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Beats has updated its Beats Music streaming music app with in-app subscriptions, Facebook friend search, an offline mode and more. The move allows users to subscribe to the Beats Music service via their iTunes account.
What's New in Version 1.0.7
You asked for it, and we listened! Some highlights in this release include:
- In-app subscription and account management via your iTunes account
- Find Your Friends -- find and follow your Facebook friends on Beats Music
- Improved Facebook and Twitter account management
- Thousands of new tracks available in The Sentence
- Artist Offers -- discover new content and merchandise from your favorite artists
- Offline Mode & Downloading improvements
- Music Player performance fixes
Previously, users had to subscribe to Beat Music on the service's website, allowing Beats to bypass Apple's 70 / 30 split with developers, which would result in the Cupertino company netting $3 a month from Beats Music's $10-a-month fee for every subscriber Beats adds within the app.
Beats CEO Ian Rogers tells Re/code that the company made its decision to add in-app subscriptions, and therefore submit to the 70 / 30 split, when it found that more than half of its users used iPhones, making it difficult to get an iOS user to subscribe with no in-app subscription option.
Other music streaming services like Rdio and Rhapsody also sell subscriptions in-app, although Rdio's in-app subscription price was raised from $10 a month to $15 a month to make up for Apple's cut. Spotify, however, does not offer in-app subscriptions, though it does offer a free, ad-supported mode available in its app.
Beats Music is available in the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Agreed, beats is down there with Samsungs milk service
Nope, I've got it open in front of me right now. Subscribed, by the way, to the full $9.99 rate. I go into Your Music, go to Artists, scroll to something I want, let's say Led Zeppelin. I have 6 LZ albums saved to my iPhone. I go into their section and what do I find? I seemingly endless list of songs. No albums. I have to go into Your Music>Albums for albums to show up, but then they're not listed by artists but alphabetically. So if I've downloaded Led Zeppelin's III and Physical Graffiti as well as Metallica's Master Of Puppets, the listing goes----------
There has always been album listings. You just don't know how to use it I guess.
Led Zeppelin III
Master of Puppets
Physical Graffiti
Not
Led Zeppelin III
Physical Graffiti
Master of Puppets
Which would be fine... IF it did that in the Artists view. But it doesn't. Spotify has NEVER understood this.
I would love for all the Beats naysayers to actually explain what is wrong with it. I've been using it since day 1 and it's been a better experience than any of the other services. It had a few rough weeks right at the start where some issues popped up, but they took care of them right away. I even contacted their customer service and they were right on top of things. Sound quality is, just like MOG before it, excellent, and its recommendations are pretty sharp. The app is well organized and easy to use. I have few complaints, and they're the same complaints I had about MOG, which is that they're missing a handful of vital albums from artists I care about - but luckily I own those anyway (I just like to have them all available in the same place).
I think what you're reading in their update notes is improvements to the Offline Mode.
The new spotify revision on the iPhone is fantastic, once they update their iPad app it's game over
So why, or how, can Beats afford to offer the in-app price the same as their regular subscription and Spotify does not at all and Rdio is $14.99?
I prefer Spotify but I really would like managing my sub within iTunes (yes I know Apple will take a cut).
Because they have extra money from charging 300$ for headphones that ought to cost 25$?
Spotify rules them all (so far).
Nope, not really.MOG, which was acquired by Beats had the best selection (IMO) and consistently the best sound quality. Spotify seems to have the most covers....
Still not sure how Beats compares to MOG, though.
Spotify rules them all (so far).
No, actually it doesn't. Spotify's pretty bad. The most minimal of organization within the app kills it for me. It's unusable in its current form, even after the "Your Music" upgrade. I decided to give Spotify another try when that was announced. Still sucks. Still no album listings under artists?! Just a big long list of songs?! Spotify doesn't get music. It's pretty clear this is something driven by a corporation and not music lovers. It's why Rdio and Beats Music are such better experiences. The only things going for Spotify are that it was one of the very first, and that it has a couple of exclusives like Led Zeppelin and Metallica.