Beats Music App Officially Launches

Beats Music is finally out on the market, after first being announced back in October. The app joins an ever-growing list of selections for mobile music loves and might officially be a sign that this particular vertical is just a bit overpopulated. The application attempts to stand out by leaning heavily on customization and curation.

The interesting way the application deals with customization can be best illustrated by its “Right Now” tab. When activating the function, the app will ask you a series of questions such as “what are you doing right now” as well as what you’re feeling, who you’re with and what genre of music you like. Once you have answered the questions the application is supposed to put together an endless playlist. One of the drawbacks is that there doesn’t seem to be any indication that the app actually takes the first three questions into account.

Users can also use Beats Music in the more traditional sense and simply get recommendations by paging through genres and finding a friend’s playlist and listening to their favorite tunes. There are also some curated playlists that are supposed to be put together by “some of the best experts in music.”

The service is offering a free seven-day trial period and then you are paying $9.99 a month for something that is basically offered by several other applications like Pandora and Rdio. The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be an ad-free version so you will be paying the nearly $10 a month and still having to interrupt your music experience a few times. The launch of this service comes amid a market that is being dominated by iTunes Radio and Spotify and is also about to welcome other new services like YouTube’s streaming music service. In that climate, it will be interesting to see whether or Beats Music can actually survive and thrive.