Apple in negotiations to purchase Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's Beats Electronics may be quickly become Apple's latest acquisition... at the impressive price of $3.2 billion. Most well known for designer headphones, Beats recently launched the streaming music service Beats Music, a platform that seeks to overtake Spotify as the premier service in streaming music. Originally reported by The Financial Times and confirmed by Bloomberg, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, this would be the largest acquisition in Apple's history.
Beats Music seeks to revolutionize the streaming music marketplace
The brain child of Jimmy Iovine, Trent Reznor, Ian Rogers, Luke Wood and Dr. Dre, Beats Music is the latest entrant into the streaming music business. An offshoot of the industry-defining Beats by Dre, the new kid on the music distribution block prides itself on providing a better brain to the discovery process. A suggestion engine and a tastemakers' toolbox, Beats Music outshines its competition by being more than just an algorithm and instead leverages a bevy of tastemaking partners to inform its engine. Iovine tells the NY Times, “What song comes next, is as important as what song is playing now.” -- a comment that may as well be a mantra for the platform. With the current digital landscape awash in music -- the sheer amount proving daunting for an average listener -- Beats seeks to eliminate those issues by providing a smartly curated-platform from its partners across the music industry. As part of its music first ideology, Beats' model does not mimic its competitors and will not have a free tier, this subscription-based model allows for a higher royalty payout for artists through the service.