Report: Apple Will Make Beats A Native App, Re-Brand It Under iTunes

In purchasing Beats, many wondered just what Apple would do with the service. Would they shutter it, or somehow make it worthwhile for everyone? The latter seems to be the case, or at least more people will be force-fed access to it. A report from the Financial Times, citing unnamed sources, says Apple will make Beats Music a standard Apple app in the middle of 2015. The app will be pushed to your device (and made unable for deletion) around March 2015.

Beats will continue on as a paid service, but has one additional bit of info we find alluring. According to these unnamed sources, Apple will somehow re-brand Beats as an iTunes app.

Re-branded under the iTunes umbrella, paid, and streaming. Sounds a lot like Apple is opening up the iTunes library to Beats. Reports of Beats Music's CEO heading to iTunes Radio may also play into the iTunes library coming to Beats.

The timing is also interesting, as we've heard before that Apple was working with record companies on streaming music royalties. Their initial reported offer to record labels bordered on offensive, and considering the dust-up Taylor Swift and Spotify caused recently, it's unlikely Apple will get any sweetheart deals moving forward.

On launch, Beats Music brought the streaming service to its knees with subscribers eagerly trying to see what they cold offer. Once things leveled out, Beats was found to have roughly 110,000 subscribers.

Apple could do a lot of things with Beats and iTunes, but cobbling it into their core app group is a good way to get people interested. So is cutting the price, which is something we've heard was coming.

Source: The Financial Times