Apple's core competency: sell flat computers.

Anything that brings you deeper into that ecosystem, feeding the likelihood of buying another flat computer, is fair & likely game for Apple to buy or compete with. Shazam: you hear a song, use phone to recognize it[1], download album from Apple Music, ... you're a little more likely to stay within the iOS ecosystem and buy another iPhone.

[1] - Recently I stopped at a traffic light; cheap chopped car pulls up with music blaring hard edgy electronica. Something sounded interesting about it. Yank out iPhone, run Shazam, identify song before car drives off. Download album which is about...software engineering?!

See, I'd add digital music to the list of apples core competency, while they haven't stayed as relevant since streaming took off, you could make the argument that the initial success of the iphone could have been attributed to the fact that tons of people were locked into their music ecosystem via ipods, and the iphone was the only way to move said music to a phone.

Also note that apples services revenue, of which music is a part of, is large enough on its own to be a fortune 100 company.

> Download album which is about...software engineering?

The traffic jams in your city are 83% more awesome than the ones in my city.

Well, don’t leave us hanging, what was the album? :)

"Brute Force" by The Algorithm: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brute-force/1083396755 reply

Was it "The Algorithm"? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDS9gmdHtB8) I really like "Pointers" from this album.

Bingo! "Brute Force" by The Algorithm: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brute-force/1083396755