The man of the year chosen by GQ is an Apple employee, now in his sixties, who broke into the music industry back in 1973 by recording John Lennon’s solo album when he was 20 years old. Since then, he has worked with the best artists in the music industry and founded Beats Electronics, which was sold this year to Apple for $3 billion. In case you haven’t guessed it yet, the man of the year is Jimmy Iovine (via MacRumors).
When rumours of the $3 billion deal surfaced, one of the first reactions was this: Apple was paying for the talent and experience of Iovine and his partner, Dr. Dre. Indeed, Iovine points out in his interview with GQ the aching point in Apple’s music business — there were plenty of reports this year of declining music downloads. He said that Apple has a “hole” in music.
I convinced them that they had to buy this company. I said, “I don’t want to work for anybody else. I want to do this at Apple. I know I can achieve this at Apple. I don’t want to shop it. I wanna come here, to Steve’s company. I know you guys; I know what you’re capable of; I know you get popular culture. I know you have a hole in music right now; let me plug it.” I think it was two years before they said yeah.
What do you mean they had a “hole” in music?
After Steve died, and with the rise of streaming, I could see they needed something. Beats Music fit.
Iovine is now an Apple employee; he works a couple of days per week at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino. He has no specific title at Apple, but he works under Eddy Cue, the head of iTunes.
Although Iovine didn’t reveal what he is working on at Apple, there have been rumours of Apple rebranding Beats Music and incorporating it into iTunes. Also, Trent Reznor, alongside U2’s Bono, have suggested that they are working on something related to music delivery, new music format.
