Pure close streaming music service

By James Cridland for media.info
Posted 18 August 2015, 6.00am edt

Pure, the DAB Digital Radio and connected speaker manufacturer, has announced the closure of its Pure Connect music service.

Since August 2010, Pure have offered a subscription streaming music service on their connected radio sets, which allowed listeners to enjoy millions of tracks of music. The service, branded FlowSongs, initially allowed purchase of tracks (at 79p), and a service letting you use inbuilt Shazam track identification, whether you were listening to FM, DAB or internet radio. It used 7digital's infrastructure.

In December 2011, a rebranded Pure Music added unlimited music streaming for £4.99 - on their radio hardware, mobile apps and on the web. Theoretically, you could listen to songs on the radio, discover through Shazam what the artist and album was, and then go and listen to the full album.

The service, now part of a brand called Pure Connect, will close on October 16th. Pure have announced that existing customers will get the service for free until closure, and are recommending that tracks purchased through Pure are downloaded before the service shuts. (Tracks aren't protected by DRM).

Pure Connect will still be the front end to Pure's internet radio listings, "in addition to 'listen again' programmes and around 270,000 podcast episodes". The Pure Connect app continues to act as a controller for the company's Jongo multiroom speakers. Pure say this change "reflects changing times within the music and radio streaming industry".

Pure's newer devices include a Bluetooth connection, allowing users to stream their own music collection, and competing services like Spotify, Google Play Music and Apple Music to their Pure devices.

The good news is that the Shazam-powered track identification service will, according to my enquiries, continue after the music service's closure on October 16th. This identifies almost any track playing on the radio, and puts them in a part of the Pure Connect service called 'My tracks'.

"Pure will also be announcing a number of partnerships with leading music streaming services in the coming months to reflect a new universal approach to music streaming," the company says.

I think this service failed because of a number of factors: first, that the user experience on a radio was fiddly and difficult to use with a tuning knob and a few buttons; second, that a radio is typically something you turn on, listen to, and turn off (and don't therefore expect to interact with); and third, that publicity of the service was minimal with confusing branding, and thus failed to compete with Spotify, Google and Apple.

However, as architects of a brave experiment, Pure deserve applause. It was a great idea to see whether they could use radio's role in music discovery to sell (and stream) music. It's a shame, but not wholly unexpected, that it didn't work.

As a disclosure: I was working at Pure while FlowSongs was initially launched, and was part of the team that successfully relaunched The Lounge.