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Apple Plans to Shut Down Beats Music?

117 points by coloneltcb 12y ago

eddieroger 12y ago
> Instead of Beats Music, the Apple Watch features an unannounced music app with a blue play button (top right in the photo below) that instantly starting playing songs when tapped during a demo. That's the current-day Remote (for AppleTV) icon in a circle instead of a rounded rect. iTunes' logo is right there in the middle. This lack of research makes me question the rest of the article, honestly. All of the post-Keynote demoes were said to be non-working, so for the touch demoes, it could have just started playing music for the sake of it, regardless of which icon was tapped.
- Ethan_Mick 12y ago
  Totally agree. I didn't see the demo, but the icon is clearly the Remote app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote/id284417350?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote/id284417350?mt=8
- mapgrep 12y ago
  >That's the current-day Remote (for AppleTV) Remote is also handy for driving iTunes on a Mac :-) I wonder if some day it will drive the Music app on iPad and iPhone. I mean, why not, especially if you're wearing the Apple Watch.
- bitJericho 12y ago
  You should question anything coming out of techcrunch.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    Especially considering their 'correction'.
- unfamiliar 12y ago
  Tim Cook even said in the keynote he loves to use it to control his Apple TV.
LeoPanthera 12y ago
Tim was enthusiastic about Beat's curated playlists in a recent interview, so if they do kill off the Beats brand, it will probably be so they can move the curated music stuff into iTunes Radio, which is ad-free with an iTunes Match subscription. I can see iTunes Match morphing into a kind of Amazon Prime like offering, where a bunch of premium services are all rolled together.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Yeah, I'd easily pay $99 per year (or whatever) for some iCloud premium features, streaming music, iWork and (to lesser extent), Match.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mark_l_watson 12y ago
It makes sense to keep the brand unified. BTW, I just renewed iTune's premium $25/year service after not having it for a while. I wonder if more streamed content will be included with that.
- mullingitover 12y ago
  iTunes Match includes iTunes Radio, which is Apple's streaming offering. I just canceled auto-renew and wouldn't touch iTunes Match ever again even if they paid me $100 a year. Match was nothing but headaches for me, there are mounds of complaint-filled threads on Apple's forums about all the bugs with the service (one favorite was that it just randomly fails to match and doesn't upload about 25% of your library). For example, I disabled Match on my phone, went back to good ol' syncing, and tried to sync a couple albums over. 24 hours later I'd reinstalled iOS 8 from scratch twice due to syncs failing, Match automagically re-enabling itself and filling my phone's disk with unremovable corrupted data...so much rage. Apple just needs to stay out of the online services game. There's a saying: figure out what you're bad at, and don't do that. Somebody needs to send Apple the memo.
orik 12y ago
I heard an advertisement for Beats Music on the radio last night and was wondering why Apple hasn't rolled it into iTunes yet.
roberte 12y ago
Beats is a great brand, they should retire iTunes instead.
- IBM 12y ago
  Beats is a good brand for the headphones. iTunes is much more valuable than Beats Music.
  - allegory 12y ago
    Good brand yes, but shitty headphones.
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  Given recent announcements (Apple Watch, Apple Pay), a likely name would be "Apple Music". Would that be permissible under their contract with Apple Records?
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    Apple Inc. owns the trademark now so they can pretty much do what they want, I'd think.
  - kaonashi 12y ago
    Would they need to shut the service down to rebrand it?
- fabrika 12y ago
  Apple Beats would make a great new music brand.
IBM 12y ago
I suspect iTunes will be next on apps that get burned down and rewritten (after Photos).
- abakker 12y ago
  I hope so. It is really terrible when music libraries get large. Its browsing model just doesn't handle large libraries or library catalogs well. Just upgrading the library, version to version takes me 30+ minutes at this point.
anonmusicguy 12y ago
Anon music guy here. Apple will rename Beats to something else (tbd) -- it will become Apple's streaming service. Apple bought Beats for the streaming music service -- to compete with Spotify, which is quickly gaining market share.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Everything you said directly contradicts the article. You don't even claim any special knowledge, since "anon music guy" is utterly meaningless. If you work for either Apple or Beats then by all means go ahead and say so, if not then I'll just assume you didn't read the article.
  - glhaynes 12y ago
    Apple execs have repeatedly publicly praised the Beats Music service since the acquisition. There's absolutely no way that their plan is to just throw it away.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      The article claims differently and also claims to have multiple internal sources (at both companies). Why are you and the other poster above pretending like this comment thread isn't about the article which you're both ignoring?
      - glhaynes 12y ago
        The core problem is that the article is shitty and has a linkbait title. The headline causes discussion to naturally go to the idea that they're going to "shut down" the service rather than transition the service and its existing customers into the iTunes umbrella, which is certainly not what people think of when they hear the phrase "shutting down". It's of course a matter of semantics, but if an article claimed they were shutting down Beats headphones and then in one of the final paragraphs mentions "oh and maybe that really just means they're rebranding them with Apple logos", it'd similarly lead to bad discussion. Edit: Also, see the direct refutation from Apple. So now we've got one actual person on the record, a spokesperson from the company, versus five unnamed sources in a garbage article with glaring errors from a known-questionable source.
ssharp 12y ago
I was with Apple in the mid-2000's, when Jobs was insisting that people wanted to "own" their music. This was when services like Rhapsody where the "big" players in online music. I would occasionally join Rhapsody and enjoy it, but it's mobile capabilities at the time were bad and devices like the iPod were entirely offline. It made more sense to me to own my music files then. By the time Spotify came to the U.S., my iPod was long retired in favor of a smartphone, and I could get enough data on my plan to make mobile streaming a very reasonable option. I haven't bought a track on iTunes in almost three years now and give Spotify my money instead. I'm really curious about how Apple is going to address the on-demand streaming stuff. It seemed like Beats Music was going to be their entry in, but that's now being shelved. Apple tends to think big and music has been a huge part of their brand for 10+ years now, so I'm interested to see what they have planned for early next year. It better be good!
- mentos 12y ago
  I have found that due to my data price sensitivity that I listen to far less music on the go then when I had an iPod.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    T-Mobile (at least in the US) doesn't count the data you use for several music services towards your data quota. http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html
    - xenophonf 12y ago
      Kind of makes one wonder what relationship T-Mobile has with the companies listed at http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html, especially in light of recent net neutrality debates.
      - toomuchtodo 12y ago
        I'm torn. As a T-Mobile customer, it definitely benefits me. As a net neutrality advocate, it does concern me.
jcavin 12y ago
I am curious if they plan to incorporate streaming into the itunes. With spotify blowing up it would be great to offer the best of both worlds, which would be streaming and owning mp3. If they plan on just shutting the whole thing down, I think it is a big mistake. Streaming music has entered people's lives in a big way and will only become more widely used.
LeicaLatte 12y ago
Of course they are going to relaunch it. With U2 this time - http://fdrmx.com/u2-and-apple-reveal-next-surprise/ http://fdrmx.com/u2-and-apple-reveal-next-surprise/
sigmar 12y ago
I guess putting the suggestion algorithm into iTunes will mean that android users will miss out
codva 12y ago
Count me among the apparent minority that still wants to own my music. I only own about 400 albums and way too many of those get ignored for months, if not a year+, at a time. Streaming just gives me even more choices that I don't really need.
- unknownian 12y ago
  It may be a minority to prefer owning music, but it's not a small one. Most music enthusiasts I know prefer a personal collection, it adds sentimental value. Many also use a combination of Spotify and personal vinyl and desktop collections.
- dasil003 12y ago
  Streaming is the unfortunate intersection of industry desire for control and consumer friendliness. Most people don't really care enough to curate their collection of music (and even if they do a playlist fits the bill), they just want to be able to listen to whatever they want whenever they want. Although the benefits of owning the music are real, they are sort of intangible in a digital world where a good chunk of people are one hard-drive crash away from losing all their data. This makes me sad because owning music—especially whole albums w/ artwork—is something I cherish. But I'm pretty sure this makes me some combination of hipster and old man that is totally irrelevant to the future of the music marketplace.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  It's not either/or. I want to own the music I really like, and stream the music I get the occasional itch for. Seems like a lot of people do this. The minority is people who listen to music only if they own it.
phusion 12y ago
I'm sure both of the beats music users will be in tears. At any rate, no one is surprised that apple is taking a big 'ol BM on Beats Music :)
wiremine 12y ago
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/554222/20140530/apple-beats-deal-dr-dre-ipod-itunes.htm http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/554222/20140530/apple-beats-d... "Apple's $3 Billion 'Beats' Deal Breakdown; $2.5 Billion for 'Beats Electronics' and $500 Million for 'Beats Music'" Sounds like they're killing two birds with one stone: 1. Closing down a brand that completed with iTunes/iTunes Radio, likely to merge streaming directly into the iTunes player. This makes sense, given how un-Apple the current Beats UX is. [1] 2. Re-position the Beats brand back to Beats Headphones. This is the money maker anyways. None of this feels surprising, does it? [1] "I'm at a party & feel like BBQing with my BFF to Dance-Pop" does not feel very Apple-esque to me personally. http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-BE268_012214_G_20140121110305.jpg http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-BE268_012214_G_...
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
I don't have much to add, but this weekend I was buying headphones at Microcenter. My wife wanted a pair of noise cancelling headphones for flying and I want bluetooth headphones for easier dog walking (leash + headphone cables = ouch). The Beats headphones were all locked up and, holy hell, the pricetags on them were ridiculous. $299 and up? I ended up getting a pair of $35 BT headphones and a pair $99 Creative noise-cancelling headphones. I can certainly see how Apple is drawn to that brand. What's it cost to make even a premium set of headphones? Maybe a tiny fraction of $299? Apple probably got sick of seeing Beats eat up the high-end for what, I imagine, is used mostly on iOS devices. Beats Music might just be an free extra and ultimately a casualty here. Cheap earbuds that come with your iOS device or Beats at the Apple store make sense for the conspicuous consumer. The profit margins must be impressive.
- tr23 12y ago
  http://allhiphop.com/2014/05/13/dr-dres-beats-by-dre-cost-an-estimated-14-to-make/ http://allhiphop.com/2014/05/13/dr-dres-beats-by-dre-cost-an... You are paying mostly for marketing.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Beats are not premium headphones, they just sell at those prices. At best they are comparable to maybe a sub $100 studio monitor set, and that $100 is also a retail price, not a cost. An actually good set of headphones in the $300 range (like Grado SR325e, Sennheiser HD600, AKG K601) will blow away the Beats, it would be like comparing a Ferrari to a Kia. The amount of profit Beats makes on headphones is ridiculous, which is why Apple bought them.
PolandKid 12y ago
They did the same thing after acquiring LaLa (A great cloud music site they shuttered in 2010)
- tjakab 12y ago
  I believe LaLa was the foundation for iTunes Match and iTunes Radio.
fabrika 12y ago
I was hoping they will rebrand iTunes into Beats, iTunes feels really tired as a brand. Beats is fresh. But I guess I was wrong, let's see what they will come up with. All new iTunes with curated playlists would also be great.
- encoderer 12y ago
  IMHO, that would be incredibly foolish. Business 101 here. You don't throw away a billion dollar brand. What you call "tired", I call 90%+ brand awareness. (Found a 2008 study with iTunes at 82% awareness).
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  Personally, I'd rather they merge the streaming service into iTunes.
austenallred 12y ago
I haven't opened iTunes in years other than to update software, and I would imagine most people are in the same boat. I used to take every penny I earned and dump it into the iTunes store. Now I just pay $10/month to Spotify now and listen to whatever I want. There used to be services like Napster 2.0 and Rhapsody that competed with the iTunes store, but they didn't work well on iPods, and their selection of music wasn't that great. Things are different now: Spotify is in a completely different league. Perhaps Rdio is in the same boat - I've heard great things, but I've never used it personally. At the end of the day, unless Apple has a music solution that's somehow cheaper/better than Spotify (which is possible, considering how it could be integrated end-to-end with the iPhone itself), I'm done using Apple music products.
- Argorak 12y ago
  > I haven't opened iTunes in years other than to update software, and I would imagine most people are in the same boat. I would hold my horses there, unless you have numbers. > I used to take every penny I earned and dump it into the iTunes store. Now I just pay $10/month to Spotify now and listen to whatever I want. Except quite a few important catalogs that Spotify doesn't have. Also, I've hit quite a few instances of "this song was there yesterday!". I went back to buying music.
  - bigdubs 12y ago
    This has been my experience as well; Spotify is great for pop music and more mainstream things. If one day you want a song that isn't on spotify, but it is on a free bandcamp download, the whole house of cards crumbles (for me anyway). If I have to keep iTunes around for random songs, I start to just buy albums through that, and then I end up rarely using spotify. Spotify has a huge selection, to be sure, and for most people it's more than enough, but there will always be someone who isn't quite covered by the catalog and they will generally just go back to using itunes / foobar / whatever.
    - milesokeefe 12y ago
      Why don't you just download the song and import it into Spotify? Spotify plays it like any other song and will even sync it with your devices like normal songs.
fastest963 12y ago
Apparently this is "not true". Source: http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go-away-apples-beats-music-service-is-sticking-around/ http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go...
k-mcgrady 12y ago
If this dies and doesn't just get rebranded I will be incredibly pissed off. Beats is the only music service that has got it right. All the radio services suck. Most playlists on Spotify suck. But when I open Beats I get a page full of great album recommendations and wonderful human-curated playlists. Honestly I'll be surprised if it just disappears. In interviews Apple exec's have been very effusive about Beats curation and how good the service is. As much as I hope it doesn't die I also hope they don't just through it into iTunes. The other thing Beats got right was the UI.
jonnathanson 12y ago
Apple still makes a lot of money selling tracks on the iTunes store. My guess would be that it's going to roll out a streaming service, but on its own terms. This probably means renegotiating a lot of the music rights previously negotiated by Beats, and starting with a clean slate. Apple probably figures it can get better terms from the labels than Beats did. Part of me thinks that the only reason a la carte purchasing still exists is because there is no way to get everything from one streaming service. To use a TV example: I can't get most HBO shows on Netflix; ergo, I use Netflix and HBO Go. Same thing with Showtime, so I use Showtime's app as well. And some things I can't get anywhere through a streaming service, so I buy them. I'm not buying a la carte because I feel the need to "own" things. I'm buying a la carte because the fragmented streaming landscape has significant gaps in its coverage. What I'm really doing, when I buy, is covering those gaps and/or hedging against the risk that something I love might go away on my streaming services. My wild hunch is that Apple realizes as much, and it's moving to get as much content as possible under new license before it reveals its streaming service. It knows that a streaming service, in 2014 or 2015, needs to be as selection-complete as humanly possible. And anything not on its streaming service needs to be for sale on iTunes. It's very hard to thread that needle when you're working with legacy licenses under two different entities, presumably applicable only to those individual services.
jwcooper 12y ago
This has been refuted by an Apple Spokesperson according to Recode [1]: Tom Neumayr, Apple’s PR rep, says the TechCrunch story is “not true” but wouldn’t go beyond that. [1] http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go-away-apples-beats-music-service-is-sticking-around/ http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go...
- vlunkr 12y ago
  Look like Tech Crunch updated their article to reflect that as well.
rahilsondhi 12y ago
If you're interested in building in this space, let's talk :)
pptr1 12y ago
This is a pretty expected move on Apple's part. There typical MO is to assimilate the company entirely. The only reason Beats headphone is still around, is because it is generating revenue and will offset the cost of the acquisition. As soon as they are ready to start producing new headphones in production, you will see Beats headphones shut down quietly.

117 points by coloneltcb 12y ago

> Instead of Beats Music, the Apple Watch features an unannounced music app with a blue play button (top right in the photo below) that instantly starting playing songs when tapped during a demo. That's the current-day Remote (for AppleTV) icon in a circle instead of a rounded rect. iTunes' logo is right there in the middle. This lack of research makes me question the rest of the article, honestly. All of the post-Keynote demoes were said to be non-working, so for the touch demoes, it could have just started playing music for the sake of it, regardless of which icon was tapped.

Ethan_Mick 12y ago
Totally agree. I didn't see the demo, but the icon is clearly the Remote app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote/id284417350?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote/id284417350?mt=8
mapgrep 12y ago
>That's the current-day Remote (for AppleTV) Remote is also handy for driving iTunes on a Mac :-) I wonder if some day it will drive the Music app on iPad and iPhone. I mean, why not, especially if you're wearing the Apple Watch.
bitJericho 12y ago
You should question anything coming out of techcrunch.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Especially considering their 'correction'.
unfamiliar 12y ago
Tim Cook even said in the keynote he loves to use it to control his Apple TV.

LeoPanthera 12y ago

Tim was enthusiastic about Beat's curated playlists in a recent interview, so if they do kill off the Beats brand, it will probably be so they can move the curated music stuff into iTunes Radio, which is ad-free with an iTunes Match subscription. I can see iTunes Match morphing into a kind of Amazon Prime like offering, where a bunch of premium services are all rolled together.

pbreit 12y ago
Yeah, I'd easily pay $99 per year (or whatever) for some iCloud premium features, streaming music, iWork and (to lesser extent), Match.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 12y ago

It makes sense to keep the brand unified. BTW, I just renewed iTune's premium $25/year service after not having it for a while. I wonder if more streamed content will be included with that.

mullingitover 12y ago
iTunes Match includes iTunes Radio, which is Apple's streaming offering. I just canceled auto-renew and wouldn't touch iTunes Match ever again even if they paid me $100 a year. Match was nothing but headaches for me, there are mounds of complaint-filled threads on Apple's forums about all the bugs with the service (one favorite was that it just randomly fails to match and doesn't upload about 25% of your library). For example, I disabled Match on my phone, went back to good ol' syncing, and tried to sync a couple albums over. 24 hours later I'd reinstalled iOS 8 from scratch twice due to syncs failing, Match automagically re-enabling itself and filling my phone's disk with unremovable corrupted data...so much rage. Apple just needs to stay out of the online services game. There's a saying: figure out what you're bad at, and don't do that. Somebody needs to send Apple the memo.

orik 12y ago

I heard an advertisement for Beats Music on the radio last night and was wondering why Apple hasn't rolled it into iTunes yet.

roberte 12y ago

Beats is a great brand, they should retire iTunes instead.

IBM 12y ago
Beats is a good brand for the headphones. iTunes is much more valuable than Beats Music.
- allegory 12y ago
  Good brand yes, but shitty headphones.
bryanlarsen 12y ago
Given recent announcements (Apple Watch, Apple Pay), a likely name would be "Apple Music". Would that be permissible under their contract with Apple Records?
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  Apple Inc. owns the trademark now so they can pretty much do what they want, I'd think.
- kaonashi 12y ago
  Would they need to shut the service down to rebrand it?
fabrika 12y ago
Apple Beats would make a great new music brand.

IBM 12y ago

I suspect iTunes will be next on apps that get burned down and rewritten (after Photos).

abakker 12y ago
I hope so. It is really terrible when music libraries get large. Its browsing model just doesn't handle large libraries or library catalogs well. Just upgrading the library, version to version takes me 30+ minutes at this point.

anonmusicguy 12y ago

Anon music guy here. Apple will rename Beats to something else (tbd) -- it will become Apple's streaming service. Apple bought Beats for the streaming music service -- to compete with Spotify, which is quickly gaining market share.

Someone1234 12y ago
Everything you said directly contradicts the article. You don't even claim any special knowledge, since "anon music guy" is utterly meaningless. If you work for either Apple or Beats then by all means go ahead and say so, if not then I'll just assume you didn't read the article.
- glhaynes 12y ago
  Apple execs have repeatedly publicly praised the Beats Music service since the acquisition. There's absolutely no way that their plan is to just throw it away.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    The article claims differently and also claims to have multiple internal sources (at both companies). Why are you and the other poster above pretending like this comment thread isn't about the article which you're both ignoring?
    - glhaynes 12y ago
      The core problem is that the article is shitty and has a linkbait title. The headline causes discussion to naturally go to the idea that they're going to "shut down" the service rather than transition the service and its existing customers into the iTunes umbrella, which is certainly not what people think of when they hear the phrase "shutting down". It's of course a matter of semantics, but if an article claimed they were shutting down Beats headphones and then in one of the final paragraphs mentions "oh and maybe that really just means they're rebranding them with Apple logos", it'd similarly lead to bad discussion. Edit: Also, see the direct refutation from Apple. So now we've got one actual person on the record, a spokesperson from the company, versus five unnamed sources in a garbage article with glaring errors from a known-questionable source.

ssharp 12y ago

I was with Apple in the mid-2000's, when Jobs was insisting that people wanted to "own" their music. This was when services like Rhapsody where the "big" players in online music. I would occasionally join Rhapsody and enjoy it, but it's mobile capabilities at the time were bad and devices like the iPod were entirely offline. It made more sense to me to own my music files then. By the time Spotify came to the U.S., my iPod was long retired in favor of a smartphone, and I could get enough data on my plan to make mobile streaming a very reasonable option. I haven't bought a track on iTunes in almost three years now and give Spotify my money instead. I'm really curious about how Apple is going to address the on-demand streaming stuff. It seemed like Beats Music was going to be their entry in, but that's now being shelved. Apple tends to think big and music has been a huge part of their brand for 10+ years now, so I'm interested to see what they have planned for early next year. It better be good!

mentos 12y ago
I have found that due to my data price sensitivity that I listen to far less music on the go then when I had an iPod.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  T-Mobile (at least in the US) doesn't count the data you use for several music services towards your data quota. http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html
  - xenophonf 12y ago
    Kind of makes one wonder what relationship T-Mobile has with the companies listed at http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html, especially in light of recent net neutrality debates.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      I'm torn. As a T-Mobile customer, it definitely benefits me. As a net neutrality advocate, it does concern me.

jcavin 12y ago

I am curious if they plan to incorporate streaming into the itunes. With spotify blowing up it would be great to offer the best of both worlds, which would be streaming and owning mp3. If they plan on just shutting the whole thing down, I think it is a big mistake. Streaming music has entered people's lives in a big way and will only become more widely used.

LeicaLatte 12y ago

Of course they are going to relaunch it. With U2 this time - http://fdrmx.com/u2-and-apple-reveal-next-surprise/ http://fdrmx.com/u2-and-apple-reveal-next-surprise/

sigmar 12y ago

I guess putting the suggestion algorithm into iTunes will mean that android users will miss out

codva 12y ago

Count me among the apparent minority that still wants to own my music. I only own about 400 albums and way too many of those get ignored for months, if not a year+, at a time. Streaming just gives me even more choices that I don't really need.

unknownian 12y ago
It may be a minority to prefer owning music, but it's not a small one. Most music enthusiasts I know prefer a personal collection, it adds sentimental value. Many also use a combination of Spotify and personal vinyl and desktop collections.
dasil003 12y ago
Streaming is the unfortunate intersection of industry desire for control and consumer friendliness. Most people don't really care enough to curate their collection of music (and even if they do a playlist fits the bill), they just want to be able to listen to whatever they want whenever they want. Although the benefits of owning the music are real, they are sort of intangible in a digital world where a good chunk of people are one hard-drive crash away from losing all their data. This makes me sad because owning music—especially whole albums w/ artwork—is something I cherish. But I'm pretty sure this makes me some combination of hipster and old man that is totally irrelevant to the future of the music marketplace.
brandonmenc 12y ago
It's not either/or. I want to own the music I really like, and stream the music I get the occasional itch for. Seems like a lot of people do this. The minority is people who listen to music only if they own it.

phusion 12y ago

I'm sure both of the beats music users will be in tears. At any rate, no one is surprised that apple is taking a big 'ol BM on Beats Music :)

wiremine 12y ago

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/554222/20140530/apple-beats-deal-dr-dre-ipod-itunes.htm http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/554222/20140530/apple-beats-d... "Apple's $3 Billion 'Beats' Deal Breakdown; $2.5 Billion for 'Beats Electronics' and $500 Million for 'Beats Music'" Sounds like they're killing two birds with one stone: 1. Closing down a brand that completed with iTunes/iTunes Radio, likely to merge streaming directly into the iTunes player. This makes sense, given how un-Apple the current Beats UX is. [1] 2. Re-position the Beats brand back to Beats Headphones. This is the money maker anyways. None of this feels surprising, does it? [1] "I'm at a party & feel like BBQing with my BFF to Dance-Pop" does not feel very Apple-esque to me personally. http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-BE268_012214_G_20140121110305.jpg http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-BE268_012214_G_...

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

I don't have much to add, but this weekend I was buying headphones at Microcenter. My wife wanted a pair of noise cancelling headphones for flying and I want bluetooth headphones for easier dog walking (leash + headphone cables = ouch). The Beats headphones were all locked up and, holy hell, the pricetags on them were ridiculous. $299 and up? I ended up getting a pair of $35 BT headphones and a pair $99 Creative noise-cancelling headphones. I can certainly see how Apple is drawn to that brand. What's it cost to make even a premium set of headphones? Maybe a tiny fraction of $299? Apple probably got sick of seeing Beats eat up the high-end for what, I imagine, is used mostly on iOS devices. Beats Music might just be an free extra and ultimately a casualty here. Cheap earbuds that come with your iOS device or Beats at the Apple store make sense for the conspicuous consumer. The profit margins must be impressive.

tr23 12y ago
http://allhiphop.com/2014/05/13/dr-dres-beats-by-dre-cost-an-estimated-14-to-make/ http://allhiphop.com/2014/05/13/dr-dres-beats-by-dre-cost-an... You are paying mostly for marketing.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
Beats are not premium headphones, they just sell at those prices. At best they are comparable to maybe a sub $100 studio monitor set, and that $100 is also a retail price, not a cost. An actually good set of headphones in the $300 range (like Grado SR325e, Sennheiser HD600, AKG K601) will blow away the Beats, it would be like comparing a Ferrari to a Kia. The amount of profit Beats makes on headphones is ridiculous, which is why Apple bought them.

PolandKid 12y ago

They did the same thing after acquiring LaLa (A great cloud music site they shuttered in 2010)

tjakab 12y ago
I believe LaLa was the foundation for iTunes Match and iTunes Radio.

fabrika 12y ago

I was hoping they will rebrand iTunes into Beats, iTunes feels really tired as a brand. Beats is fresh. But I guess I was wrong, let's see what they will come up with. All new iTunes with curated playlists would also be great.

encoderer 12y ago
IMHO, that would be incredibly foolish. Business 101 here. You don't throw away a billion dollar brand. What you call "tired", I call 90%+ brand awareness. (Found a 2008 study with iTunes at 82% awareness).
forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
Personally, I'd rather they merge the streaming service into iTunes.

austenallred 12y ago

I haven't opened iTunes in years other than to update software, and I would imagine most people are in the same boat. I used to take every penny I earned and dump it into the iTunes store. Now I just pay $10/month to Spotify now and listen to whatever I want. There used to be services like Napster 2.0 and Rhapsody that competed with the iTunes store, but they didn't work well on iPods, and their selection of music wasn't that great. Things are different now: Spotify is in a completely different league. Perhaps Rdio is in the same boat - I've heard great things, but I've never used it personally. At the end of the day, unless Apple has a music solution that's somehow cheaper/better than Spotify (which is possible, considering how it could be integrated end-to-end with the iPhone itself), I'm done using Apple music products.

Argorak 12y ago
> I haven't opened iTunes in years other than to update software, and I would imagine most people are in the same boat. I would hold my horses there, unless you have numbers. > I used to take every penny I earned and dump it into the iTunes store. Now I just pay $10/month to Spotify now and listen to whatever I want. Except quite a few important catalogs that Spotify doesn't have. Also, I've hit quite a few instances of "this song was there yesterday!". I went back to buying music.
- bigdubs 12y ago
  This has been my experience as well; Spotify is great for pop music and more mainstream things. If one day you want a song that isn't on spotify, but it is on a free bandcamp download, the whole house of cards crumbles (for me anyway). If I have to keep iTunes around for random songs, I start to just buy albums through that, and then I end up rarely using spotify. Spotify has a huge selection, to be sure, and for most people it's more than enough, but there will always be someone who isn't quite covered by the catalog and they will generally just go back to using itunes / foobar / whatever.
  - milesokeefe 12y ago
    Why don't you just download the song and import it into Spotify? Spotify plays it like any other song and will even sync it with your devices like normal songs.

fastest963 12y ago

Apparently this is "not true". Source: http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go-away-apples-beats-music-service-is-sticking-around/ http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go...

k-mcgrady 12y ago

If this dies and doesn't just get rebranded I will be incredibly pissed off. Beats is the only music service that has got it right. All the radio services suck. Most playlists on Spotify suck. But when I open Beats I get a page full of great album recommendations and wonderful human-curated playlists. Honestly I'll be surprised if it just disappears. In interviews Apple exec's have been very effusive about Beats curation and how good the service is. As much as I hope it doesn't die I also hope they don't just through it into iTunes. The other thing Beats got right was the UI.

jonnathanson 12y ago

Apple still makes a lot of money selling tracks on the iTunes store. My guess would be that it's going to roll out a streaming service, but on its own terms. This probably means renegotiating a lot of the music rights previously negotiated by Beats, and starting with a clean slate. Apple probably figures it can get better terms from the labels than Beats did. Part of me thinks that the only reason a la carte purchasing still exists is because there is no way to get everything from one streaming service. To use a TV example: I can't get most HBO shows on Netflix; ergo, I use Netflix and HBO Go. Same thing with Showtime, so I use Showtime's app as well. And some things I can't get anywhere through a streaming service, so I buy them. I'm not buying a la carte because I feel the need to "own" things. I'm buying a la carte because the fragmented streaming landscape has significant gaps in its coverage. What I'm really doing, when I buy, is covering those gaps and/or hedging against the risk that something I love might go away on my streaming services. My wild hunch is that Apple realizes as much, and it's moving to get as much content as possible under new license before it reveals its streaming service. It knows that a streaming service, in 2014 or 2015, needs to be as selection-complete as humanly possible. And anything not on its streaming service needs to be for sale on iTunes. It's very hard to thread that needle when you're working with legacy licenses under two different entities, presumably applicable only to those individual services.

jwcooper 12y ago

This has been refuted by an Apple Spokesperson according to Recode [1]: Tom Neumayr, Apple’s PR rep, says the TechCrunch story is “not true” but wouldn’t go beyond that. [1] http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go-away-apples-beats-music-service-is-sticking-around/ http://recode.net/2014/09/22/apples-beats-music-brand-may-go...

vlunkr 12y ago
Look like Tech Crunch updated their article to reflect that as well.

rahilsondhi 12y ago

If you're interested in building in this space, let's talk :)

pptr1 12y ago

This is a pretty expected move on Apple's part. There typical MO is to assimilate the company entirely. The only reason Beats headphone is still around, is because it is generating revenue and will offset the cost of the acquisition. As soon as they are ready to start producing new headphones in production, you will see Beats headphones shut down quietly.