One Chart That Explains Apple's $3.2 Billion Interest In Beats

Streaming music revenue is growing quickly, while the rest of the music industry is contracting.

This explains, at least in part, why Apple is reportedly buying Beats for $3.2 billion. Beats makes expensive headphones, and it has a music streaming service. The headphones business pays for the deal, and the music streaming is free.

Apple's rise to the world's most valuable company started with the iPod and iTunes. However, the iTunes model of paying for downloads is going away. Apple has thus far whiffed on streaming, and now it's going to have to pay up for that mistake.

Here's a chart from Statista illustrating the rise of streaming music revenue.