Last week, Apple premiered Beats 1, an all-hours live radio station, in conjunction with its Apple Music streaming service. Apparently, in the midst of all these new releases, the company has also taken the responsibility upon itself to shield us from the evils of foul language. As discovered by Buzzfeed, the online service isn’t exactly taking full advantage of its immunity from FCC standards: Beats 1 exclusively plays clean versions of songs.
This turn toward the family friendly effectively neuters explicit songs and separates the service from others in its field, notably Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio, which all play unaltered tracks.
Sure, you can listen to the explicit versions of songs through Apple Music’s on-demand subscription service, but, even then, titles with dirty words don’t survive in their entirety. For example, N.W.A’s iconic song is displayed by the service as “F**k the Police.” Takes some of the fun out of it, doesn’t it?
In other streaming news, Lil Wayne dropped his new mixtape, FWA (Free Weezy Album), exclusively on competing service Tidal this weekend. With fifteen new songs featuring Wiz Khalifa, Young Jeezy, and other guest artists, the release is helping the company—which Wayne co-owns with Jay Z—live up to its promise to provide exclusive content.
(via Variety)
