There are a lot of apps trying to tap into the very lucrative and popular music streaming business. After creating a very successful (if somewhat controversial) headphone company, Music Mogul Dr. Dre now has his own player in the game. Beats Music app for Android is a $9.99 per month Internet music streaming app. Two of the more popular music streaming apps are Spotify and Pandora. Pandora specializes in picking individual songs for the listener bases on a certain song, artist, or genre that you pick to start the ‘radio station’. Spotify acts more like iTunes…if you owned millions of songs. Beats Music for Android tries to do its own thing, by making themed playlists for you.
Logging in to use Beats Music requires your Facebook or Twitter credentials. Once you are logged in, you need to select your favorite genres, artists, and styles of music. Beats Music displays your options on colorful ‘bubbles’, which are labeled with the bands and genres. After selecting a few options Beats Music creates a playlist channel that focus’ on your defined preference. Beats Music updates four times a day based on your music preference input, the time of day, and several other factors. New songs, artists, and albums are displayed to the main home screen without you needing to search.
The user interface functions are less than optimal. Swiping left or right to switch sections can easily open up side panel menus where My Playlist, My Library, Search and other options are. My Playlist is where the app stores your created playlists and My Library stores music saved for offline playback. The app uses multiple types of fonts and text sizes, as well as a sometimes-clashing color scheme. Instead of a typical horizontal bar to track runtime, Beats Music uses a large Beats logo in the center of the screen which fills up with red color as the song plays. You can select somewhere on the logo to skip to that part of the song. The logo blocks the album cover art and is rather gimmicky. There are multiple settings for streaming quality; 320 kbps “high quality”, 65 kbps is standard. Streaming on high quality uses a copious amount of data so be sure to keep it 65kbps unless you are near wifi. A familiar option is the ability to favorite or ban songs to help influence future music played. Unlike Pandora, you can select a song to stay on repeat.
Good:
- Beats Music has clear and crisp audo playback when streaming on “high quality” setting.
- Intuitive way to find new music for playlists.
Bad:
- $9.99 a month for this service is very pricey, more than Spotify or Pandora.
- The app graphic style and user interface is very polarizing.
- Beats audio very heavily advertises itself on the app.
Conclusion: If for some reason you do not like Pandora or Spotify, and want a music streaming app for your android device, then Beats Music is a passable option. Beats Music is best for people who know what type of music they like, but do not know what to play exactly. Themed playlists are easily accessed but if you want specific songs you could find a better app. Like Spotify.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beatsmusic.android.client&hl=en
Leave a Reply