Jimmy Iovine is the CEO Beats Audio, the companies that already produce the famous Beats headphones, and in one intervened yesterday he discussed his relationship with Apple and Steve Jobs. A decade ago, Iovine tried to convince Steve Jobs to launch an audio streaming service since 2002-2003, but after 3 years of discussions and fumbling, Steve Jobs he did not want to develop this service, the main problem being the commission offered to the record companies, jobs considering that it must be small and that eventually the companies will accept it.
In 2002, 2003, Doug asked me to go up to Apple and see Steve. So I met him and we hit it off right away. We were really close. We did some great marketing stuff together: 50 Cent, Bono, Jagger, stuff for the iPod — we did a lot of stuff together. But I was always trying to push Steve into subscription. And he wasn't keen on it right away. [Beats co-founder] Luke Wood and I spent about three years trying to talk him into it. He was there, not there...he didn't want to pay the record companies enough. He felt that they would come down, eventually. I don't know what [Apple media head] Eddy Cue would say — I'm seeing him soon — but I think in the end Steve was feeling it, but the economics...he wanted to pay the labels [for subscriptions], but [the fees were] not going to be acceptable to them.
Although he failed then to convince Apple to launch a streaming service, now the company will launch one not developed in-house under the Project Daisy and Mog brand. Although Iovine has collaborated with Apple in many projects, it seems that at those moments everything was not suitable for Steve Jobs, but this does not mean that the current Apple would not be prepared for an extensive collaboration with Beats Audio in terms of services of streaming audio.
