Electronic music streaming app Beem gets a seriously cool update

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Back in early April we reported on the new streaming music app Beem by Windows Phone Development MVP Den Delimarsky. The app taps into Digitally Imported (www.di.fm), the popular electronic dance music site which features everything from Techno to Trance to Chillout to Progressive making it quite the value. What's more, both the service and app are completely free and the app doesn't even have any ads. Did we mention it's pretty gorgeous too?

Version 1.1 just hit the Marketplace with a bunch of welcomed new features, some of which are extremely impressive:

  • A bug fix that now allows you to re-pin a tile even if it disappears (apparently an OS bug, but there is now a workaround).
  • UI tweaks.
  • Ability to search for played songs in the Zune Marketplace.
  • Ability to record the stream and store it locally for playback (consider this a DVR implementation for DI.FM).
  • Ability to set short recorded music as a ringtone.
  • There is now a "Now Playing” option that allows users to easily jump to the currently playing station.
  • Added the ability to clear the music player (in case you don’t want to see the last played content even though it is paused).

The ability to look the song up in Zune was something we asked for--after all, we want to make use of that Zune Pass--so it's great to see it here. The new feature works flawlessly allowing us to search for the song/artist that's currently playing and then download to our phone directly (something that's very awesome over AT&T's LTE).

But the ability to locally record whatever is playing is the most impressive. The music is saved within the app for later offline playback and is really quite useful. Not only does it record but it shows you how much space in KB it's taking up in real-time. Very cool stuff.

Finally, the rest of the changes are just icing on the cake. The new Tile layout of the stations is quite eye-catching and the app is a must-have for us as we're big fans of downtempo for our background tunes. If Beem sounds like something up your alley then you can grab it right here in the Windows Phone Marketplace (or check out Den's page on the update). The app is on our must-have list for a reason!

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

19 Comments
  • I know it's a windows phone site but electronica is a sub-genre like trance and techno :P The genre is called Electronic Dance Music (or EDM).
  • Is that the one that goes "unce unce unce unce"? :-P Fair enough, altered title slightly as writing out all of EDM is kind of awkward.
  • Don't judge music by it's beat/kick ;)
    "Dance Music" is also an acceptable term. :)
  • Not sure I'd go there, do you really consider ambient and downtempo (what I use this app for) as "dance music"? I just don't see myself dancing to The Cinematic Orchestra or Kruder & Dorfmeister, lol.
  • Ok, let's just call it "Electronic Music" since DI.fm's moto is "addictive electronic music" .
  • Interesting. So Dubstep is WUB WUB WUB, and Techno is UNCE UNCE UNCE.. not bad
  • I judge "dance music" by how much it sounds like a etard farting in a microphone.
  • Is it me and my Lumia 900...or is the volume SUPER low? I'm on 30/30 and it sounds like 10/30.
  • Confirmed low volume on another Lumia 900. Have to max the phone out and the volume ain't what we would like.
  • Beem developer here. It seems to be an issue with Nokia phones, where streaming audio might have a volume mis-setting. To fix it, try lowering the volume until it becomes louder. Then adjust it back. So far I got the same reports from Lumia 900 and 800.
  • Same problem here and I'm on a Samsung Focus.  Both speaker and headphones are low volume even when all the way up.  I have noticed this is a problem across many streaming apps, from Ministry of Sound's own app to Mixtapes.  Though for Mixtapes they fixed the problem by offering a low, medium, and high volume setting, and my guess is that they are just amplifying the sound in someway before sending it off to the headphones or speakers, but in Mixtapes setting the volume to High fixes all the volume problems.  Might want to see what they did and if you could add something like that to Beem.
    One other problem I have found is that if I pause the music and let it sit for a while, going back and hitting play, most of the time, will not start the music again.  The only way to fix it is to go to the settings and hit "clear the audio controls".
    Other then that though, its an awesome app, and I was able to listen to The State of Trance today from EDC while at work, which is much better then listening to the same stuff over and over again.
  • nice app btw and yes i agree with you, my titan never had this headphone problem but my lumia does for some reason. i think its a software thing that nokia can fix on their end.
  • nice app btw and yes i agree with you, my titan never had this headphone problem but my lumia does for some reason. i think its a software thing that nokia can fix on their end.
  • Thanks for the tip ZeBond but it seems as if it's still broken. Great app otherwise...Hopefully a fix comes soon!
  • Strange on the volume thing. I was playing it in my lab last night and everyone was commenting on how loud the 900 was for playing the music. Then again, my 900 has no other "issues" either so maybe it's a hardware thing? Will have to keep an ear out if we hear anything.
  • Sorry Daniel I should've specified...it happens to me only over headphones. The speaker volume is fine.
  • Same issue with the volume on my Verizon HTC Trophy. I listen in the car while driving, with the phone's headphone jack connected to the radio's aux input. I have to turn up the phone's volume to 30/30, and then turn up the radio's volume to around 85% of maximum to get it loud enough to hear clearly. I don't havr thus problem with other devices connected to my radio. Very cool app, though. At this point my two biggest wish list items are some sort of volume boost feature, and possibly some way to schedule recordings to be done by a background task (if that's even possible), so I can record specific shows to listen to later. Enjoying this app a lot, keep up the great work!
  • Cool DI.FM! I will surely try this app out. I been using miRoamer for shoutcast streams.
  • this is not an app issue. the volume thing is a nokia issue and has been posted about in the forums. i don't know what HTC does with their phones, but this was never a problem with my previous titan