You’ll soon have Beats Music on your iOS device whether you want it or not.
Apple is planning to bake the streaming music service into iOS in early 2015, according to The Financial Times. The integration could happen “as early as March,” which would line up with the possibility of a media event to announce the rumored iPad Pro.
Reports have already indicated Apple plans to rebrand Beats Music under iTunes, and the Times adds that the service will still be based on a paid subscription model. Last month, Recode reported that Apple was hoping to lower the price from $10 to just $5 per month, which would undercut competitors like Spotify and Rdio.
Beats Music is “part of a three-pronged music strategy for Apple,” according to today’s report. Apple plans to operate it alongside traditional downloads from the iTunes Store (which are slowing) and ad-supported streaming with iTunes Radio.
Apple has a long way to go before it can catch up with Spotify’s 10 million users. Beats Music is estimated to only have 110,000 subscribers, but preinstalling it on hundreds of millions of iOS devices would certainly give Apple a leg up in terms of potential reach.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
9 responses to “Apple to preload Beats Music on iOS early next year”
Here is hoping they at least hide the icon in the countries that don’t support the service. The only thing more annoying than not being able to access iTunes Radio or Beats in Canada would be having a prominent icon advertising that which can’t be deleted a la Stocks, Weather, Etc…..
this is BS. iOS is becoming bloatware big time. I will never use beats music, and should not have to be forced to have this app taking up space and storage on my device. I should be able to delete all stock apps at my whim.
Great, now another fucking app I can’t delete. Apple let me delete shit!
This won’t completely solve the issue of deleting, but there are at least jb tweaks to hide unwanted stock apps from the dashboard so you never have to look at them. But yes I echo, let me delete shit.
I love how this article is so fatalistic…”…whether you want it or not.” Good God.. just delete the app if you’re not into it or don’t care about it. Big deal. #firstworldproblems
You can’t delete apple native apps like maps, reminders, calendar, etc, that’s the problem with this.
don’t want that crap ! apple.. please make it optional … I know you re trying to recoup the stupid expense on buying beats… but I am paying for that… Here is a suggestion apple :- sell it to samsung !
This is an antitrust suit waiting to happen.
So should Apple just leave off every app and just give you an App Store icon? Then you won’t have anything to bitch about. Oh, you’ll probably bitch about having to use the App Store. That could probably be fixed by a class action lawsuit.