Apple hasn’t talked about what it plans to do with Beats but the company has long been rumoured to be rolling the Beats Music streaming service into iTunes. Adding fuel to the fire is a new interview with Trent Reznor where the Nine Inch Nails frontman says he is working with Apple following the Beats acquisition.
Speaking to Billboard, Reznor reveals that he is working with Apple on a project related to his job at Beats. Reznor, for those that don’t remember, was named chief creative officer of Beats Music in 2013. When asked if what he was working on with Apple was related to Beats Music, Reznor said yes, but that he couldn’t go into details.
“It’s related to [my Beats role]. Beats was bought by Apple, and they expressed direct interest in me designing some products with them. I can’t go into details, but I feel like I’m in a unique position where I could be of benefit to them,” he told Billboard, later adding that the project was “in the world” of content delivery.
Perhaps most tellingly is that Reznor says in another portion of the interview that he believes the right music streaming service could solve everyone’s problems and that he is “on the side of streaming.”
“Ownership is waning. Everybody is comfortable with the cloud — your documents, who knows where they are? They are there when you need them. That idea that I’ve got my records on the shelf doesn’t feel as important even to me as it used to. I just think we haven’t quite hit the right formula yet.”
Past rumours on this subject have pointed to Apple moving engineers off Beats Music and onto iTunes and other projects. Last we heard, Apple planned to roll Beats Music into iTunes in 2015. Right now, Beats Music is only available to users in the United States. Presumably, if Apple were to incorporate it into iTunes, an international rollout would be part of Apple’s strategy.
[source]Billboard[/source]
