Jimmy Iovine talks Beats, Apple Music, and the streaming wars in new interview
What you need to know
- Jimmy Iovine sat down with the New York Times for a new interview.
- In the interview, Iovine talked music, tech, and how record labels need to adapt.
- He also talked a little about Apple Music and why he left the company.
Jimmy Iovine, the former owner of Interscope Records and executive of Apple Music, recently sat down with the New York Times to talk about his journey from music to tech, and the challenges that the industry will face in the future.
When asked about why he left Interscope Records and sold Beats to Apple, Iovine said that he says the need for the tech and music industry to come together, and he wanted to play a roll in making that work.
Iovine went further to say that "the streaming business has a problem on the horizon, and so does the music business." When pushed further, he expanded on the line, saying that the music streaming business is turning into a commodity.
Iovine had hoped to help solve this problem when he sold Beats to become an executive at Apple, helping to launch and run Apple Music, a music streaming service that now has over 60 million subscribers. When asked about why he left Apple, Iovine said that he "ran out of personal runway".
In his retirement, Iovine helps runs the XQ Institute, an educational initiative Steve Job's wife Laurene Powell Jobs. While he devotes himself to passion projects, Iovine still thinks about where the music industry is going, and how the record labels need to adapt to support artists in order to survive.
You can read the full interview at the New York Times website.
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Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.