Starting this week, travelers on select Southwest Airlines flights will be able to listen to music streamed via Apple's Beats Music service. The airline today announced this new Beats Music option and provided a live demonstration onboard a 737 emblazoned with the Beats Music logo.
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Southwest adopted Beats Music in response to growing consumer interest in streaming music.
"Southwest connects our Customers to what is important in their lives and in this case, it's music," said Kevin Krone, Southwest Airlines Chief Marketing Officer. "We continue to enhance our onboard offerings to remain current as our Customers' needs evolve, and with the addition of Beats Music on our entertainment portal, we're doing just that."
The in-flight service is free and includes hundreds of music lists compiled by Beats' own expert curators. It is available on WiFi-enabled Southwest flights and is compatible with iOS, Android, and other devices.
Apple purchased Beats Music and Beats Electronics in a $3 billion deal that was finalized earlier this year. As part of the deal, Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre joined Apple and are reportedly using their music contacts and Apple's clout help make inroads in the streaming music market. Rumors suggest Apple is working to lower Beats' pricing and revamp the service early next year.
Top Rated Comments
It's an extension of their Wi-Fi offering. Southwest optimizes their Wi-Fi for in-flight entertainment, which is free to customers as it is subsidized by sponsors. Actual Internet service on Southwest is actually pretty slow (all airplane Wi-Fi is slow, but I tend to get better throughput on American and Delta, which use GoGo Inflight, while Southwest uses Row 44).
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And how does that differ from any other airline? Some of the newer American jets have powerpoints at ever seat, which is nice, but there's a lot of old stock out there.
I fly Southwest everywhere I can, cheap, bags fly free, and the staff is much nicer then any of the workers from other airlines (cough United).
Now if you always fly first class I get it, but for the average person Southwest is great.
I wonder if Dr. Dre, Tim Cook, and Trent Reznor will be flying Southwest from now on.
I'm wondering if NFL players will now be banned from flying Southwest by the NFL (Bose) :D.Not enough to entice me to fly on their dirty grungy late sky bus.
After flying a United regional jet from STL-IAD (sorry United, but there's nothing "regional" about flying halfway across the country), I'd take a Southwest 737 any day of the week.