When Apple announced its $3 billion acquisition of Beats last month, the company said it had no intentions of killing off the Android version of the app, with Tim Cook saying “It’s all about the music.” This evening, Beats announced a hefty update to its streaming app on Android. The update bumps the app to version 1.1 and includes a variety of features and changes that users have been calling for since the initial release. This is the first feature update the app has gotten since Apple announced it will acquired the company.
First off, you can now use the app in landscape mode. The “Just For You” interface and recommendations have been made more “refined and fresh” with this update, as well. The biggest feature, however, is the ability to save offline downloads to an external SD card and move offline downloads between the card and the internal storage of your device. This is huge for devices that have limited internal storage and a microSD card to expand it with.
- Landscape mode
- Save offline downloads to an external SD Card
- Transfer offline downloads between SD card & internal device storage
- ‘Find It’ is now ‘Browse’ in the left hand navigation bar
- Just For You recommendations are now even more refined and fresh
- Improved playback
- Bug fixes
The update is available on the Play Store now. It’s estimated that the Beats streaming service accounted for less than $500 million of the $3 billion Apple paid for Beats.
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I think supporting Android is a mistake. Why make the copycat platform more attractive?
Apple could try to use it as a gateway to iOS in the future if Beats Music integrates into iOS but they keep the app for androids.
Good call!
It would be a great lure for fence-sitters who are thinking of switching already.
Also, incorporating the fancy new IOS 8 functionality like Extensions (for the Notification Centre, the Mac and other mobile apps), Siri and inter-app audio into the Apple version of Beats may make the pull of the gateway almost irresistible
Because of.. money?