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Listeners of Apple's new radio station are complaining it keeps playing the same song

Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

Apple launched Beats 1, its new online radio station this week, and the launch didn't go smoothly. It kicked off with presenter Zane Lowe repeating "test, test," and then the stream started glitching and it had over 30 minutes of downtime on day one.

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But now people are complaining about a new problem: It keeps playing the same song.

Pharrell Williams' new single, "Freedom," is exclusive to Apple's new music streaming service, Apple Music. It's not on other streaming services, and so Apple is heavily promoting the track on its streaming site and Beats 1 station. Lowe even played it twice in a row shortly after the station launched.

But a lot of people aren't happy with the repeated plays of Pharrell's new single. Sure, it's normal for radio stations to play popular songs several times a day, but some Beast 1 listeners feel that Apple is taking it too far.

A thread on the Apple subreddit titled "Beats1 Needs to Stop Playing Freedom" reads: "Since 6AM yesterday, Beats1 has played Freedom 9 times. Why are they obsessed with this song?" Clearly, Apple is "obsessed" because the track is exclusive to Apple Music, but Reddit users are still unhappy about the amount of times it's playing the track.

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"It's Apple's exclusive song but I agree it needs to stop," one user says. Another user says "It's a great song. I love listening to it. However, I've heard it from Beats 1 way too many times so I turn the volume off or go to my own collection of music and come back later."

Reddit user SmartShark decided to check out Beats 1 after reading the Reddit post, but wasn't pleased with what they found: "I just tuned into Beats 1 after seeing this post, and bam, it's literally Zane Lowe interviewing Pharrell about this song."

It's not just Reddit users who are annoyed about "Freedom." People have been tweeting about it too:

 However, some people actually like hearing "Freedom" a lot:

So when will the "Freedom" end? Well, it looks like it's going to continue until Apple Music gets another exclusive track, then it will probably keep playing that one over and over instead.

Apple
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