There's always more than one reason to justify the acquisition price, but surely the desire to purchase in the first play is a bit more singular? Such as wanting to jump start their streaming service in this case, and the rest is just tangential benefits.
Apple execs have repeatedly publicly praised the Beats Music service since the acquisition. There's absolutely no way that their plan is to just throw it away.
The core problem is that the article is shitty and has a linkbait title. The headline causes discussion to naturally go to the idea that they're going to "shut down" the service rather than transition the service and its existing customers into the iTunes umbrella, which is certainly not what people think of when they hear the phrase "shutting down". It's of course a matter of semantics, but if an article claimed they were shutting down Beats headphones and then in one of the final paragraphs mentions "oh and maybe that really just means they're rebranding them with Apple logos", it'd similarly lead to bad discussion.
Edit: Also, see the direct refutation from Apple. So now we've got one actual person on the record, a spokesperson from the company, versus five unnamed sources in a garbage article with glaring errors from a known-questionable source.
Apple bought Beats because they sell audio hardware at a markup and in volumes that even Apple was jealous of, to a very "juicy" demographic group (folks under 25). It's practically free money as long as the brand retains strength. The streaming service is a sideshow in comparison. The main reason so many people thought that Apple bought beats for the streaming service is that they didn't want to believe that Apple could be so crude as to simply buy a lucrative "fashion" brand so they invented some convoluted high-level strategy idea, but that's fantasy.
Apple will rename Beats to something else (tbd) -- it will become Apple's streaming service.
Apple bought Beats for the streaming music service -- to compete with Spotify, which is quickly gaining market share.