The Algorithms & Cloud Experiences Group of Bose Corporation has posted an opening this week with the company, seeking a Senior User Experience Designer to work on “Cloud Music Services.” It’s unclear if the company intended to announce its intention to create a streaming music service or potential music “cloud locker” through the posting, but the move represents another attempt by Bose to compete indirectly against Apple, and to a lesser extent other streaming services.
The job posting comes on the heels of a series of maneuvers by Bose that have brought it into conflict with Apple. The company signed an endorsement deal with the NFL that required players not to wear their preferred headphones (mostly Beats, then just recently bought by Apple) before or after games or doing interviews, which caused some conflict with players (some of whom were paid Beats endorsers), though Apple’s Jimmy Iovine mostly saw the kerfuffle as free publicity for Beats.
Bose then sued Beats for patent infringement, but the two companies quickly settled their differences — but not before Apple had, for reasons not made clear, removed all Bose products from its stores and online site. The company returned the Bose items to the store this week, as mysteriously as it removed them.
The list of possible employers on the resumes of “ideal candidates” runs the gambit from major retailers like Apple, Google Play, and Amazon to streaming services like Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Spotify, to radio and podcast streaming platforms like Stitcher and Slacker (Sirius XM is also mentioned). Relevant industries listed include video games, music services, fitness, and consumer electronics — for candidates who wish to “lead design and prototyping of next-generation streaming music platform and ecosystem of products.” These clues don’t give us a strong idea of what the plan is, and with the amount of customer research and analysis listed under the duites, Bose may not have a complete vision quite yet, either.
