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Comment by anonmusicguy | Hacker News Reader

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.

It confuses me when people think there would be a single reason to the acquisition, when instead they probably bought Beats for some combination of

1) a lucrative accessories (headphones) business

2) the Beats executives

3) a relatively small streaming service

There's always more than one reason to justify the acquisition price, but surely the desire to purchase in the first play is a bit more singular? Such as wanting to jump start their streaming service in this case, and the rest is just tangential benefits.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Apple bought Beats because they sell audio hardware at a markup and in volumes that even Apple was jealous of, to a very "juicy" demographic group (folks under 25). It's practically free money as long as the brand retains strength. The streaming service is a sideshow in comparison. The main reason so many people thought that Apple bought beats for the streaming service is that they didn't want to believe that Apple could be so crude as to simply buy a lucrative "fashion" brand so they invented some convoluted high-level strategy idea, but that's fantasy.

Agreed, not to mention, if they were looking mostly at the streaming platform, why not Spotify? It was definitely about the hardware.

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