Innovation > Innovation Lions Media Description
BEATS MUSIC
R/GA, London / BEATS BY DRE / 2014
Awards:
Overview
Credits
Overview
ClientBriefOrObjective
Streaming music services lack heart. Algorithms aren’t enough to fix the problem, and deliver people the perfect music for the moment. If you love Paul Simon, you’ll really enjoy Art Garfunkel. That makes perfect sense to a computer, but not to a human being who lives and breathes and feels.
To fix that problem, you need to figure out a way to combine technology with people driven by a passion for music. That was the brief Jimmy Iovine and Trent Reznor gave us—design a revolutionary new service combining human curation and technology, and create a new way to experience music. And, once it’s built, launch it to a mass U.S. market.
Implementation
The result is Beats Music, a digital music service that reinvents the category, by combing technology with human curation. There are three layers to the app. The first is a smart profile that users set up by telling it what genres and bands they are interested in. An AI layer connects that profile with input from human curators. An editorial team, made up of music experts, feeds the system with hand-selected playlists, albums, and songs.
Outcome
Try the app for yourself and you’ll see that it achieves its objectives—the app does provide intelligent recommendations and personalize music more successfully and consistently than any of it’s algorithm-only competition.
In less than two months, over 4,000,000 people have downloaded the Beats Music App. It became the #1 music app in Itunes on the first day of launch. Thousands of mentions in the press, millions of social media impressions, and incredible reviews in the music and tech press. Beats Music is well on its way to become the dominant player in the space.
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