There is so much digital content to be consumed, that it all can be a bit frustrating. You have one service for movies, another for music, another for books, and the list goes on. WEYV is a new service that aims to help consolidate all of those into one application.
What is WEYV?
For those who are unaware, WEYV was introduced back in December of last year. The point of the app is to consolidate all of your streaming needs into just one app.
Currently, WEYV offers ways to stream music and view single issues of various popular magazines. However, instead of just paying for a subscription for one person, the idea is to get the family (or friends) involved.
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When you sign up for the service, you are given WEYV units based on your subscription. A future update will also add the ability to stream some of your favorite movies and tv shows.
The way that these units work is that your subscription level determines how many you get. From there, whenever you either listen to music or read a magazine, a specific number of units will be used.
After you have either finished reading or listening to music, the units will return to the pool. This will allow for others to use the units without being restrained to enjoy the content they want to consume.
How much is it?
When you sign up, WEYV offers a 2-week free trial period. This will give you plenty of time to get acclimated, along with deciding whether this app and service is for you.
Currently, there are four different pricing categories:
- Individual – $15 per month: 1 person can listen to music and read a magazine at the same time.
- Couple – $28 per month: 2 people can simultaneously listen to music and read magazines.
- Family – $39 per month: 3 people can simultaneously listen to music and read magazines.
- Custom – $48 per month: Build a custom plan.
The trick here is that you are provided with various credits to use over the course of a month. Whenever you select a song or magazine to read, the WEYV credits are used. Once you are finished, the credits are then returned to your account.
BONUS: WEYV makes a charitable donation every time you listen to a song.
At first glance, this may seem a bit pricey. But it’s important to remember that you get access to a vast music library and a growing magazine library. Plus, you won’t have to worry about dealing with multiple subscriptions every month.
While things may be looking to be a bit odd, there is some benefit here. Each aforementioned subscription model allows up to 25 different people in total.
How does WEYV work?
Once you have created your WEYV account from either the web client or mobile app, you can start having fun. We’ll start from the music aspect, which interested me the most due to one reason – Jay Z.
Music
If you want to jump in head first, you can just select the Music tab and search for your favorite artist. However, there is a lot of different aspects of the Music tab that you can mess around with.
At the top of the Music section, there are three sub-sections: Discover, My Music, and Offline Music. Below that, there is a section for “Playlists and Stations” which shows off a few suggestions on finding some music.
Even further down, you will find “Songs inspired by you”. This section will populate once you have started listening to music and it will attempt to find some new (or old) songs to listen to.
As is the case with just about every music streaming app, you can create your own playlists or stations. In order to do so, simply tap the “Create Playlist/Station” button at the top.
Creating a playlist will allow you to find specific songs to add. Meanwhile, creating a station will work with either a song or an artist. However, the station option allows for a bit more customization.
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Instead of WEYV just generating a playlist of random songs that it hopes you’ll like, there are some more options. These include the percentage of songs from the artist, along with a slider for song popularity.
The final option under Music comes via “Offline Music”. This section will store all of your downloaded music. In order to make a playlist or station available for offline, head back to the “My Music” section.
Tap the three-dot overflow button to the right, and select “Make Available Offline”. This same method works for both music and magazines and makes life a lot easier.
Then WEYV will download all of the songs in that playlist or station. From there, you don’t have to worry about a disruption in your listening experience if there are questionable service connections.
Magazines
Moving onto the next section, we have the ability to read magazines. At the time of this review, WEYV is offering more than 40 different magazines to choose from.
There are some popular options such as Sports Illustrated, Time, Popular Science, People, and more. We are also expecting to see more selections add in the future.
Navigating the selected issue is rather easy, as you just swipe left and right to change pages. You can also view the table of contents, search the issue, or pull up your music list from this section.
If there’s something that you want to read, but don’t have time to do it, you can add the issue to your Reading List. This will add the current page you are reading to the list, and you can add more articles to the list until you’re ready to read them later.
If you have some free time and want to browse, WEYV sports a “Discover” section. From here, you can see different reading lists, trending articles, and other lists.
If you’re preparing to head out for the day, but want to save a magazine to read later, you can add it to your offline feed. This will obviously download the magazine to your device so you can pick back up later without worrying about the issue downloading.
More coming soon
In addition to the Music and Magazine sections, there are big plans for the future of WEYV. These include ebooks, podcasts, and even videos.
We aren’t sure as to when these new features will be coming to the app. However, it should be in the very near future.
Is it worth it?
WEYV is the new kid on the block and has an uphill battle to face. The concept of using “units” to listen to music or read magazines is a bit odd for a single plan.
However, this would make more sense if more users in your group were using this service. Moving past that and looking at WEYV from the streaming aspect, I had some mixed feelings.
In the aspect of music streaming, I was extremely excited to see Jay-Z offered here. The media mogul removed his library from the likes of Spotify in favor of his own TIDAL Music platform.
Other than that, the ability to deeply customize various playlists and stations made me feel right at home. WEYV’s ability to help me find new music, or rediscover some older music, was also a welcome addition.
On the magazine front, I was a bit disappointed. Sure, I can keep up with my favorite sports, or check out some new technology articles. But it seems that the magazine selection is geared a bit towards topics that I don’t care about. Hopefully, this will change in the future and more offerings will be added.
All-in-all, WEYV is an interesting take on combining both streaming music and reading magazines. The next year will be a fun one to watch, as WEYV looks to expand its user base and add more features.
If you want to download the app for yourself, you can do so here. As we mentioned above, there is a free 2-week trial, but AndroidGuys readers can get two months for free when you use promo code WEYVFREE2.