Apple sniff around Beats

Beats headphones - the universal signal to shopkeepers that someone easily separated from their money has entered their store - are about to be bought out by Apple.

It's unclear if they're interested in the streaming or the headphone part of the business.

UPDATE: Rory Cellan-Jones is currently on Today suggesting they're interested in the streaming bit of Beats. That makes the three billion price tag seem expensive; unless there's a motivation to acquire a more solid Android user base.

Beats gets going

Overpriced headphone manufacturer Beats has taken a step closer to launching its streaming music service, with an app going live in the Apple app store:

The service, which goes up against the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and iTunes Radio — as well as Mega CEO Kim Dotcom‘s new music streaming service Baboom – will cost $9.99 per month for unlimited streaming from its catalog of more than 20 million songs.

Besides the ability for journalists to mention Dr Dre in articles about the service, it's not entirely clear what Beats believes makes it different from other streaming services.

The company's business models so far has been to encourage conspicuous consumption - people pay over the odds for oversized headphones so they can wear them on the tube or bus. It's not obvious how this will work for streams of music.

Jimmy Iovine says Beats streaming will be different by, erm, being like everyone else

Overpriced headphone manufacturers Beats are planning to launch a music streaming service, which Jimmy Iovine reckons will be unlike anything anyone has ever seen before:

"There is a sea of music, an ocean of music and absolutely no curation for it. You friends can't curate for you. No one knows what song comes next," Iovine said. "Apple knows a lot about your music taste. Google knows a lot, and Facebook. But no one is using it to curate."

Actually, don't playlists on Spotify do nothing but have your friends curate music for you - if we're going to use that slightly clunky phrase?

And if you really need some songs, chosen from an endless repository, placed in an order that has been chosen by a music expert... isn't that what, say, Gideon Coe or Rob Da Bank does pretty well already?

If Iovine's idea seems to be defining a problem that doesn't actually exist, then his solution appears to be a plan that hasn't quite been thought out:

"Most tech companies never get curation right. It's not in their culture. We will be miles ahead of them," he said. "If you are going to the gym five days a week, we know that, and when you wake up we will have a list for you." The curation won't be math-free, Iovine said, but it will rely more on the human touch, marrying math and emotion. Beats users will be able to contribute to the music curation, but it wasn't clear as to how it will work with the trusted expert playlists.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, "your friends" are shit at curating music, but "Beats users" are somehow magically great at doing it. Instead of paying Iovine $10 a month, you could just find someone already doing that, and befriend them.

Still, targeting the product at gym users makes sense. People who will pay for a machine which lets them run on the spot will shovel cash over for anything.

Overpriced headphone manufacturer acquires underpowered music service

Beats - who sell expensive headphones with a giant B on them - purchasing the MOG Music service.

The two sides have celebrated their union by releasing cascades of warm PR juice into the open, upturned faces of the public:

"Beats By Dre was born out of a need to restore the emotional connection with music that was lost by the degradation of sound from the digital music revolution, starting with the weakest link in the experience at the time - headphones," Beats President and COO Luke Wood said.

"But it was never about just headphones. We've since expanded the Beats mission to every other link in the music experience chain - speakers, mobile phones, personal computers and automobile sound systems.

"With MOG, we are adding the best music service to the Beats portfolio for the first truly end-to-end music experience. With their talent and technology, the possibilities around future innovation are endless."

It's not actually end-to-end, is it? It's not connected to the creation of music in any way, shape or form. And although MOG files (currently) are relatively high-quality, they're nowhere near CD-quality, are they? So it's not even moving back to the first degradation of sound of the early digital music revolution.

In effect, Luke Wood should have said "we've got some things to listen to music on, and we thought we should probably sell some music, too."

David Hyman, CEO of MOG added: "We're thrilled to be joining forces with Beats, a company that's committed at the highest level to the experience surrounding music delivery; the fit feels perfectly natural.

"MOG subscribers can expect continued excellence from the best music service in the market, and we look forward to putting premium music experiences in the hands of millions of music lovers everywhere."

"The experience surrounding music delivery" is one of those phrases that could only be uttered by someone who doesn't care for music. I've long argued that audiophilia is the enemy of a passion for music; someone standing around applauding the experience of music delivery sums that up nicely.

Beats buys MOG

MOG, which those of you with longer memories will recall as plotting to turn music blogs into pure gold, is going to be bought up by Beats, the only faintly ridiculous headphones/somehow-musical-laptop brand.

I know what you're thinking: why would you buy MOG? In god's name, why would you do that? Why?

Well, the New York Times helpfully points out that while Dr Dre is the face of Beats, it's mostly owned by mobile phone company HTC; they might think MOG's music streaming service (or at least the deals it has cut to make it possible) could be valubale if you wanted to plug a music service into a telephone handset.

Not entirely sure what will happen to the blog network, but the smart money would be on it having a sack pulled over its head and being driven out of town.