Dr. Dre’s music streaming service is almost here. Beats Music, which will go up against the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and iTunes Radio, will launch on January 21.
Beats Music will cost $10 a month for all-you-can-eat music, just like its competitors. AT&T is also partnering with the service to offer it bundled with smartphone plans. In addition to the $10 per month plan, AT&T will exclusively retail a family plan that provides five accounts for just $15 per month.
Instead of just offering music and leaving users to discover their own tracks, Beats Music attempts to help them discover artists and albums. A feature called “right now” generates playlists based on elements in the physical world: people, locations, activities and genre.
The New York Times trialled the feature by choosing “I’m at the beach & feel like pre-partying with my friends to dance-pop” which returned a playlist of the Chemical Brothers, Lady Gaga and Janet Jackson.
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The Beats Music app onboards users by asking what genres they’re interested in and then recommends music tailored to users’ tastes. After that, they’re encouraged to follow artists, like/dislike tracks and pick their favorite genres so that the service can recommend new artists accurately.
The company boasts that it combines musical analysis with human editors to help curate and create great playlists and recommendations for users. According to The New York Times, Beats employs music experts such as Scott Plagenhoef, the former editor of Pitchfork to help curate content and ensure that there’s a human element in the playlist creation process.
Beats Music will only launch in the US on January 21 for iOS, Android, Windows Phone as well as the Web. The company is also taking email addresses of those outside the US for a later launch.
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