Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre of Beat’s Music are set to launch their very own online music subscription service that’s a cut above the others currently available. The new service is an innovation in music streaming. The difference between Beats Music and Spotify is that the service uses a mix of clever algorithms and human curation to find the very best music just for you. From the very moment you subscribe to the app, it tracks and records what you listen to. It definitively determines what albums, tracks and playlists to serve up to you next. It will be available on desktop and mobile devices
Beats Music prides itself on the fact that it is more personalised to the listener rather than an online jukebox. In a recent interview with Beats Music Chief Executive, Ian Rogers, he said that ‘No one was doing a music service, everyone was building a music server’. Spotify, Rhapsody and Rdio all run on the same premise, they each have interesting and innovative social tools that let you see what your friends are listening to. He believes that they are almost in competition, that the site with the most tracks is the best. The creators of Beats Music have built upon this and believe that functionality and personalisation is key, and the user can expect the highest standards of this.
The creators of Beat’s music believe that Spotify and the likes got caught up in a race to create the biggest music libraries and because of this have fallen behind in other areas. This is where Beats have taken things to the next level and this is their advantage.
Beats Music works on tracking your music DNA, which begins when you start using the app.
When you sign up for the app it asks questions like what are your favorite bands, genres, your age and your gender. All of these are taken into consideration when the app selects music for you. This way it knows what songs were popular when you were in school or what was popular when your first started using a disc man or iPod. Its impressive technology plays songs at different volumes, it knows who to play loudly and knows who to play quietly. If you have your headphones plugged in at work, the songs that you listen to in the office will be given a different mathematical weight than what you listen to in the car or at home.
The app has several algorithms in place to determine the perfect music choices for you, but what’s most impressive is the human element. Beats have a workforce of behavioural scientists and curators working behind the scenes, or behind the screens as it may be. This little army works to make sure that you feel like you are listening to right music. For example just because you listened to one song by Gary Barolow, it doesn’t mean that you want to hear a whole load of Take That. This is where the human element comes to play and they can help determine who you would really like to listen to.
The one difference between Beats Music and the other music streaming services is that it won’t have a free tier and will only operate on a paid monthly subscription. This may prove a problem for them from a digital marketing perspective. Whether or not people will be willing to pay the fee is something we will find and in the coming months and we look forward to the launch of this exciting new service!
