It’s been a year of big acquisitions in the technology sector. Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion in February, Google bought Nest Labs for $3.2 billion, and now reports indicate that Apple is in talks to acquire Beats Electronics for a $3.2 billion payout of its own.

The news about Apple broke in The Financial Times and The New York Times on Thursday, coming from anonymous sources familiar with the inner dealings currently taking place between the two companies. Nothing is for sure yet, and obstacles could still prevent the Apple-Beats merger. However, if the two companies can reach an agreement, then the technology world could be hearing about their new partnership as early as next week.

What does this mean for Apple? The company has been a dominating force in the music industry for over a decade now, ever since the iTunes music store and the iPod transformed the way that people purchased and listened to music. Now, however, Apple’s revenue growth has stalled out somewhat, and the age of downloading once proliferated by iTunes is arguably being phased out in favor of subscription-based streaming services like Spotify and Rdio.

A merger with Beats Electronics might do a lot to reinvigorate both Apple’s revenues and the company’s position in the music world. Beats was originally founded by music industry moguls Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, and the popular “Beats by Dre” headphone line has become immensely popular since it was first unveiled in 2008. The headphones bring deep bass and superior sound quality that Apple’s smaller earbuds can’t muster, and despite the fact that each set reportedly only costs $14 to make, Beats has been making a fortune from them by selling each pair for as much as $450.

At very least, Apple would be able to get its hands on some of that profit margin (and hopefully ramp up the quality of its own headphones and device speakers). However, many industry analysts believe that the reason Apple wants Beats Electronics is not for the company’s audio systems, but for its streaming music service. Last year, Apple unveiled iTunes Radio in an attempt to compete with the likes of Spotify and Pandora, but the feature has mostly been a disappointment.

The Beats streaming service, on the other hand, launched in January of this year, and has already gained significant attention for its curated playlists from the likes of Dr. Dre and Nine Inch Nails frontman, Trent Reznor. A combination between iTunes Radio and Beats could give Apple the subscription-based streaming service it really wants and give it a chance to win back the customers it has lost to Spotify and other streaming services in the past few years.

And while $3.2 billion sounds like a lot of money, it’s little more than a drop in the ocean for Apple. The company reportedly has $159 billion in cash reserves.