Just days before the WWDC 2014 kicks off, Apple officially announced yesterday that they have agreed to acquire Beats for $3 billion. Beats Music is a famous streaming music service and Beats Electronics makes headphones and other audio software.
Apple had introduced its own streaming service, iTunes Radio, a Pandora competitor - last year with iOS 7. There were also rumors some time back of Apple introducing a song identification feature in the upcoming "iOS 8". This should be a natural progression after Shazam was an early hit and lead to a lot of sales on iTunes through their song identification.
If these rumors are to be believed, and are true, then it definitely looks like Apple is coming back to pay more attention in the area which made it take off big time - Music.
While Apple is still the largest music seller through iTunes, it faced tough competition from Internet radio services like Spotify, Pandora (and Beats Music). But if the deal goes through, they would bring music subscription services on board as well giving the other companies a run for their money.
We are excited to see what else Apple has in store for announcing during WWDC 2014 which kicks-off on June 2nd. Like every year, we will be updating our blog with the latest news from Apple WWDC and how it affects our clients. Stay tuned!