Beats Music integrates in-app purchase option on iOS

Beats Music integrates in-app purchase option on iOS


Beats Music surprised the market today by introducing in-app purchases on its iOS app. The company is retaining its $10 per month price point, which means that 30% of that is going into Apple’s pockets.

According to Ian Rogers (as reported by Re/Code) this move was necessary as over half of Beats users are iPhone users and getting them to convert to the premium tier was tough.

Beats has also added thousands of songs to its only free offering which is essentially an internet radio.

In the UK, Bloom.fm allows users to upgrade to its premium tier via Apple’s in-app purchase but those subscriptions are more expensive than if subscribers sign up on the website to compensate for Apple’s cut.

Rdio has a similar policy, charging customers more on iOS to make up for the 30% charge.

According to the latest reports the vast majority of Beats Music’s subscriptions so far have been driven by AT&T’s tie-up, so the company may be pushing harder on converting the users that have organically joined the platform or installed the app just to give it a go.

Beats provides a 7 day free trial of the platform for customers that don’t come via the AT&T deal, this is a short amount of time so it makes sense for them to make sure that customers that are “cut off” after the 7th day but have enjoyed the service can continue using it with the minimum disruption enabling “impulse buy” subscriptions through the iTunes Store.

Streaming music is always a scale business. Sure, losing 30% to Apple is not ideal but it’s far better than not converting that user at all and losing the other $7…

(Andrea Leonelli)