A new music streaming venture called Electric Jukebox has launched today in a bid to take on the approach of the incumbent market rivals like Spotify and Apple Music.
The service differentiates itself from competitors by delivering the service through a dedicated streaming device that you simply need to plug into your TV’s HDMI port and connect to your Wi-Fi. That’s it.
The hope is that the dedicated gadget will bring added simplicity for users who are bamboozled by the current crop of streaming devices on offer.
The company says that just six percent of users listen to music through a dedicated streaming device and accompanying service subscription, hence the ‘lo-tech’ approach to making it “as easy to listen to as a CD.”
The device works ‘out of the box’ and doesn’t require any app downloads, accounts or monthly premiums. Included with the device is a one-year ‘Premium Pass’. At the end of a year, you can either carry on listening to curated channels, radio stations or mixtapes interspersed with ads. Or you can buy another year of access for £60.
The retail price for the unit is £179/$229. If you pre-order in the next seven-days it’ll cost £149 or $199; it’s due to arrive in shops before the end of the year.
The success of Electric Jukebox will be determined by the way in which it manages to reach its target audience – a largely non-tech oriented group who find the current devices and services overly confusing and too expensive to commit to on an ongoing monthly basis.
It’ll also depend on the music catalogue – the company says it has “tens of millions” of tracks available to stream, but fostering partnerships for emerging artists and new music would help to keep the service fresh.
The simplicity will appeal to users who want to just be able to say (or type) the name of an artist and have a jukebox-style playlist start without an further intervention – you can also select individual artists, tracks and albums too. The controller also acts as an on-screen mouse cursor for navigating the service.
In a market swimming with ‘me too’ competitors, Electric Jukebox can’t be accused of that but its high-end price tag will put off potential impulse purchases – its timing ahead of Christmas this year is probably no accident, though.
For comparison, a year of Spotify Premium costs £10 per month, making it around £120 per year. That means that you could have Spotify Premium for around a year and a half for the up-front price of the device – and it’s worth bearing in mind that if you want an ad-free experience after your first year, it’ll cost you another £60 each year.
As a result, for anyone event remotely comfortable with technology, a Chromecast dongle and a monthly streaming subscription would get most of the job done for a lot less money up-front, and in the long-run.
➤ Electric Jukebox
Review: Beam thinks it can make dental health less painful via an app (and it may be right)
Proper dental care is important, but costly. A startup by the name of Beam thinks it can help provide preventative care for more people with an app and colorful brushes, and it might be onto something.
Beam is a service that helps connect its users with a network of dentists, and provide best practices for care along the way. You can get everything from brushes to floss down, and even schedule dental exams — all via an app.
Right now, Beam says dentists make money via a ‘fee for services’ model, wherein they’re paid by you and/or your insurance company for work they do. Beam’s goal is to offer outcome-based payments to the dentist, who would be rewarded for having patients who are actively engaged in healthy dental care habits via the app. The company tells me it wants to “align the intents” of patients and dentists; less dental work for us, and incentives for dentists who have healthy patients.
To that, the company believes the current dental care model is reactive. Dentists are incentivized by fixing problems rather than preventing them. Beam is changing that, and tells me it wants to give dentists more for encouraging and promoting preventative care.
Beam isn’t just a clever business model, though. In addition to providing its own device (more on that in a second), Beam is also an insurance broker, with services provided through Renaissance . Depending on your region, Beam costs anywhere from $15 to $55 per month (which also gets you the brush, floss and toothpaste), and works with over 100,000 dentists nationwide. It sells individual as well as plans for businesses.
As a broker, Beam says its model is beneficial for insurers it works with, as well as more traditional dental insurance brokers. Insurance companies can use Beam as a direct broker to consumers, while existing brokers can offer Beam as a package to companies. Beam makes a percentage of the fees paid for coverage.
The crux of Beam is its app, where you can do everything from find a dentist to order toothbrush heads. It’s also where you can sign up for an insurance plan.
As you brush, you earn stars. Those stars act like rewards points, where Beam says it may give you anything from Amazon gift cards to discounts on insurance premiums.
Your brushing habits are learned via Beam’s own toothbrush, or by self-reporting your brushing habits in-app. The more you brush, the more stars you earn.
The more stars you earn, the more Beam starts to benefit you — and the healthier your teeth will be. The healthier your teeth are, the less your dentist has to do, which Beam sees as beneficial (I’m sure you’ll agree).
The brush is simple enough, and Beam says its motor is similar to a Sonicare. It’s a duller sensation, but that’s by design. In Beam’s research, they claim people tend to over brush and cause damage to their teeth; the less invasive motor reduces that damage.
A Beam Brush also has enough memory for two months’ worth of brushes, and a battery life that will get you right around 60 days of power as well.
It links to the app via Bluetooth, and you don’t even need to have the app up and running for it to sync. So long as your phone is in Bluetooth range, it can sync with Beam.
Dead simple to use, the Beam app does little more than chart your progress and provide you with access to your dental plan and dentists.
It also has challenges to help you earn stars, which range from adding a picture to your profile to adjusting the brush speed to fit your preference.
The takeaway I had from using Beam is that it encourages all involved — you and your dentist, really — to act better. It wants you to brush regularly, and encourages good habits to do so.
Beam also wants your dentist to provide preventative care rather than fix problems, and rewards them for having engaged patients.
The service itself is encouraging, though. Dentistry probably has a black eye for many people, likely because they go to the dentist and walk out in pain — and spent a lot of money in the process. If Beam can help its users and dentists come together without so much drilling and scraping, everyone is moving in the right direction.
If Beam is right, and we can help solve some of our issues by proper preventative care, it’ll gain a lot of traction.
➤ Beam
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