Apple will discontinue the streaming music service Beats Music it acquired in May, according to five sources, including several prominent employees at Apple and Beats. Many engineers from Beats Music have already been moved off the product and onto other projects at Apple, including iTunes. It’s not clear when exactly Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre’s music service will be shut down or what Apple will do with streaming, but every source with knowledge of the situation that we talked to agreed Apple plans to sunset the Beats Music brand.
[Update: Apple has told TechCrunch that our report of Beats being shut down “is not true”, but sources familiar with the situation tell Re/code that Apple “may, however, modify [Beats Music] over time, and one of those changes could involved changing the Beats Music brand.” This aligns with what my sources said, which is that the Beats Music brand will be shut down, but that it’s unclear what Apple wants to do in streaming music. It seems quite possible that the Beats Music product could be rolled into iTunes rather than being ‘shuttered’, but that’s semantics.
Apple’s response really depends on the interpretation of “shut down”. If Apple rolls Beats Music into iTunes and removes the dedicated Beats Music app from the App Store, I would call that being shut down. Beats Music itself came from a “rebranding” aka shutdown of the MOG music streaming service it acquired. We’ll see what happens if and when Apple adds streaming to iTunes, but its doubtful that Apple will maintain Beats Music as its own brand and independent product.]
The fact that the new iPhones did not come pre-installed with Beats Music, while several other Apple apps came loaded on the 6 and 6 Plus, should have been a red flag. There was also nothing said about Beats Music during the Apple Watch reveal, even though the service’s radio and fire-and-forget playlists could work well on a wearable. In August, Beats Music was being advertised to new users on iOS 7, yet the only time Beats Music got an off-hand mention at the September launch event was when Apple CEO Tim Cook said the new U2 album would be available there.
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