Comment Buying a streaming contract? (Score 1) 188
Remember, Apple bought Soundjam and released iTunes something like 6 months later.
Buying something that already exists is much faster than rolling your own, even if you COULD roll your own. It's probably worth Apple's time not just for licencing reasons but for software reasons as well.
I'm predicting that iTunes will be phased out over the next couple of years in favour of the Beats software. Everyone agrees at this point that iTunes has sort of run its course, and this will give Apple something to transition to. This will unify all of Apple's music service, and Apple can merge the App Store stuff together on the Mac and release a stand-alone iDevice app store for windows.
This is wild speculation on my part, I admit, but it makes so many things so much easier.
The headphones business is just a nice way to make sure the company is paying for itself right away. This is an acquisition that won't lose Apple any money over the short term, and will make their long-term prospects in the space a lot better.