Apple denies it is shutting down Beats Music
The iPhone maker purchased the music streaming service for $3bn earlier this year, but the absence of Beats at this year's iPhone launch is raising eyebrows
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Your support makes all the difference.Apple has been forced to deny that it is shutting down the streaming music service it acquired as part of the $3bn purchase of Beats in August this year.
A report by technology news site TechCrunch yesterday claimed that the Apple was going to “discontinue” the service along with “several prominent employees” – a claim the company has since denied in a rare public statement.
“This is not true,” said Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr, although other sources similar with the situation told tech site Re/code that the iPhone maker may still “modify [Beats Music] over time, and one of those changes could involve changing the Beats Music brand.”
The confusion seems to be at least partly over semantics (is changing the brand the same as shutting down?) but Apple also appears keen to placate fears that its largest ever acquisition was poorly judged.
(On Twitter the rumours of a shutdown have already drawn comparison with Google’s ill-fated acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The search giant bought the handset maker in 2011 for more than $12bn, only to sell it to Chinese firm Lenovo for less than $3bn earlier this year.)
When it was first announced that Apple was planning to buy Beats it was assumed that the iPhone-maker wanted to cash in on the company’s cool factor (its celebrity endorsements range from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga to founder Dr Dre himself) as well as ramp up operations of its fledgling music streaming service.
However, Beats Music is thought to have only around 250,000 paying subscribers compared to leading streaming service Spotify (10 million paying users and 30 million free) , and as TechCrunch points out: “Considering Apple’s penchant for simple, unified brands, and how it despises fragmentation, shutting down Beats Music makes a lot of sense.”
The absence of Beats Music from the recent launch of the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch is also conspicuous. Pre-loading the music streaming service on the 10 million iPhones sold last weekend would have been an easy way to increase audience exposure – instead, the streaming service was barely mentioned during the launch. Whatever Apple's got planned for Beats, it's certainly keeping its cards close to its chest.
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