It's only two years since Apple spent $3bn on Beats, making the hip hop mogul Dr Dre a very wealthy man in the process.  At the time we were told that a big attraction for Apple was the Beats Music streaming service, as well as the core headphones/hardware business.

Now the rumour is that Apple are looking at acquiring Tidal, the high-end and 'artist friendly' streaming service, part owned by - another rap superstar - Jay Z.  This time the thinking is that Apple wants the close relationships with the other (19) artists that co-own the platform.

Now that SoundCloud is 'fully legit', in terms of licensing deals, and is strongly positioned as the 'social' streaming platform - popular with the millennial and EDM generation - I wonder what this means for the rest of the market?  Spotify have the scale and were supposed to IPO at some point this year... what about the others?

Time will tell, but one thing that's for sure (and a shame) is that we won't see Dr Dre and Jay Z on the board of Apple - I imagine those would have been great meetings.