S. Samuel
After its long-awaited launch this week, Beats Music has reportedly experienced a few initial start-up problems and temporarily disabled interested new users from signing up.
According to reports, massive amounts of traffic initially contributed to connectivity complications after its Tuesday (January 21) launch.
Excessive demand and use of the service, which became operational Tuesday, led to connectivity issues and new users being unable to register for the service. That led the company to put into operation “a gate” that will slowly allow new users to sign up and claim their Beats Music name. “We were able to still register people so we don’t turn them away at the door,” said Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers. “We just don’t put them into the main service so they don’t have a bad experience. And then we can email them after and say ‘All right, come on in’.” (USA Today)
Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers issued a statement this week in light of reports which claimed new users were unable to sign-up.
“Huge thanks to everyone for making our launch day yesterday so successful. We’ve been blown away by the love that made us the #1 Music App in the iTunes Store. Due to the extremely high volume of interest in our service some users are experiencing issues. Most people are unaffected but our priority is to give everyone a great experience. We prepared for issues like these, have a plan, and are going to hold off on letting more people in while we put this plan in action.” (Statement)
Some music publications have considered the validity of Rogers’ comments.
Note the lack of details as to what that plan might entail. One acute commenter at DigitalMusicNews.com noted that the whole scheme could be a P.R. scheme: The company could be luring even more curious customers into the fold by flashing the service’s recruitment numbers and then withholding access, a classic psychological advertising ploy. Of course, Beats could have honestly been swamped by customers. Commercials for the brand’s headphones have proven results: Aloe Blacc’s single “The Man” has seen a huge sales spike since being featured in Beats ads, and his EP has risen drastically up the Billboard 200 as well. (Music Times)
Apple users can get their hands on the new service today (January 21).
The service, which is a competitor to streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, costs $9.99 a month for access to a collection of 20 million songs. The service will be available for Android users, but the app hasn’t launched within the Google Play Store just yet. The love child of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, Beats Music (formerly known as Daisy) is attempting to differentiate itself from the handful of other streaming services out there by letting its users discover tracks on their own, with the user only picking out their favorite genres of music as a starting point. Beats’ launch was beaten by a day by Baboom, Kim Dotcom‘s new service which went live yesterday with an electropop album from the founder of Mega and Megaupload himself. (Complex)
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