Beats Music review

There's no shortage of music subscription services that offer unlimited streaming for a monthly fee. The conceit of the latest offering, Beats Music, is that its playlists and other recommendations are curated by warm-blooded humans, not robots.
As CEO Ian Rogers proclaims, "Algorithms can do 'sounds like.' They can't do 'feels like.'"

Beats Music comes from Beats Electronics, the headphone-maker backed by hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre and former music executive Jimmy Iovine.

For $10 a month, you get unlimited streaming and song downloading for offline listening. Downloaded songs expire once you cancel the subscription. AT&T customers are also eligible for a $15-a-month family plan for as many as five family members. You can sign up for a 90-day free trial, but there's no free, ad-supported version like some of its rivals.

Beats Music has its roots in the MOG streaming service, which Beats Electronics bought in 2012. Beats Music has a more playful interface than MOG, which was mostly utilitarian. Beats also introduces a few ways to discover both new and old material.

Apps Android, iOS, and Windows Phone are available now. Computer users can listen through their Web browser. And like other streaming services, you can choose specific songs, albums or artists on your own. Beats Music has a catalog of more than 20 million songs, which is comparable to its rivals.

I began by going through a get-to-know-you sequence for new users, picking a few genres and artists I like. Somewhat flustered by the scarcity of choices, I picked "Sting," "Katy Perry" and "Harry Connick Jr." and the genre "Pop." I'm glad I was discerning about these choices (redoing them several times), because eventually I was presented with something I liked.

The Beats Music app tries to take the information you enter in order to present you with a variety of albums and playlists that are "Just For You."

Another section for recommendations, dubbed "The Sentence," prompts you to fill in blanks to establish what you'd like to hear, but you end up with silly sentences like "I'm in the shower & feel like ordering in with my family to Indie." It's reminiscent of Allrecipes' "Dinner Spinner" except I'm not sure what ingredients I'm adding in. I mostly skipped this game because I found the resulting choices to be far too random.

Another "Highlights" section made more sense, like a playlist of the "2014 Grammy Winners."

One recommendation I liked from the "Just For You" section was a playlist called "Young Lovers Heartbreak Mix." If you have a rainy day - or in drought-plagued Los Angeles, at least a few hours with nothing better to do - it's worth a listen.

The 25-song, 96-minute playlist starts off slowly with the piano ballad "Say Something" by A Great Big World. It builds gradually, ramping up with the rise-from-the-ashes fourth song "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato. It hits a crescendo between songs 13 and 14, when "Don't Speak," Gwen Stefani's 1996 hit with her band, No Doubt, crashes into Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" from last year. Somewhat appropriately, the playlist ends with Taylor Swift's power recovery song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The app says the playlist was created by "Beats Pop," but the curator was actually Arjan Timmermans, the popular blogger behind ArjanWrites.com. Hired as the head of pop and dance programming at Beats Music last year, Timmermans is one of nine real people who put some 5,000 playlists together for Beats Music. (Neither Dre nor Iovine are among them).

The playlist was designed for "a teenager who got their heart broken for the first time," Timmermans said in an interview. The songs - a mix of hits by current teen idols and breakup classics like "Don't Speak" - are meant to work together emotionally, he said, telling the listener, "It's OK to be sad, but I can move through this."

The playlist has a beginning, middle and an end and runs about as long as a movie. And I found that some songs' lyrics work together back-to-back, like the way Stefani's line "don't tell me cause it hurts" runs into Cyrus' "don't you ever say I just walked away, I will always want you."

That's a link I don't see a machine making these days. For people, it's probably a subconscious connection buried deep down there somewhere.

I am no teenager anymore, am happily married and am not the playlist's presumptive audience. But as a sampling of what Beats Music has to offer, it shows me this app has a soul.

Source By: http://gadgets.ndtv.com/

Google Currents app shut down, users redirected to Google Play Newsstand

If you are one of those few who were addicted to Google Currents then there is some bad news for you. Google Currents app has completed its full circle like its app icon. Google has started rolling out the final update 840KB update to the Currents app which officially takes it offline.

Once users will update to version 2.3 of the Currents app, they will be asked to launch the Google Play Newsstand in a welcome message, which reads:

"Google Play Newsstand is a new app where you can enjoy favourite news, blogs, and (where available) magazines. Newsstand replaces Currents. All your Google Current subscriptions have been transferred to Newsstand."

Once users choose the launch the Google Play Newsstand app, the Currents app is automatically removed from their smartphone's app drawer. The Play Store page even removes the 'Open' button so users are left only with the option to uninstall.

If users really want to retain Currents for a little while however, here's a little trick that we at NDTV Gadgets tried - all users will have to do is to go to Settings>Manage Apps, and then uninstall updates to the Google Currents app. This will replace the app to its initial state (factory version) and the app icon is restored.

We are not sure whether you will get the stories updated further but the Currents app will at least be restored to app drawer. A report from Android Authority says that the old version of the app is still operational, but there is now word on its further life.

Google Currents app never really got much traction since it had launched in December 2011. The app couldn't stand up to the likes of apps like Flipboard.

Last year in November, when Google decided to combine its Currents and Play Magazines app into one app, it was renamed Google Play Newsstand.

Google Play Newsstand app integrates Currents with magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and offers all content in one location, as well as content from online publications, blogs and news feeds.

For the latest technology news and reviews, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and get the NDTV Gadgets app for Android or iOS.

Source By: http://gadgets.ndtv.com/

Facebook to buy WhatsApp in a $19 billion deal

REUTERS - Facebook Inc(FB.O) will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world's largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold.

The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO and underscores the social network's determination to win the market for messaging.

Founded by a Ukrainian immigrant who dropped out of college, Jan Koum, and a Stanford alumnus, Brian Acton, WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley startup fairy tale, rocketing to 450 million users in five years and adding another million daily.

"No one in the history of the world has ever done something like this," Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg, who famously closed a $1 billion deal to buy photo-sharing service Instagram over a weekend in mid-2012, revealed on Wednesday that he proposed the tie-up over dinner with CEO Koum just 10 days earlier, on the night of February 9.

WhatsApp was the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe. Although WhatsApp has adhered strictly to its core functionality of mimicking texting, other apps, such as Line in Japan or Tencent Holdings Ltd's (0700.HK) WeChat, offer games or even e-commerce on top of their popular messaging features.

The deal provides Facebook entree to new users, including teens who eschew the mainstream social networks but prefer WhatsApp and rivals, which have exploded in size as private messaging takes off.

"People are calling them 'Facebook Nevers,'" said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed and an early investor in Snapchat.

How the service will pay for itself is not yet clear.

Zuckerberg and Koum on the conference call did not say how the company would make money beyond a $1 annual fee, which is not charged for the first year. "The right strategy is to continue to focus on growth and product," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg and Koum said that WhatsApp will continue to operate independently, and promised to continue its policy of no advertising.

"Communication is the one thing that you have to use daily, and it has a strong network effect," said Jonathan Teo, an early investor in Snapchat, another red-hot messaging company that flirted year ago with a multibillion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook.

"Facebook is more about content and has not yet fully figured out communication."

For graphic on comparing per-user valuations, click link.reuters.com/mej96v

PRICE TAG

Even so, many balked at the price tag.

Facebook is paying $42 per user with the deal, dwarfing its own $33 per user cost of acquiring Instagram. By comparison, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten just bought messaging service Viber for $3 per user, in a $900 million deal.

Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar, warned that while investors may welcome the addition of such a high-growth asset, it may point to an inherent weakness in the social networking company that has seen growth slow in recent quarters.

"This is a tacit admission that Facebook can't do things that other networks are doing," he said, pointing to the fact that Facebook had photo-sharing and messaging before it bought Instagram and WhatsApp.

"They can't replicate what other companies are doing so they go out and buy them. That's not all together encouraging necessarily and I think deals like these won't be the last one and that is something for investors to consider."

Venture capitalist Sequoia Capital, which invested in WhatsApp in February 2011 and led three rounds of financing altogether, holds a stake worth roughly $3 billion of the $19 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.

"Goodness gracious, it's a good deal for WhatsApp," said Teo, the early investor in Snapchat.

Facebook pledged a break-up fee of $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in stock if the deal falls through.

Facebook was advised by Allen & Co, while WhatsApp has enlisted Morgan Stanley for the deal.

Shares in Facebook slid 2.5 percent to $66.36 after hours, from a close of $68.06 on the Nasdaq.

"No matter how you look at it this is an expensive deal and a very big bet and very big bets either work out or they perform quite poorly," Summer said. "Given the relative size, the enterprise valuations this is a very significant deal and it may not be the last one."

(Reporting by Garry Shih and Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Soham Chatterjee in Bangalore, writing by Edwin Chan, Editing by Savio D'Souza, Andrew Hay, Peter Henderson and Lisa Shumaker)

Source By: http://in.reuters.com/