Daisy CEO Ian Rogers, with Dr Dre, Jimmy Iovine and Luke Wood of Beats Electronics, at the announcement of Daisy at CES 2013 in Las Vegas
Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly been in discussion with Beats Electronics CEO Jimmy Iovine on a possible partnership between the two on a digital music-streaming service.
Reuters claims to have spoken to three sources on the matter who say Cook met with Iovine in late February, along with Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services and one of the key people behind the iTunes music store.
Beats Electronics, producer of the high-end headphones bearing legendary hip-hop producer and co-founder Dr Dre’s name, is already in the process of establishing its own music-streaming service – project Daisy – to launch later this year.
Announced at CES in January, Daisy secured US$60m in funding this week from a group of investors led by Access Industries – an investment group led by Warner Music Group owner Len Blavatnik.
Iovine himself is also chair of record label Interscope Geffen A&M (owned by Universal Music Group) while Daisy’s chief creative officer is noted musician Trent Reznor and CEO is Ian Rogers of Topspin Media, which provides software for musicians to grow their audiences online.
With these music industry figureheads at its helm, Daisy has a good chance of creating deals with record labels for providing a digital music service. This could be the very reason that Apple, rumoured to be working on some kind of streaming service for months now, is interested in teaming up.
