A Tweetstorm for Beats 1

#Beats1 is so much better and more significant than I had imagined: completely indifferent to existing Top40 hits and traditional radio genres. There’s classic hip-hop mixing it up with newly-released indie rock, pulsating EDM, obscure Radiohead songs, alt-speed-metal, and a bunch of sounds that I don’t have categories for. It’s kind of amazing that Apple gave its flagship radio product the playlist of a great college station. Given the installed base, it will inevitably be the largest and most influential radio station in the world. That has to be good news for music. It will be fascinating to track its impact on the careers of the musicians it features. But listening to Beats 1 this morning, I couldn’t help but think of the sorry state of iOS indie app developers. Right now, the App Store is like the worst of Top40 radio. The question for Apple is whether it can do for app developers what Beats1 promises to do for musicians.