A major rumor in the world of digital music surfaced yesterday that persists Tuesday morning despite efforts by Apple to dispel the underlying assertions.
With only a short time removed from the iDevice-maker’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats, we’re told that Apple may shut down the streaming service component of Beats in the near future.
TechCrunch cites a handful of sources close to Apple, all of whom indicate that Apple will soon close or dramatically revamp the service.
“Shutting down Beats Music also meshes with reports that the Beats acquisition was mostly about getting Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s talent on board,” TechCrunch reports, “and picking up the headphone business, not about streaming music.”
It is possible, however, that Apple is merely looking to better integrate the Beats brand into Apple’s ecosystem and must relinquish the streaming service in its current packaging to pull off that effort.
Apple, of course, maintains that Beats’ streaming music service is going nowhere.
