A company like Pandora or Spotify? Two debt-financed companies that still can't turn a profit from music.

Neither of which also sell music in their own online stores, so it's hard to make a fair comparison.

Also, Apple's iRadio is probably not taking off as well as they'd like and Beats Music already has a better feature set.

Pandora and spotify are structurally unprofitable because of their licensing problems/payments. Apple is %500Bn company-- big enough to become a label--has the marketing expertise (iTunes) and Capital ($X0Bns cash) to be a next-generation 'label'. Or maybe I'm missing something?

If Apple (or Google) had wanted to buy out the record labels and their catalogs, they could have done so years ago. They obviously didn't, probably because it's a dying industry that isn't nearly as profitable as their current products.

The very idea of a 'record label' is a relic of the 20th Century, when all recorded music was distributed on heavy physical artifacts.

Not sure I follow. Who said anything about buying out the record labels? Apple can just <become> a label-replacement. There is still a need for a distribution/production/promotion service layer in music biz.

Or Google Play store, for that matter.

I think the problems run much deeper.

Music is now competing for attention with apps, push notifications, emails, SMS, etc. Listening to recorded music was at one time something to do in and of itself. Today it's something that's done almost exclusively in the background.