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AT&T wants to give ALL your internet activity data to BEATS, right?


nat whilk II

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Beats has bought out MOG music.  MOG is going away as of this coming April 15th.  Beats is sort-of-claiming that their service will be MOG plus more, but we'll see. 

 

Ok, I'm used to this revolving door thing for internet-based services.  Don't like it but I'm not bleeding from any major artery yet - and I'm inclined to check out Beats, cause if they are indeed like MOG in certain crucial respects, I might subscribe to Beats, even 'tho it's looking to cost twice as much per month.

 

So, hey! Beats sends me a special offer for AT&T customers  via email:

 

Exclusively with AT&T, you can get the Beats Music Family Plan with 5 accounts across 10 devices for $14.99/month and a 3 month trial. Individual Plans with AT&T will be $9.99/month with a one month trial.

 

Ok, well, we're on AT&T Uverse, so I think I must qualify, so I click through and get the message that I need to have an "eligibility check" for the AT&T deal.   Here's the fine print - I have put certain WTF!!?!?! items in bold:

 

By Clicking

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Uh... just wait 'til you see the Beats app.  

[EDIT: let's be real, it's day one and some stuff is definitely planned (as in already in the help system) but not working yet. I've been posting in a few threads on Beats Music's FB page and Zoe from MOG's support staff is over there and really doing a heroic job of fielding folks' comments, helping them where she can, reassuring when it's just a matter of time, and passing suggestions forward when it's stuff that's just plain missing. I doubt that company realizes what an incredible PR asset she is.]

 

Assuming you can RUN the Beats app, which only is available to those on Android 4.0 up, shutting out more than a third of Android users, right there.

(The browser version runs in Chrome and Opera on my Win7 machine. But it's got even more limitations than the mobile!)

I guess folks coming from Spotify and other services like it pretty well -- but the MOGgers, it appears to be a very mixed bag.

I, myself, would never leave MOG for Beats unless I was forced. But I'd take Beats over Spotify, if for no other reason that Spotify seems so ruthless about taking advantage of musicians (the sweetheart deals with big labels that often disadvantaged label aritsts as well as indie labels are pretty notorious), whereas Beats at least talks a good game on that front (all labels get equal deals, etc).

It's got all sorts of goofy UI animations (moreso in the mobile app, or at least the Android app) but it's sorely lacking on the usability front.

It's almost completely lacking ANY play queue managment. 

Seriously: you click a song/album or playlist and it plays (from the first track). Click another song/album and it interrupts whatever is going on and plays that. There is NO add-to-end-of-queue or play-next.

In fact, you can't see the queue. You can set it to shuffle but you can't reorder or add or subtract. You can play whatever's playing or switch to something else.

If you create a playlist -- you can't create a playlist from the desktop browser version (oops -- but you can edit one... if you mean by edit that you can add to it but not reorder it or remove things from it). To create a new playlist, you have to create the playlsit from the mobile app. Oh, wait, your phone or tablet is running Android 2.x or 3.x? Looks like you're OUTTA LUCK. (Also, it appears there have been a number of issues with the iOS app, at leat for some. But IT at least has up/down arrows on the playlist tracks [not play queue, mind you]. Of course, they don't work, apparently.)

Meanwhile the dorks from outside MOG seem to think Beats is the bee's knees. It's killing me.

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Ok, I can wait this out and see - I'll cool my afterburners for the time being. 

 

What I was trying to do was, however, run the Beats app per the email they sent me.  It says "See for yourself - download the app and hit play" and there are links to the Apple App Store, to "Andoid app on Google Play", and to "download from Windows".   The Windows link is dead, the other two are live. 

 

And the email explicitly says that MOG is going away April 15th.  Quoth the email:

 

Will MOG shut down? 

Yes. After April 15th, MOG will no longer be available in the US. Monthly billing will stop on March 15th and yearly subscriptions will be refunded on a prorated basis.

 

But this forced disclosure stuff is what I'm in full reaction mode against.  I know 99.99% of everyone just shrugs off the privacy thing 'cause nothing has come along and created any real problems for them yet.  But even if I grant that "oh, nothing will probably happen, c'mon, stop acting like someone's worrying Mom about all this", I still get riled just on the principle of the thing.

 

nat whilk ii 

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blue2blue wrote:

 

It's almost completely lacking ANY play queue managment. 

 

Seriously: you click a song/album or playlist and it plays (from the first track). Click another song/album and it interrupts whatever is going on and plays that. There is NO
add-to-end-of-queue
or
play-next.

 

In fact, you can't see the queue. You can set it to shuffle but you can't reorder or add or subtract. You can play whatever's playing or switch to something else.

 

If you create a playlist -- you can't create a playlist from the desktop browser version (
oops
-- but you can edit one... if you mean by edit that you can add to it but not reorder it or remove things from it). To create a new playlist, you have to create the playlsit from the mobile app. Oh, wait, your phone or tablet is running Android 2.x or 3.x? Looks like you're OUTTA LUCK. (Also, it appears there have been a number of issues with the iOS app, at leat for some. But IT at least has up/down arrows on the playlist tracks [
not
play 
queue,
mind you]. Of course, they don't 
work
, apparently.)

 

Meanwhile the dorks from outside MOG seem to think Beats is the bee's knees. It's killing me.

 

That almost sounds too good to be true! 

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