Beats Music will enter the increasingly crowded subscription-streaming market Jan. 21 with a catalog of more than 20 million songs and a pitch built around a familiar problem: Having access to nearly everything does not make deciding what to play any easier.
The new service comes from Beats Electronics co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, along with company president Luke Wood, chief executive Ian Rogers and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who serves as chief creative officer.
Rather than competing solely on catalog size, Beats Music is emphasizing recommendations assembled by music programmers, writers, DJs and other human curators. Algorithms will still help personalize the results, but the company believes knowledgeable people can provide the context and sequencing often missing from an enormous digital library.
“It takes a highly curated, uninterrupted sequence of songs to achieve a fulfilling music experience,” Iovine said, “where the only song as important as the song you are listening to is the song that comes next.”
That philosophy places Beats Music somewhere between an on-demand library and the carefully constructed mixtape a friend made after deciding your taste needed professional intervention.
The service’s primary recommendation screen, “Just for You,” will deliver personalized albums and playlists several times each day based on listening preferences, activity, time and other contextual information.
Its most unusual feature is “The Sentence,” which allows listeners to complete a Mad Lib-style statement describing where they are, what they are doing, who they are with and what kind of music they want. Beats Music then turns those answers into a continuous playlist.
Additional sections include “Highlights,” featuring timely recommendations from the company’s editorial staff, and “Find It,” which lets users browse music by genre, activity or curator.
The curation team includes former Pitchfork editor-in-chief Scott Plagenhoef, hip-hop editor Carl Chery, country writer Ken Tucker and radio programmers from several markets. Beats Music will also carry playlists from outside partners including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and several radio brands.
The basic individual subscription will cost $9.99 per month and include ad-free streaming and offline listening. Apps will be available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, along with a browser-based version.
Beats has also secured an exclusive wireless partnership with AT&T. Customers with qualifying multiline accounts will be able to pay $14.99 per month for access by as many as five family members across 10 devices. The family offer includes a 90-day trial, compared with 30 days for eligible individual AT&T subscribers.
That family plan may prove to be one of the service’s strongest advantages. Most subscription platforms charge nearly the full individual rate for each listener, which makes sharing a legal streaming account across a household expensive or inconvenient.
Target will serve as Beats Music’s exclusive retail partner, selling prepaid gift cards and contributing its own curated playlists. The arrangement gives the digital service a physical presence in stores while providing another option for listeners who do not want to attach a recurring subscription directly to a credit card.
Beats Music is also promising equal royalty rates for major and independent rights owners. Reznor said the company was developed around the belief that music has value and should create meaningful connections between artists and listeners.
None of this guarantees listeners will abandon Spotify, Pandora, Rdio or the other services already competing for their monthly subscription. Beats Music is entering late and charging roughly the same price as its established rivals.
Its argument is that access was only the first streaming problem. The next one is helping listeners find something worth hearing before they give up and play the same album again.
Beats Music launches in the United States on Jan. 21.