Frequent flyers are well acquainted with waiting on the tarmac. The aircraft is boarded, the door is closed, the plane taxis out to its takeoff position … and sits, unmoving, while passengers grow irritable. The pilot issues helpless apologies.
Here are a few of the irritable comments of Beats Music passengers, posted to Twitter within minutes of this writing:
“Happiness w #beatsmusic has nosedived. No connection, no web account interface, and no support/customer service.”
“#beatsmusic is a really cool service. It’s just too bad the app doesn’t work at all. Connection problems, bugs, etc. Not a great start.”
“I’m having all kinds of signup issues with #BeatsMusic. I wanted to try the service with my Sonos speakers, but it’s 404 city.”
“As soon as the east coast wakes up it starts to die.”
We were motivated to search for potential discontent by anecdotal reports we received from colleagues and other connections that Beats was inaccessible — in some cases in all attempts over the 1.5 days it has been public. Furthermore, our Beats Music test account has been unable to connect through dozens of attempts over six hours in three app installations and the web interface.
We sympathize with the challenges of technology launches. We also recognize the brand damage that can occur when a mightily publicized new service has a partial failure which can become viral. We hope for quick resumption of Beats Music so we can continue evaluating (and enjoying) the service. Most of all, we hate sitting on the runway.