Apple reportedly working on iOS Beats Music integration for early next year

The latest figures around the decline of music downloads - especially in the USA - must have put some fire under Apple’s plans to integrate their recent acquisition Beats Music into the current ecosystem.

The Financial Times reports that Apple will be integrating Beats Music directly into iOS and that the move could happen as early as March 2015, making streaming accessible to millions of customers who may have never tried Spotify before. What’s more, with Touch ID payments, that transaction would be completely seamless.

The exercise would likely entail ditching the Beats Music name, with the service likely to be rolled into Apple’s much-loved iTunes brand. With 200 million estimated active iTunes customers this would be the biggest rollout ever for a streaming platform (YouTube Music Key’s potential customer base obviously potentially dwarfs this, but it won’t be built into devices that we know of).

If Apple finds a way to integrate the streaming service in the traditional “Music” app on iOS devices users would be able to listen to everything that’s now on Beats but also to their own collection without friction, essentially making them feel as if they owned all the music in the world.

It will be interesting to see if Apple is working on a way around the issues posed by the likes of Taylor Swift who are starting to window releases to maximise sales. Obviously iTunes would still carry the releases as a download, but what if there was a way for users to “top up” their streaming account and pay and extra $2 or $3 to gain access to a specific album on the day of release, months before it is due to hit streaming services? Consumers may not like it at first but there must be a better way of reconciling artist expectations and the inconvenience of having to manage locally-stored MP3s.

Also, the fact that Apple is rolling something out to its entire customer base does not mean that it will be successful by default. That kind of rollout would be highly scrutinised and flaws easily spotted. Cupertino has had its share of failed products, and if it wants this to work the execution needs to be near-perfect.

Finally, since Beats Music never made it out of the USA it is unclear whether Apple would be able to acquire international licenses in time for launch or whether the potential March 2015 rollout may be confined to the USA.


(Andrea Leonelli)