If you’re not satisfied with Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, or any of the other music streaming services available, then mark your calendar for January 21, 2014. It’s the date Beats Music, built off the success of the Dr. Dre-branded headphones, will become available for iOS, Android, Windows devices, and the Web for $10 a month. Along with its unveiling will be an AT&T-exclusive family plan for the service, which will run $15 a month.
For the standard subscriber, $10 a month will allow a single user to stream music from the Beats Music library of 20 million songs on three separate devices. AT&T customers can pay $5 more a month to allow up to five users to listen to music across 10 devices. There’s a bit of a catch here: those who want in on the family plan will have to have a multi-line account with AT&T.
AT&T subscribers will also have more of a chance to decide if they want in on the Beats Music service. While non-AT&T customers get a 7 day trial, single AT&T customers get a full 30 day tryout and AT&T families can test out Beats Music free for 90 days. AT&T subscribers are getting some big favoritism, though there has been no indication that Beats Music will embrace AT&T’s Sponsored Data feature to buy the data costs of its users.
Beats Music will start with a sizable library that not only can be streamed but can also be downloaded and stored locally for as long as a user is subscribed to the service. It will also feature a fill-in-the-blank style search engine that will help create a playlist for users based on their answers. Still, we hope no part of the actual Beats Music service will be limited simply because of a person’s choice in mobile carriers.
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