There are two numbers that you need to pay attention to in order to make sense of Apple’s breathtaking acquisition of Beats Electronics. Neither of them is the rumored $3.2 billion price. They are 13.3 and 800 million.
Apple’s saint Steven P. Jobs said customers wanted to own their music. Not anymore.
The first number is the percentage that music downloads have decreased in Q1 of this year compared with 2013. This is on the heels of a 5% decrease last year, so it’s looking like the decline is picking up speed. It’s pretty clear that the download era is waning and Apple knows this better than anyone. I’m sure the company has a phalanx of data analysts poring over projections and understand that the rate that customers buy downloads might not be in a freefall, but it could be coming quicker than anyone expects.
It’s pretty clear when it…
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