4 ms·

For those of us not familiar with Beats, what is so special about the music service compared to (for argument sake) Spotify?

by antr 12y ago

sscalia 12y ago
I used my trial of Beats Music for awhile -- I will admit, it had the BEST discovery and automatic playlist creation of any service I've ever used (Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes Radio) -- you really could be confident when you suggested a song it would build a list of songs that you weren't skipping. It also had a unique UI.
- josefresco 12y ago
  "I used my trial of Beats Music for awhile" To be fair, Pandora for me was a magical wonderland of new music discovery for even the first 6-12 months of use. Now? Not so much, and I find myself often wishing Pandora was better at several things.
andrewmunsell 12y ago
Curation and discovery-- they have celebrity and music curator created playlists. They also have an interesting Pandora-like radio where you can essentially select a mood and it'll build a playlist for you.
- graublau 12y ago
  I think all streaming services have a form of this, heck even iTunes store has celebrity curated and Genius.
  - Antiquarian 12y ago
    > all streaming services have a form of this ... Quality differs.
    - chrischen 12y ago
      Most streaming services just use echonest... so quality probably is pretty similar across the board. You may get variations depending on your own personal preferences and the seed artists you provide.
graublau 12y ago
Anyone think Rdio would be a much better fit for streaming?
- vidarh 12y ago
  I'm distinctly underwhelmed by Rdio. I basically started trying it because of the good Chromecast support, but their recommendations are not particularly good (I listen to a bunch of electronica, and one of the (good) choices it presented me with was a Polish artist; shortly afterwards I got a bunch of 70's Polish pop music, and it took me a day of thumbs down and skipping to get it to stop; similarly, I somehow managed to be subjected to a prolonged assault of Irish folk music where the only connection I've managed to spot was that one of the artists have a couple of track that are somewhat similar to a couple of the track of an artist I like a few other tracks of). And their mobile app is horrible. The amount of skipping is awful; you'd think they could buffer more. Especially when you have synced tracks that it could use to "fill in". Even though I've synced a number of tracks to my mobile, it skips or fails halfway through even those tracks when my network connection is bad, unless I've marked myself as offline. Add on no ability to play my local music, and I find myself almost certain to switch from Rdio to my local player on my phone within 10-15 minutes. It's nice for when I'm home, using it via Chromecast, and I pick exactly what I want to play, or have the patience to try to beat its recommendations into submission, but I doubt I'll stay a user very long.

For those of us not familiar with Beats, what is so special about the music service compared to (for argument sake) Spotify?

by antr 12y ago

For those of us not familiar with Beats, what is so special about the music service compared to (for argument sake) Spotify?

sscalia 12y ago

I used my trial of Beats Music for awhile -- I will admit, it had the BEST discovery and automatic playlist creation of any service I've ever used (Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes Radio) -- you really could be confident when you suggested a song it would build a list of songs that you weren't skipping. It also had a unique UI.

josefresco 12y ago
"I used my trial of Beats Music for awhile" To be fair, Pandora for me was a magical wonderland of new music discovery for even the first 6-12 months of use. Now? Not so much, and I find myself often wishing Pandora was better at several things.

andrewmunsell 12y ago

Curation and discovery-- they have celebrity and music curator created playlists. They also have an interesting Pandora-like radio where you can essentially select a mood and it'll build a playlist for you.

graublau 12y ago
I think all streaming services have a form of this, heck even iTunes store has celebrity curated and Genius.
- Antiquarian 12y ago
  > all streaming services have a form of this ... Quality differs.
  - chrischen 12y ago
    Most streaming services just use echonest... so quality probably is pretty similar across the board. You may get variations depending on your own personal preferences and the seed artists you provide.

graublau 12y ago

Anyone think Rdio would be a much better fit for streaming?

vidarh 12y ago
I'm distinctly underwhelmed by Rdio. I basically started trying it because of the good Chromecast support, but their recommendations are not particularly good (I listen to a bunch of electronica, and one of the (good) choices it presented me with was a Polish artist; shortly afterwards I got a bunch of 70's Polish pop music, and it took me a day of thumbs down and skipping to get it to stop; similarly, I somehow managed to be subjected to a prolonged assault of Irish folk music where the only connection I've managed to spot was that one of the artists have a couple of track that are somewhat similar to a couple of the track of an artist I like a few other tracks of). And their mobile app is horrible. The amount of skipping is awful; you'd think they could buffer more. Especially when you have synced tracks that it could use to "fill in". Even though I've synced a number of tracks to my mobile, it skips or fails halfway through even those tracks when my network connection is bad, unless I've marked myself as offline. Add on no ability to play my local music, and I find myself almost certain to switch from Rdio to my local player on my phone within 10-15 minutes. It's nice for when I'm home, using it via Chromecast, and I pick exactly what I want to play, or have the patience to try to beat its recommendations into submission, but I doubt I'll stay a user very long.