Beats Music service, part of Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) multi billion dollar acquisition of Beats Electronics, LLC, received a major overhaul yesterday. One of the most important parts of this “tuneup” was a large package of bug fixes, which will likely smooth out the performance of Dr. Dre’s signature headphones and streaming music service. The “bugginess” of Beats has been one of the obstacles to its even more widespread adoption by consumers.
The update also brought Beats Music service and its associated app into better alignment with Apple’s current iterations of iOS, such as iOS 7 and, presumably, the soon to be released iOS 8. Playback quality has been improved and the connection made more reliable, so that the service is less likely to “drop” or experience other difficulties in the middle of a song.
New features also abound in the updated version of Beats Music service, which is known by the version number 2.2.0.
Some of these features include:
A song history function which permits several different history views. Previous playlists can be viewed, and there is also a time-based history view that simply enables the user to look back over a list of recently played content.
The Sentence, a playlist generator that generates playlist based on the proximity of family or friends, the user’s current mood or location, and so forth.
Verified profiles for artists or bands to ensure that the genuine performer being sought by the user is actually being displayed.
Tune Your Taste is a customized recommendation function which can identify artists and genres when making listening suggestions.
Author’s opinion: though many analysts hold that Dr. Dre and James Iovine are the main acquisitions Apple was aiming for, Beats’ streaming music service could be argued to be just as large a prize, or larger. Streaming, subscription-based music services have far outpaced purchase-based models such as iTunes in terms of cash generation and overall popularity. Apple’s mysterious 2014 R&D initiative may be related to developing Beats into a robust service to compete head-on with Spotify.
The fame and glitz of Mr. Iovine and Dr. Dre may be no more than icing on the cake in terms of Apple’s (AAPL) primary strategic aim of jumpstarting their entry into the lucrative streaming music market. (Note: this opinion is that of the author alone and does not reflect that of PF Hub or any other individuals named in this article.)
