Is Apple planning to merge Beats Music and iTunes?

As digital music sales have been experiencing a decline in recent times, and since Beats Music was recently acquired by Apple, the Wall Street Journal has reported that the digital leader is planning to merge it with iTunes. 

If the report is true, the move would put Apple in direct competition with Spotify and, it seems likely that Spotify would fail to keep up. Sources are reporting that Apple is currently in discussions with the world's biggest record labels to work out a deal where users would pay a monthly streaming subscription of just $5, which is currently half the price of Spotify. 

It's this fact, plus 800 million pre-existing iTunes users (half on whom already have their credit card details stored on file), that perhaps means Apple could easily become the market leader for music streaming world wide.