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Beats Music — Music that's always right for you
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Beats Music has received a ton of hype these past few months. It was originally posted here: http://www.producthunt.co/posts/93
They offer a 7-day trial but otherwise Beats Music is a paid-only service. Curious to hear what people think about it.
It's really interesting to see online music kinda come full circle.
First it was pandora. Playlists by artist or song -- you could add variety, but it was algorithmic. They called it "the music genome project" and they had a 10-year head start on anyone else. With that, they're still (even more?) relevant today.
Then came the "access to everything" apps like spotify and rdio. That's all well and good, but they still need recommendations and playlists and stations. They use echonest, but that can't hold a candle to pandora.
Then came songza + frat music and the idea of true curation and recommendations. They're seemingly quite successful.
Beats looks and feels a lot like a combination of songza and frat music.
Makes me think a few things:
1 - people don't want (open-ended) choice. They want recommendations. "Don't make me think, just give me options"
2 - the human touch goes a long way. Curation by people rather than algorithms alone almost always wins.
...I think those hold true in human behavior, not just in music.
I wouldn't be so quick to write off Spotify/Rdio. Spotify alone has 24m users: https://www.spotify.com/us/2013/
As an Rdio user who likes having open-ended choice, I'm trying Beats for the 7-day trial exclusively to see what I miss compared to Rdio. The userbase on Rdio has me pretty locked in.
A friend that works at Beats Music has been hyping the platform for months now. It's got some interesting features and a cool way to put music in front of my finger but searching for a specific album still takes too long by being more complicated than Rdio.
Who else is trying it out?
I am doing a similar experiment @alwaysunday. Some people I know feel very locked in to Spotify & Rdio and I don't expect them to go anywhere anytime soon. That being said, I think the competitive advantage Beats has is through their partnership with AT&T. Having the $9.99 packaged into a cell phone bill provides a much lower barrier to acquire users.
@alwaysunday definitely not writing @rdio off...i actually pay for / subscribe to Rdio, Pandora and Songza.
I don't think beats will make the cut for me based on my experience with it today, but if it did...i'd probably stop subscribing to both pandora and songza but keep Rdio.
@lylemckeany that partnership's interesting. I have AT&T. Could I still pay / subscribe if I have T-Mobile or VZW? I assume yes, just have to pay with a card. AT&T partnership just reduces friction?
@pomajp The partnership will definitely reduce friction when it comes to new subscribers. It is a huge advantage, IMHO. As mentioned earlier, it will most likely still be tough to convince users to switch from @spotify & @rdio since users have existing playlists and are very familiar with the products.
I think the best part about Beats Music is that it's revived competition in the streaming music space. Beats itself is a "meh" product and is just over-hyped, but it's triggered Spotify and Rdio to start fighting for users again and make free tiers more widely available. It's great.
Just started playing it and haven't really tested out the playlists yet, but just wanted to say I love the design. Very modern compared to the other offerings.
Have been using it some more. My fav feature is going to an artist and selecting the Intro to Artist playlist. Plays their best hits then you can go deeper from there. Also some great guest "playlist makers" like Q-Tip, Zedd and Ellen.
The sound quality is also top notch for audio snobs. Seems to be 320kbps, which is as good as you can get for streaming.
@alwaysunday noticed it wasn't on all artists but a good number of big artists. I tried it for Hendrix, Nirvana, and D'angelo.
I'm enjoying the expert curated playlists in Beats thus far but they're losing me with "The Sentence" and all the different (30+) playlists to match with activities, broken down by genre. Like @jonathanpoma said above, people don't want to be inundated with open-ended or excess choice. They want to be told what to like and have that meet their expectations. We are uniquely solving this problem with http://moodsnap.fm through an "image-driven radio" experience. Letting your instincts guide you by simply choosing a photo that feels right, to hear songs that feel right. Direct path to your emotional decision making center.
@alwaysunday as of today you need a Spotify Premium account. In 1-2 weeks you'll be able to listen with just Moodsnap.
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