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Apple Reportedly Planning to Shut Down Beats Music [Update: Not True]

Rogifan said:
The Beats brand is associated with headphones period end of story. Most people probably don't even know Beats music services exists. They'll roll it into iTunes and that way they no longer have to support other platforms like Android.
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So, with all these "rebranding" experts spinning this into an "ideal move" by Apple, does that mean the headphones will soon be rebranded with Apple's logo too?

And if so, is that lipstick on a pig?

Warbrain said:
Why integrate it to Apple TV if it's going to be killed off? That makes no sense at all.
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Personally, based on the pace of :apple:TV development over the years, I picture the :apple:TV support team being one guy (one of the executive's nephews or similar) jammed into an office the size of a closet at the farthest point from the main Apple campus. Either the Internet just isn't fast enough to get the word to him yet, they forgot to tell him again and/or he's simply the last to know.

I'm only half joking.
 
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bozzykid said:
Too bad they aren't rebranding iTunes to Beats. I think the iTunes name is tired and doesn't reflect the whole ecosystem. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they killed off the iTunes name next year.
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I would be extremely surprised if they did this, the iTunes name has a huge presence. It would be like renaming Coca Cola.

Anyways, how does Beats reflect the ecosystem more than iTunes?
 
[Update: No]

Of course it's a no guys, why would Apple go through the hassle of adding it to their "Apps made by Apple" and creating a dedicated channel to Apple TV to close it down?

Didn't make sense from the start imo.
 
Gasu E. said:
It's actually pretty easy to click on the link and read the entire techcrunch article. Always amazes me that people would rather bother to pointlessly speculation on a MacRumors summary, than simply click on the link to get the larger story.
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Meaning, often, the more accurate story.
 
Parasprite said:
Anyways, how does Beats reflect the ecosystem more than iTunes?
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Because Beats refers to music. iTunes refers to a million different things under that umbrella which aren't related to music. We have already heard these rumors before so I don't think it out of the question.
 
"Shut Down" might not be the most accurate description of the plan but Apple isn't going to run 2 very similar music services.

With Iovine, Dre, & now Bono, expect Apple to capitalize on the Beats brand's curation strengths and morph it into an App Store sibling for emerging artists... with a "BUY" button everywhere.
 
A rebrand makes more sense. I always figured they'd want to roll it into iTunes at some point.

At the same time, I was somewhat hoping Apple would embrace the term "Beats" for their entire music arm. I would be fine if the iTunes app itself was rebranded to Beats instead of the other way around. "Beats" is a clean, simple word that would work well. The iTunes brand screams 2005 iPod click wheel to me. Tired name.
 
Patriot24 said:
I’m sure rolling Beats’ technology, contracts, and subscribers into iTunes/Music.app was the plan from day one regardless of what they may have said at the time - you don't want people bailing off of the service because they think it is going away immediately.
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They were very vague from the start about what they were planning. They never claimed they would meld this with something else, wouldn't. Would kill it or wouldn't.

I suspect that the tech will be combined with other things. But I won't lay claim to a thought on whether they will roll it into iTunes or roll something like Radio out of iTunes.
 
*Select beats music app
- Redirect to iTunes.

Even if its not true, I can't see Apple having 2 Music Services forever. I would imagine they are collecting data/info from the Beats users and programming it into iTunes.
 
PatriotInvasion said:
"Beats" is a clean, simple word that would work well. The iTunes brand screams 2005 iPod click wheel to me. Tired name.
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I pretty much see it the other way. The word iTunes probably has one general definition that everybody knows. The word Beats has a whole bunch of definitions, some of which have nothing to do with music. If iTunes is "tired", how about OS X (so old, we ran out of cats and we're going into 10.10+ numbers), Macintosh or even Apple?
 
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What is the difference between Beats and the 9000 other apps like Pandora, Slacker, Spotify etc that stream music for a monthly subscription?

And why would anyone pay for any of them when you can get it for free (with ads) from iTunes Radio or ad free if you have iTunes Match?
 
I tried to support Beats but it is too buggy. Half the time it only downloads 30 seconds of a song. I downloaded Spotify today with the free trial and it's a pleasure to use so far. The Beats app needs a lot of work.
 
BreuerEditor said:
So they acquired Beats, added it to AppleTV, and now they're going to kill their music service? Why spend the time and money on the AppleTV integration if you're planning on canning it?
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Transitional move. Bring it over, make things look ok and supported. Update everything else and leave this behind until people jump ship from it because it is outdated.
 
Feel bad for employees.

I am discovering more and more of the awful feeling after having "spun my wheels" on a project only to discover that sometime in the future it will only be shut down. :(
 
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