Apple to shut down Beats Music on November 30th

With Apple Music thriving, Apple has posted on the Beats support website that Beats Music will be shut down at the end of this month. According to the post, the service ends November 30th with the cancellation of subscriptions. Apple says that those who were using the soon-to-be defunct music streamer can move their "picks and prefrences" to Apple Music. The support site includes a link to instructions on how to do this.

Apple acquired Beats Music as part of its largest acquisition ever, the $3 billion purchase of Beats Audio that it announced in May 2014. Despite quickly assimilating Beats' headphone unit into the company, leaks made prior to the announcement of the transaction hinted that Apple's main target was streaming Music service Beats Music. At the time, leaked documents showed that the streaming music service had only 111,000 subscribers.

On the support site, Apple hinted that the human curators who worked on Beats are now doing a similar job for Apple Music. The latter launched on June 30th and offers a free three-month trial. After that expires, Apple charges $9.99 monthly for an individual account, or $14.99 for a family of up to six members. At last count, Apple Music had 6.5 million subscribers in October.


Besides the streaming music service, Apple Music includes always on global radio station Beats 1 and a feature called Connect. This is essentially an online bulletin board where artists can interact with fans.

source: Apple via CNET