Beats Music streaming service to launch in January

It’s official. After months of anticipation, the new streaming music service from Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s Beats Electronics has planned its launch for January 2014.

People who want to try out the service, called Beats Music, when it launches can now reserve a username, said Ian Rogers, its chief executive, in a post on his blog.

“We’re nearly ready for liftoff,” Rogers wrote. “We can’t wait to share it with the world.”

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Beats Music is based on MOG, an on-demand digital music service that Beats Electronics, best-known for its high-end headphones, bought in 2012. Beats is poised to enter an industry already crowded with competitors, such as the established player Spotify, which has 40 million subscribers.

Rogers, who joined Beats at the beginning of this year, did not share further details about the service, saying only that the program now exists as a private, beta testing version for a select group of people, including artists and other “influencers,” to play with it and provide feedback.

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The announcement comes just after another rival, San Fransisco-based Rdio, announced the hiring of a new chief executive.

Rogers wrote in his post that anyone who has spent time around him in the last sixth months has seen him “buried in my phone making playlists, poking, prodding, and testing our forthcoming service.”

To close out his post, Rogers included a video of a wine ad starring Orson Welles, which includes the line, “Some things can’t be rushed: good music and good wine.”

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