Is Beats Music Shutting Down or Not?

Apple spent a truckload — $3 billion, to be exact — in order to pick up the Beats Music brand and make it part of the Apple family. All the trimmings came along with the acquisition; the popular Beats line of headphones, the Beats Music streaming service, and the talents of both Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.

So why on earth would Apple squash Beats so soon after the buy?

TechCrunch reported that would be the case earlier today, stating in a report that Apple planned to “shut down” Beats Music. The site pointed to what some had speculated previously — that the purchase of Beats was mainly to get Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine on board with the company.

But just as quickly as TechCrunch seemed to trumpet the end of Beats Music, Re/Code came out to say that wouldn’t be the case. Re/Code put in a request for comment from Apple and got a response (which, for reasons that will remain mysteries, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine didn’t wait for) saying that the Beats Music streaming service wasn’t going anywhere.

Tom Neumayr, Apple’s PR rep, says the TechCrunch story is “not true” but wouldn’t go beyond that.

The TechCrunch article was later edited to include this update/attempt at save:

[Update: Apple has told Re/code that Beats isn’t being “shuttered”, but sources familiar with the situation say “It may, however, modify it over time, and one of those changes could involved changing the Beats Music brand.” This aligns with what my sources said, which is that the Beats Music brand will shut down, but that it’s unclear what Apple wants to do in streaming music.]

So yeah, “may” and “could” and words that look a lot less sure than they were prior to the company in the story actually commenting on the story.

At this point, it doesn’t look like the Beats Music streaming service is going anywhere. Says Apple, anyway.

Stay tuned.