Apple Inc. Trademarks For Beats 2,3,4,5 Hint At New Apple Music Radio Stations

Beats 1 may only be the beginning for Apple Music’s push into the online radio space. Beats Electronics — an Apple Inc. subsidiary — applied for several service marks pertaining to station names “Beats 2” through “Beats 5” as well as logos B2 through B5, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark office applications spotted by French blog Consomac.

Currently, Beats 1 is the only radio station offered through the Apple Music streaming audio service and features a mixture of pre-recorded content and live shows from DJs across the world such as Zane Lowe in Los Angeles, Ebro Darden in New York and Julie Adenuga in London. While there’s a variety of genres of music played on Beats 1, the majority of music has tended to skew towards hip-hop, according to an analysis of Beats 1 data by Quartz.

The genre make up of music played on Beats could change if Apple begins introducing additional stations to its lineup to cater to its audiences' tastes. While that could prove to be difficult to achieve through one station, deals struck between Apple and record labels may allow the iPhone maker to expand the service to as many as five stations, according to the Verge.

To prepare for a possible expansion, Apple has also laid the groundwork for the new stations by registering website domains such as “Beats3.com.cn” and “Beats2.com.ru” in China and Russia, according to MacRumors.

Access to Beats 1 is free for anyone with the Apple Music app on iOS or Android. But Apple also offers a paid subscription to customers, which gives access to a streaming catalog of about 43 million songs. Paid subscribers reached 6.5 million users in October, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. That number is forecasted to come in just under 8 million users by the end of 2015, according to MIDiA research cited by Fortune.

Apple Music starts at $9.99 a month for single users or $14.99 a month for a family of up to six people.