Beats Music Freezes Registration After Sign-Up Surge

Beats Music has temporarily frozen sign-ups to its Spotify-rivaling streaming service, blaming high demand for the shutters slamming down on new users getting access. "Our priority is to give everyone a great experience" Beats Music said in an email to those who had pre-registered usernames, promising an extra week of trial access for anyone who signs up this week when the service re-opens.

According to Beats Music, the potential for high interest affecting service performance wasn't unplanned for. "We prepared for issues like these," the company said, "have a plan, and are going to hold off on letting more people in while we put this plan in action."

The company hasn't said exactly when it aims to begin accepting new registrations again. Currently, the site shows a 404 page error when the "Sign up" option is selected.

Beats Music launched on January 21st, offering streaming and offline play to mobile devices for $9.99 per month. The service aims to cut through the catalog-overload some users experience with Spotify, Xbox Music, and others, by curating playlists.

As we found in our Beats Music review, that means a combination of dynamically-created playlists based on individual user preferences, and a selection of frequently-updated song collections by industry professionals.