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Beats Music To Shut Down November 30 (fortune.com)
UnknowingFool writes: After November 30, Beats Music subscriptions will be cancelled and no longer work, according to Apple. Subscribers can use Apple Music, which has many of the same features. This shutdown was not unexpected when Apple purchased Beats last year for $3 billion, as Apple has a history of buying companies for various reasons other the products. Many former companies have been absorbed into Apple in one form or another in this manner: the technology of Fingerworks peripherals was the start of multi-touch for iPhones; PA Semi and Intrinsity personnel were the core of Apple's internal chip design teams; and AuthenTec made biometric technology that became the backbone of Touch ID.
"...as Apple has a history of buying companies for various reasons other the products."
wat
What about all the ppl. that shelled out US $599.00 for the beats appliance?
Beats me.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
When Apple bought FingerWorks back in 2005, all we FingerWorks customers saw was a terse announcement that the company had ceased operations effective immediately, and that no further products would be released or shipped. It was quite some time before we could even be sure it was Apple that bought them, because the deal was wrapped in non-disclosure terms.
The FingerWorks user community was very, very small -- so small that the company probably couldn't have kept going as an independent entity. I suppose having Apple rescue some of their technology was better than losing it all. But the gestures that Apple has implemented are a tiny, tiny fraction of the rich, well-designed vocabulary present on the FingerWorks TouchStream keyboards. I still wish they'd release the rest of it, but that's never going to happen.
What appliance? Why would you have an appliance that's specific to any particular music store? Especially at more than twice the cost of Amazon's Echo appliance.
Was it better than a Harman Kardon Aura?
If you bought a device for a single music store at $599.00, you're fucking stupid. And maybe the cost doesn't matter.
You are an idiot :D
Apple figured they'd rather have an Apple-branded music service to pre-load onto their phones as bloatware and all profits from said bloatware.
We know from Apple Maps that Apple is hit-and-miss with application software. Their greatness is hardware.
But yet they buy the company with with horrible--yet trendy--hardware, and a service with an ephemeral subscriber base. I don't understand this acquisition at all. I'd stab my eardrums out with a pencil if I was forced to listen to Beats for any length of time, and having a music service a la Pandora doesn't differentiate and sell their hardware--where Apple makes their money. Not sure where they're going with this one....
Yes, they do "get to keep what they bought". Some of these things are significantly less useful without the service they subscribed to, but it is hard to say what the actual damage of that is, especially since I'm sure it was in the fine print of the EULA that the service could be shut down at any time with no implied liability. iTunes will start supporting the devices eventually, at least for long and just well enough to stave off a class action suit.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
"Apple has a history of buying companies for various reasons other the products"
1) No editing or proofreading needed here. God forbid we have coherent, readable sentences in the summary.
2) Sometimes Apple buys things simply to shut them down or eliminate them, similar to the way that Amazon recently stopped carrying competitors to its streaming video service. Can't compete? Worried about eroding market share? No problem- just buy your enemy and dismantle the business.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I see the main reason for acquisition was licensing. Beats had existing licenses with the big music companies that would survive the purchase. Apple didn't have these licenses yet. My opinion is that the music companies wanted a much higher rate from Apple as they know how much money Apple has.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Gee, so glad I had to lose MOG with its very nice interface to Beats with its horrid interface.
I knew Beats was going to be a disaster as soon as I tried it out (and dumped it).
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you bought a device for a single music store at $599.00, you're fucking stupid. And maybe the cost doesn't matter.
I agree. Anybody who would buy an appliance that you can only load music into with something like iTunes is fucking stupid.
You can buy mp3s from anywhere and load them onto an iPod or iPhone.
I can see the convo at apple.
Beats is taking up our market what can we do?
Why would anyone want to use anything but our service it's perfect.
Let's just buy them and force customers to change, our service is better anyways...
Great idea! let me get the checkbook
More accurately they got exactly what they paid for advertising and an ego trip. Ohh, look I'm a victim of marketing with a massive ego and I can believe I can pose about by strapping a 'Beats' logo to my head. What happens to them, people point their fingers at them and laugh, well, that might not really happen but a lot of people are thinking it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Beats Music is a streaming music service sort of like Spotify and Google Music. Like both those services, you could create playlists and I guess could "subscribe" to other people's playlists.
Those are going away with no way to recover them.
So, no, they don't get to keep what they bought. Like pretty much every cloud software, once the servers put down, whatever data you had stored in them is gone forever.
Errhm. https://www.apple.com/music/me...
What happens to my Beats Music service?
You can easily move your current Beats Music subscription over to Apple Music. Just open Beats Music on your iOS device and you’ll be prompted to join Apple Music. Once you’ve signed up, the playlists you’ve created or subscribed to and the albums you’ve saved in your Beats Music library will all be available to you in Apple Music.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Beats never sold music, only rented it. What people may lose are things such as playlists, unless there is some way to transfer them. And if there is music that is available on Beats but not on Apple Music, subscribers will lose the ability to listen to it.
From my viewpoint, every Apple purchase has had a strategic value for Apple whether we know it or not. For example, when Apple bought PA Semi, people assumed Apple would go back to PowerPC chips as PA Semi specialized in the POWER architecture. Later Apple purchased Intrinsity and Jobs himself said that the purchases were for the expertise and personnel not the products; Apple was not going into the POWER chip market. Instead Apple was focusing on mobile CPU design for their devices.
With the Beats Music I can see more the conversation going this way:
"Well maybe we should start a streaming service?"
"The problem is the music companies. They want to charge us a really high rate."
"Can we negotiate?"
"They know we have record profits. Plus, they are a little sore about how we have had the upper hand on them."
"Can we purchase someone that already have the licenses?"
"Hmmm there is Beats. They are asking for a lot though."
"Is it less than what the music companies want?"
"Yes, definitely"
"Look into it."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Yes; you can transfer your Beats playlists to Apple Music; just open the Beats Music app and it will prompt you to do so.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.