Beats Music, the streaming radio solution spun out from the makers of Beats audio hardware products, has decided to bite the bullet and give Apple its 30 percent cut on subscription sign-ups. The streaming music provider originally side-stepped Apple’s in-app ecommerce options in favor of carrier billing arranged outside the app to pay for its full service, but now users can sign up much more easily in the app itself.
The free service included in Beats Music called ‘The Sentence,’ which randomly shuffles music, is much-improved too, with thousands of new songs available in the mix. Monthly subscriptions, which include to on-demand playback of any of the music in the Beats catalog, can now be unlocked via a $9.99 in-app purchase.
Beats allowing the in-app subscription option means that the service likely wasn’t happy with the volume of subscribers it was getting through the old methods. An in-app option is definitely far more convenient for the average user, but it comes with a significant cost to Beats, who have to pay up around $3 to Apple on each new user they sign up for the privilege of using the App Store as the means of distribution. Still, if it leads to a significant increase in the volume of new sign up, it’s probably worth it.
Other new features include a new section that allows artists to push their own music and merchandise, and improved social and offline playback features.