So what does Apple get for all that cash? According to many audiophiles, overpriced if wildly popular headphones and a curated music service that has made no dent at all in the overcrowded streaming music space. Ergo, if there is no product of sufficient value, the $3.2 billion is mostly paying for goodwill, intangibles and brand.
Apple has not overpaid for an acquisition in its entire history. The biggest deal it ever made was its $404 million acquisition of Next, which brought Steve Jobs back to the company and provided Apple with a Mac operating system for the next decade. That was a very good deal.
There are any number of higher quality — and more expensive — headphones on the market, and Apple could buy any of them for a fraction of the price it appears willing to pay for Beats. Want top of the line? Try Sennheiser HD 800s at $1,500 a pop.
And as for Beats Music, well it is so far behind Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) and Spotify that it barely registers. If Apple is after a music streaming service, wouldn’t Spotify be a better option?
What Beats Music offers that is at least semi-unique is curation by music industry partners like the Grand Ole Opry, Downbeat magazine, Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. This has been a winner for satellite radio, but has not been a major plus for streaming music companies yet.
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Apple has been building its presence in the music industry ever since the introduction of the iPod. Apple certainly has the money to regain its once-dominant position in the music industry, and the acquisition of Beats may give it more leverage with the industry biggies who are still unhappy with the deal Apple struck with them in the early iPod days. But is there still real money to be made in streaming?
Market researcher Nielsen put out a report on Thursday that shows adoption of music streaming across the United States by geographic region. Nielsen found between 37% and 51.3% of consumers stream music, and that no region of the country has more than 7.5% of listeners paying for music. In every region of the country free streaming rules, and either Pandora or YouTube is the most popular way for listeners to discover new music.
All things considered, an acquisition of Beats still looks like a bad deal for Apple. Shares traded down about 0.7% Friday morning, at $584.23 in a 52-week range of $388.87 to $604.41.
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