What it is: Beats 1 is an Internet radio station that runs 24/7 with DJs curating the music to play each day.
In the old days, people listen to the radio to hear their favorite songs. Back then, individual DJs ran their own shows so their musical tastes ranged from mainstream to truly bizarre. As long as you understood each DJs preferences, you could find a DJ whose musical tastes mirrored your own. Then you could listen to what the DJ chose to hear the type of music you’ll be most likely to like.
The problem occurred when radio stations started consolidating under a single corporation. To save costs, the major corporations simply programmed the same playlists into a computer and eliminated the DJs altogether. Now instead of a DJ offering his or her own eclectic tastes in a regional market, you had a uniform playlist of music that often satisfied nobody.
Beats 1 is an attempt to bring back the days of DJ-curated music that gives fans a chance to hear different types of music that they might not have discovered on their own. Part of the fun is listening to new songs and finding new artists to follow.
However, if you listen to Beats 1, you may not hear the range of new music that you personally like. That means you may have to listen to several songs you don’t like just for the chance to hear one or two songs you might like. After a while, you may get tired of listening to Beats 1 altogether.
Yet the name gives you a clue what the future may hold. Beats 1 can’t possibly cater to the whole world’s musical tastes, so it’s reasonable to expect a Beats 2 and Beats 3 station to pop up sometime in the near future. Each Beats station will likely cater to a different group of people with their own favorite DJs curating the music they like best. The goal of Beats isn’t just to attract listeners but to convince them to pay for a streaming music subscription or buy the songs as digital audio files outright. As Beats 1 proves itself (or not), a Beats 2 or Beats 3 station could become financially feasible, leading to an entire network of stations catering to different musical tastes and interests.
There could even be a talk show version of Beats consisting of nothing but talk radio or podcasts catering to business, health, or technology. The possibilities are endless, and it all goes back to the old days of discovering new music on the radio.
Just as people were loyal to one local radio station or another, so might people become loyal to a particular Beats station in the future. Beats 1 is just the beginning. When Beats 2 and Beats 3 arrive, then you’ll know that the future will be arriving faster than you might think.