[brentm]

Whenever a brand like Beats lends their name to or builds a service like this with a much hyped press launch I feel like it's almost always doomed. I tried my account this morning and that's probably the end. It's just another streaming radio app, nothing at all new. Their entire value claim is based around the idea that not just an algorithm is picking the music, humans are involved too. That's great, who cares? Humans are already involved for the other radio apps, maybe not special "music experts" but direct plays on Spotify are certainly factored into their radio algorithm. In fact it's more democratized that way. This needed to be magnitudes better than Pandora, Spotify radio and iTunes Radio to get anyone to care once the press goes away, it does not appear that is the case. I will be impressed if anyone is still talking about this in 3 months.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "Their entire value claim is based around the idea that not just an algorithm is picking the music, humans are involved too. That's great, who cares?"

I care if they can produce better playlists that way. As a Spotify user for many years I can honestly say that after just a few hours with Beats I find the playlists are a lot better and a lot easier to find. They are recommend loads to me and most are ones I like.

My favourite thing is that if I visit an artist page and I haven't listened to them before it has an 'Intro to [artist name]" playlist. If I do know the artist it also has a 'Deep cuts' playlist. I've also seen '[Artist name]: influences' playlists which are an interesting idea. NB: I doubt they have these playlists for every artist but they've been there on most I've searched so far.

I don't get any of that on Spotify. Most of the playlists I get recommended on Spotify are "Hangover songs", "Workout mix", "Christmas tunes" etc. etc. They are nice but a lot less useful.

[sbarre]

Here's the thing though, they can bundle a free trial period (longer than the default on the website) with every pair of Beats they sell, and they will probably get enough adoption to keep going in the long run.

I forget the stats, but Beats headphones have a ridiculous market share...

[brentm]

I don't disagree with that. The brand is huge and will find a way to at least keep the lights on here but how many people are really going to decide to spend their $9.99 a month on this? Most people won't even pay Spotify $9.99 a month for radio and a virtually unlimited music library since oh yea it's all also available for free.

[alanctgardner2]

The point is that democracy is not always good if you want to be exposed to new and interesting things. A million people will listen to Justin Beiber, or Katy Perry, but how does a new/obscure band get traction? It used to be radio spins, but radio is a dying medium. Beats is trying to give you something like your favourite local radio station, with an interesting mix of old favourites and new tracks that haven't reached a critical mass of listeners on other services.

In other words, if you only use people's listening preferences, you can only recommend established tracks well. Adding an editorial component lets you get ahead of the curve.

[timje1]

That's the purpose of the 'hot' algorithms that you get in a lot of ranking sites. In order to keep new content rising to the top, you can build algorithms that prioritise the rate of increase as well. Even weight the listens of users who historically listened to successful tracks before they got popular ('trendsetters' etc.).

So there are other alternatives to human curation when it comes to getting ahead of the curve.

[Edmond]

Agree..I am skeptical given that it is basically an industry play...The guys behind it are music industry veterans (Dre et al) and bad habits die hard.

Unless they show that they actually know what they are doing and not just trying to use technology to gain more control over music consumers, I'll have to wait this one out.