Apple To Bring Beats As A Competitor In Music Streaming Services

Apple which purchased Beats earlier this year in May for $3 billion to optimize music streaming is doing what might seem the correct next move. According to the Financial Times Report, Apple will now bundle up its Beats music service into an upcoming version of iOS which will instantly reach its millions of users. It is expected that Beats will be re branded under the iTunes moniker when it relaunches in 2015. It also suggests that the subscription service will be launching globally which was limited only to US till now.

The timing of this announcement is particularly interesting as Apple recently admitted that it’s sales of music downloads has declined. The company has around 200 million active iTunes users whereas Beats music has a low subscriber base of around 110,000 users. This move might be an effort to encourage Apple’s iTunes music buyers to try the streaming service and also, it could use the Apple Pay payments technology to charge for monthly subscriptions.
Apart from bringing its own users to try the new platform, it also has to compete with the leading music streaming options like Spotify, and recently announced YouTube Music which already has a huge number of users. YouTube’s new Music Key service which has just launched in Beta proves a far greater threat than other services like Spotify and Pandora ever will. YouTube is the number one online source for videos and music consumption and that Music Key will provide audio and video (with no ads) portrays a major obstacle to Apple to make it’s users switch.
The real threat lies in the fact that Music Key will be widely adopted by the market before it can roll out the next Beats-baked iOS. The Youtube Music Key is free for the first few weeks but after that the subscription charge is $7.99. In order to beat its competitors, Apple is working to make the music streaming cheaper for it’s users. It has already begun discussions regarding new licensing terms that will allow them to drop the monthly subscription price for Beats Music to as low as $5, down from $10 a month.