Apple buried its Beats 1 radio brand. What next?

So, Apple ditched its Beats 1 radio brand. Big deal. Actually, everything Apple does is a big deal.

While the pandemic has smacked the kiss of death on most industries, Apple just became the first company to hit a market cap of US$2 trillion, getting there just two years after passing the US$1 trillion mark.

That’s just showing off.

The big Apple headline figure happened in the same week its Beats 1 brand was buried in the streamers graveyard (not far from Milk Music and Rdio).

From now into the future, the Beats 1 radio station will be known as Apple Music 1, and the tech giant has pressed the button on two new stations, Apple Music Country and Apple Music Hits.

So, what? On the surface, the takeaways are pretty transparent. Apple sees a future in radio, and it’s betting on it with time invested and resources. All of which means more opportunities for artists, and for media professionals working on Apple’s channels.

And for music fans, more tunes. Less obvious is what next for the other side of the Beats empire.

Apple

Remember, Apple paid a fortune for the Beats brand back in 2014, a deal that made Dr Dre hip-hop’s first billionaire, and his co-founder Jimmy Iovine a very wealthy individual.

The Beats-to-Apple transaction was multi-pronged. Apple swallowed the Beats subscription music platform, and its electronics business, the cornerstone of which is the popular Beats by Dre range of headphones.

Dre and Iovine, the former Interscope CEO, made their move into the consumer electronics space in 2008 with Beats by Dre headphones. Their marketing plan was genius. Get those cans on the heads of all your fave athletes and artists, and everyone will want one (and pay an eye-watering sum for them).

In 2012, they bought struggling music streaming service MOG and expanded that into subscription-based Beats Music before selling it off to Apple for a cool $3 billion.

What now for the headphones brand? Apple is clearly keen on its AirPod products. Last year, came those painfully-expensive/must-have AirPod Pros, and in June of this year, the company pushed out spatial audio features on its Bluetooth headphones.

Check out Unbox Therapy’s Lewis Hilsenteger:

Unbox Therapy host Lewis Hilsenteger reckons the “writing’s on the wall” the Beats-branded headsets.

“It’s one of those brands Apple could kill or diminish,” he says on his YouTube channel. “I’m not saying it’s going to be dead, I’m just saying its significance is likely diminished and this could be the start of if, by removing the name (from the radio station).”

Apple doesn’t hang with failure. In Silicon Valley, sitting still is certain death.

Apple didn’t become a US$2 trillion company from buying into nostalgia. And it’s in an enviable position where it can call all the shots and take risks.

Watch this space.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.