Looks like it won't be long before the streaming music service battle gains a new combatant. Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers announced today on his personal blog that the service will officially launch in the U.S. in January 2014, following months of alpha and beta testing with a private group of users "that know and love music." Rogers says that select artists and other "influencers" have been given a preview of Beats Music recently and asked for their feedback, and the company is taking that information and using it to improve the service before its public debut.

There's no word yet on how much Beats Music will cost when it goes live, but other streaming services charge around $5 per month for streaming on a computer and $10 for mobile usage, and so I wouldn't be surprised if the pricing for Beats falls somewhere around there. If you're a lover of all things Beats or just want to secure a good username for the service so that you can check it out when it goes live, you can now claim your desired identity by visiting beatsmusic.com and registering with your name and email address.

Back in early July, Beats dropped $14 million to acquire the streaming service MOG, which at that time had a catalog of 16 million tracks and charged users $5 per month for unlimited ad-free streaming and $9.99 per month for unlimited mobile use. It'll definitely be interesting to see how Beats Music has beefed up MOG in the months since, especially with Rogers' statements about testing the service with artists and music lovers and improving it based on their feedback. The good news is that now that we've made our way into December, it won't be long before we get to go ears-on.

Via TechCrunch, Fistfulayen, Beats Music