Yesterday, we did a quick walkthrough of Beats Music, the new streaming music service. Today, we learn that Beats has suspended sign-ups for a bit. It seems the service was so popular that users were seeing some issues. Rather than try and muscle their way through the growing pains, Beats is suspending new sign-ups.
Via email, the team behind Beats let us know that there would be a halt to new subscribers. While this undoubtedly has to do with the service being new, and offering a free week trial, it’s oddly nice to see Beats take a step back rather than try to scale upward to meet a spike in demand. Their email said, in part:
Due to the extremely high volume of interest in our service some users are experiencing issues. Most people are unaffected but our priority is to give everyone a great experience. We prepared for issues like these, have a plan, and are going to hold off on letting more people in while we put this plan in action.
They went on to note that if you claimed your username in the weeks prior to launch, they were still holding it for you. The focus is on bringing the best service possible, not accommodating a surge of users. Rather than deal with upset users, they’d rather the ones they have fall in love with Beats.
Additionally, those who sign up this week will get an additional week of service free for the trouble. Theirs was the #1 music app on iTunes yesterday, and undoubtedly saw a lot of Android users download it as well. Beats offers no timetable for a return, but we hope it doesn’t take long for them to sort out whatever they need to.
