Did Apple forget about Dre?

For many in the Millennial generation, the first mention of Dr. Dre in their lives came from rapper Eminem in his song “Forgot About Dre.” So for an entire segment of the population, forgetting about Dre has been seen as a fairly big misstep, one it seems Apple may now be committing.

To recap: Apple (AAPL) bought Beats in May for $3 billion dollars. It was the biggest acquisition ever for the company and many speculated that instead of being interested in headphones, Apple may have been interested in Beats new streaming service. Many also pointed to the powerhouse duo behind Beats – powerhouse producer Jimmy lovine and famed rapper/producer Dr. Dre.

Then, Apple introduced the iPhone 6. There was nary a mention of Beats during the September 9^th launch event and the new phone does not have a pre-programmed Beats app.

Enter technology blog TechCrunch. The site came out with a story that Apple planned to shut down the Beats Music streaming service.

In a rare public comment on rumors, Apple said the report is not true. Still, the question of what exactly Apple plans to do with Beats remains unanswered.

“$3 billion is a lot of money for you and me, but for Apple this is loose change; it’s what they find underneath the couch cushion” said Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task. Apple has some $150 billion dollars in cash on its books.

But despite all of that cash, Apple has never spent big on high profile acquisitions, but the company does have a history, as the New York Times points out, of buying companies for talent and then folding their product into existing Apple services. After buying transportation apps HopStop and Embark, Apple put their employees on Apple maps. After buying another music service, Lala, Apple shut it down and put its employees under iTunes.

“I think they may very well wind down beats music, which… had a pretty small subscriber base. Merge it into iTunes, or reinvent iTunes with beats in some fashion,” Task said.

If Apple did buy Beats for the talent pool, the two biggest players would be Dre and Iovine, but so far no news has come from the power duo’s relationship with Apple. Dr. Dre has made headlines because his seemingly infinitely delayed new album, Detox, will now no-longer be called Detox. Oh, and he also officially became hip-hops first billionaire August 1st when the deal closed. But that’s about it.

Still, in a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the duo “creative geniuses,” and said they’ve “done a fabulous job with the brand.”

“We don’t know yet what they’re going to do with those folks,” said Task.

It’s also still unclear just why Apple bought Beats to begin with.  For a company so widely held, and widely followed, people seem endlessly curious. Task ventures the buy has more to do with Beats hardware than its streaming service.

“Maybe they bought it to prevent Google from buying it,” said Task. Google (GOOGL) just bought Songza. “Google’s trying to make Google radio, Google music a big thing, too. So this may have been a defensive person.”

Bottom line – we may not have an answer any time soon.

“Yes, there is uncertainty about what they’re going to do with Beats and Beats music, but we’re so impatient, as a society and certainly in the media. Hopefully Tim Cook has a longer term plan. I don’t think he spend $3 billion to buy this company just to shut it down in 6 months,” said Task

He added, “They just released the iPhone 6, they got 10 million sales in the first weekend, they did a blockbuster, and we’re like, ‘What’s next?’”