Apple is planning to bundle the Beats Music app as a part of iOS early next year, reports the Financial Times. The company acquired the Beats Music service earlier this year as a part of its acquisition of Beats Electronics.
Apple will bundle the subscription music service it acquired from Beats into its iOS operating system early next year, instantly making it available on hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads – and ramping up pressure on Spotify, the market leader in music streaming.
Quoting the ever popular “people familiar with the situation,” the Times says Apple could begin bundling Beats Music into iOS as early as March 2015.
Beats will continue to be a paid service, and will likely be branded under the iTunes label. FT says the move may come alongside the Spring launch of the Apple Watch.
Beats Music has struggled to gain subscribers, with industry estimates putting the service’s paid subscriber base at just 110,000, quite a bit behind such industry leaders as Spotify.
While pre-installing apps can be a fast-track to user adoption, Apple’s iTunes Radio service is included as a part of the bundled Music app since iOS 7, and has yet to gain any major traction among users.
