Beats Music Service


Received a notice today that my beloved MOG was being consumed by Beats' new streaming service, which was made available for mobile phones today. Beats' angle is that they'rr sort of a super-hybrid of MOG's choose-your-own format and Pandora's Genome-based selection format, with the added feature of having human "curators" recommend lists of songs within your chosen genre.
Bored with work, I downloaded the free trial and opine as follows:
1.Compared to MOG's very simple, intuitive interface, Beats' GUI is overstimulating and confusing; at least initially it's hard to navigate. Download and buffering times seem long; this may be attributable to startup server issues. Setting up and accessing playlists is challenging.
2. The depth of their catalog is astonishing; it's even deeper than MOG's.
3. Sound quality was noticeably richer, louder and more detailed than MOG--it has the same juiced-up character as their (unfairly maligned) headphones--exciting, if not audiophile-accurate.
Like others, I was skeptical that the world needed another streaming service, but they're onto something here. As a lot of hugely successful mass-market ventures, Beats incurs alot of backlash/envy; there's a recurring theme that their stuff is overhyped or overpriced. To some extent I concur, but I must acknowledge that they're very smart guys and this service ought to be very successful.
loomisjohnson
Another MOG guy here.

A friend of mine recently interviewed for a senior position at Beats Music (he's the former CEO of a competing streaming music service). I understand that the long range plan is a little different: They call it curated music. The idea is that a team of "curators" will provide advice and - over time - users will find the curators they like. Feels a little like DJs to me, but hey! I don't run the place.

My friend was a bit skeptical of the plan's chances of success, but - given his years in the business - I think he's pretty skeptical about anyone's chances to compete with the deep pockets of Spotify.