Beats Music might find itself bundled with iOS in 2015

November 20, 2014

A future release of iOS might just come with an extra app bundled inside: Beats Music. When Apple bought Beats back in May, many wondered what the end game was. And while the headphone business is presently far more lucrative for Beats than their streaming music service, finding it pre-installed on millions of iPhones might just change the calculus.

Apple's previous effort at streaming music — iTunes Radio — has so far not really lived up to expectations. Bundling Beats Music with iOS would at the very least elevate Apple's streaming music platform to the status of a default icon in the launcher (something iTunes Radio never had). At the same time, Beats Music suffers from the same geographic limitations as iTunes Radio and is only available in the United States (whereas iTunes Radio has at least expanded to Australia).

Says Financial Times on the issue:

The inclusion of the paid-for Beats service in an iOS software update could happen as early as March, according to people familiar with the situation. The move represents Apple's first attempt to capitalise on Beats since it bought the headphone maker and streaming service from Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine for $3bn this year.

The question remains, however, is how much of an impact bundling Beats with iOS would have for usage of the service. As it presently stands, AT&T is pushing Beats Music on Android devices more strongly than Apple is for their own. And with options ranging from Pandora to Songza to Spotify and all the other streaming services out there that have many more paying subscribers than Beats, who's really going to give Beats a shot?

Source: Financial Times