More Beats radio options coming, as Apple files trademarks for four new stations

The current selection of radio stations on Apple Music leaves a lot to be desired, with Beats 1 the only current radio station with 24 hour DJs.

Apple has plans to change that by adding more Beats stations in the near future. Spotted by French website Consomac, the company has filed trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the letters B2, B3, B4, and B5 and the words Beats 2, Beats 3, Beats 4, and Beats 5.

The trademarks show a similar logo for the four new radio stations and are all assigned to Beats Electronics LLC, a company Apple acquired for $3 billion last year. All four are listed under broadcasting and music streaming.

Apple has a licensing agreement with a number of record labels to create up to five additional radio stations on top of Beats 1. These new four stations might be for regional listeners in China, Russia, and Spain, or for different languages.

They might also be focused on certain music genres, unlike Beats 1, which caters to all types of music fans. Apple has not commented on future radio stations.

The company has already registered domains for several Beats stations, including beats2.hk, beats2.com.cn, and beats4.com.ru, spotted by MacRumors.

Not much has been said about Beats 1 since launch, when it crashed for a few hours due to high traffic. We suspect the radio station is not seeing the same number of listeners as it did at launch — though Apple has not made any official announcements on the number of listeners.

Apple has also been quiet about the possibility of other radio stations launching on Apple Music. This would be a good way to promote listening to the radio on the streaming service, but Apple might see it as unnecessary competition for Beats 1.

Also watch: New Deadpool Trailers Bring More Mutants and Mayhem

Please enable Javascript to watch this video

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1PsYDCV
David Curry