Hacker News Reader

Apple could just buy the entire music industry. Total US revenue for the music industry is $15 billion and dropping. (Revenue peaked in 1998 around $38 billion in current dollars.) Apple revenue is around $225 <strike>million</strike> billion.

Music can only be a side business for Apple. It's just not big enough.

View on HN

Also, all this talk about streaming being a new model is pretty silly. Rhapsody started its unlimited music streaming service in 2001. Apple started offering paid music downloads two years later. Streaming isn't something new that's going to revitalize or destroy the music industry, just an old well-devleoped model that has been growing as people got better mobile speeds.

What Apple needs music for is the branding. Apple attached itself to music because the industry had the mindshare of cool locked down for generations.

Apple now has more of the mindshare of cool than the music industry.

I've noticed a big difference in coverage over just the last few years. Before then there were large swathes of content that just wasn't licensed to any streaming services, unlike today.

You mean "Apple revenue is around $225 billion"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com