Beats launches ‘Music’ streaming service for $10 a month, iPhone app now available

As promised, Beats launched its highly anticipated ‘Music’ service this morning, bringing the headphone-maker into the highly competitive world of streaming audio. And with a library of around 20 million songs available for on-demand play, it’s certainly built to take on the competition.

But Beats is taking a different approach to its subscription service. Unlike your Rdios and your Spotifys, it doesn’t offer a free ad-supported model and the company is putting a lot of focus on its custom radio stations and playlists that it says were curated by some of the best DJs in the world…

From the press release:

“We wanted to build a music service that combined the freedom of an on-demand subscription service – unlimited, uninterrupted streaming and downloads of tens of millions of songs – but layer on top features that would give you that feeling only music that moves you can give. The right song at the right time will give you a chill. Make you pull someone close. Nod your head. Sing in the mirror. Roll down the car window and crank the volume to the right.

So we built Beats Music.

We pulled together our personal heroes across the genres. Veteran radio programmer Julie Pilat leads our Music team with Global Head of Programming and Editorial Scott Plagenhoef (formerly Pitchfork) overseeing our programmers including Carl Chery (formerly XXL), Suzy Cole (formerly WRIF), Arjan Writes (www.arjanwrites.com), Mason Williams (formerly Rhino Records), Fuzzy Fantabulous (formerly Power 106), Ken Tucker (formerly Country Weekly), Jerry Pullés (formerly Latino 96.3). They work with tons of music experts to cover a huge spectrum of music, making sure the catalog is great for music fans (goodbye catalog spam) and you’re always stocked with great listening choices. We also invited in our favorite trusted sources — Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Grand Ole Opry, Downbeat, DJ Mag, Hot 97/Power 106, Naxos, and many others — and built them right into the app, on mobile, no plugin required.”

And with the Beats mobile app, users can access this powerful curation with just a few taps. It offers several features including ‘Right Now,’ which allows users to input where they are, what they’re doing and what they want to listen to, and ‘Highlights,’ which lets the Beats DJs pick the right music.

For those not into the fancy curation features, Beats Music offers the standard affair as well. Users can simply open the app and hit ‘Play’ to start streaming music, as well as create and share their own playlists. There’s also an offline feature for listening to all of your favorite albums sans Internet.

Here’s what the iPhone app looks like (it’s available on Android and Windows Phone as well):

Beats Music is $9.99 a month for unlimited streaming, unlimited album downloads for offline streaming and no ads, and there’s a 7-day free trial for new users. There’s also a promo for AT&T customers right now, allowing up to five people and ten devices to access to the service for $14.99/month.

If you’re interested, you can find the Beats Music iPhone app in the App Store for free.

So, what do you think of Beats Music so far? Do you plan on trying it out?