Dive Brief:

• Apple will indeed shut its newly acquired Beats streaming music service and merge it with iTunes, according to TechCrunch, which is doubling down on an earlier, similar report. 

• iTunes itself is seeing a whopping 13% drop in sales, according to the Wall Street Journal, while streaming services like Pandora and Spotify are seeing increases in subscriptions.

• TechCrunch is speculating that Apple could essentially help disrupt the whole scene by undercutting streaming monthly services by charging only $5 each month.

Dive Insight:

Apple paid a pretty penny for Beats Electronics this summer, and early this fall it looked pretty clueless, with its auto-upload of U2’s newest album to all iTune accounts. But, big picture, those may end up just blips on a swiftly changing landscape of music retail. Apple and iTunes helped usher in the era of digital downloads, which has helped decimate the CD (not to mention vinyl and cassette) world. Now streaming services are cutting into iTunes’s share of the pie. We’ll see if Apple can take its bite out of Beats and shape up its streaming service in time for the party.