Not a fan of this progress wheel covering up the album art.

It sucks. Great library of music, but the overall application just feels too busy. I feel as though I need to do more than I should have to, just to play a song I want to hear. You can “heart” songs, but this doesn’t seem to do that much (on Google Play Music, it adds them to a playlist that you can review later, Spotify does this as well – it’s very useful). The radio stations or playlists that it makes aren’t that great – they seem to play assortments that aren’t very intuitive – and the build a sentence thing is just a dumb gimmick – it never hits the spot. Whereas most music services let you make stations with artists or songs, Beats relies on genres, and then doesn’t seem to have all of the genres one might want to select from. It asks you to select a few genres when the app is first configuring. Music isn’t that simple anymore, bands tend to transcend genres a bit. For example, the band “Power Glove,” what are they? Rock? Industrial? Metal? Electronic? Electonica? How about letting me pick my favorite artists? Anyone that knows me knows that Michael Jackson is my favorite of all time, ever. Yet whatever genre-based selections that Beats made never provided me with Michael, I had to go find Michael. I should never have to find Michael. Michael and I are kindred spirits, bound for all eternity. Beats tried to tear us apart – a sin, unforgivable.

The social aspect of the app is probably something that some people would like, I just don’t care and it gets in the way. I “followed” a few artists, but I’m not sure what this does, Maybe if one of the artists rolls out a new release, it notifies you?

Anyway, the navigation felt clunky, all of these gimmicky and social features got in the way of just getting to the music. Often times, I like to check out new artists and just find a list of their songs, hit play and listen to them, but Beats tends to play one song and then stop and await a new command. The progress bar is replaced with a progress wheel in Beats, that progresses over the album art – which although relatively inconsequential, irritated me. Sometimes – I’d say a good 10-25% of the time, the application would just fail to load music for no apparent reason.

I feel like if I were in my late teens or early twenties I’d like this service more, but I’m a grown up and Beats isn’t for me.