched with a lot of fanfare today, but you may have noticed that its promised Windows Phone client is missing. What happened? As it turns out, the app is just fashionably late -- Beats' Ian Rogers says that the Windows Phone edition should be available on January 24th. That's unfortunate for Lumia-toting listeners who wanted to try Beats Music on day one, but there's no shortage of alternative services to use in the meantime.
MOG to close in April as subscribers offered (small) incentive to move to Beats Music
We don't know how many subscribers MOG has managed to hold onto since it was acquired by Beats in 2012, but soon the number will be zero. Following yesterday's launch of the all-new Beats Music streaming service, MOG is effectively defunct: users will stop being billed after March 15th and those with an annual subscription will get a refund for unused time once the service closes finally on April 15th. Anyone expecting Dr. Dre to ring the doorbell and offer them a chauffeur-driven ride to the replacement service may be disappointed: the main incentive on the table is a month's free trial of Beats Music, and playlists won't be transferable. In other words, it'll almost be like starting from scratch, which means this is as good a time as any to start shopping around.
Beats Music builds a unique, if messy, listening experience around emotion
The Beats empire has officially expanded beyond its humble headphone roots. Beats Music has officially launched (download it from the iTunes App Store here), and become the latest contestant for your streaming music dollar. Of course, the market for such services is already pretty crowded. Between Spotify, Google Play and Rdio (just to name a few) one might wonder "why bother?" Well, the company thinks there's plenty of fish in the sea who haven't jumped aboard the music subscription bandwagon just yet. While we're sure execs are hoping to convert a few listeners along the way, they're more concerned with broadening the pool of customers. After two years of plugging away, with a little help from Trent Reznor and its MOG acquisition, Beats feels it has something unique to offer; something built around curation, emotion and a personalized user experience. It all sounds good in theory, but the real question is whether or not the reality lives up to the promise. As usual, the answer is complicated and it awaits you after the break.
Beats Music is launching January 21st -- here's a sneak peek
That's Beats' new streaming service. No surprise, of course. Seems like the Jimmy Iovine / Dr. Dre's red headphone-pushing company has been eyeing the space since the World Class Wreckin' Cru days. Last month, the company offered up a bit of information in the form of an online teaser, noting that it would finally be dropping in January. The exact date, it turns out, is the 21st, though the company happily let us download an iOS teaser of the offering (it'll be available on "nearly all the major platforms" at launch according to the company). The product is reportedly the culmination of two years of work, an attempt to approach music streaming from a different angle -- namely populism. The rep I spoke with told me the company sees many of the current streaming offerings as appealing primarily to the early adopter. The first part of the solution is the "on-boarding" process. Here you tap bubbles on a series of screens, first designating your favorite genres (one tap for "like," two taps for "love" and holding down on the bubble to make it disappear -- take that, electronic music). Next up, do the same thing with artists, designating your favorites amongst the offerings. Then, the system begins "curating music based on what you like." The idea is somewhere between a Spotify and a Pandora, offering up custom playlists based on your listening habits, curation that will change as you continue to utilize the service. The playlists, as the company puts it, are based on ""feels like, not sounds like," and future iterations will also include options to make it possible to follow your listening habits based on location, so you can, say, get a workout playlist when you're at the gym.
Beats Music set for US launch in January, but you can claim a username starting today
If you've been anticipating the arrival of Beats music-streaming service since it was first teased, it looks like wait is finally up next month. CEO Ian Rogers took to his personal blog to announce the January 2014 launch of Beats Music in the States. The software in currently in an internal private beta and is gathering feedback from artists so that the necessary improvements can be made before going live. To tide you over for another month, you can head over to the Beats Music site and stake your claim on a username starting today. You know, so you won't have to worry about not swiping up that go-to handle when the time launch-day rush comes. Hopefully we'll find out soon just what the outfit has done with its MOG acquisition.
