Jimmy Iovine on how Beats was born out of record company struggles
About Jimmy
- Co-founded Interscope Records, shaping pop and hip hop culture since 1990.
- Co-founder of Beats Electronics and Beats Music, sold to Apple for $3B in 2014.
- Produced albums for legends: John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks.
- Founded USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Tech & Business Innovation.
- Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 for a 50-year industry career.
Jimmy Iovine on how Beats was born out of record company struggles
Jimmy Iovine watched tech and media companies make billions off music while the record industry struggled. That frustration sparked a turning point: music had to become more than just song sales. His answer was to build something new with artists — and that’s how Beats was born.
Transcript
Note: Transcripts may be automatically generated and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.
All these big companies use music and make billions of dollars and we're sitting here in the record business getting banged like this and everyone else is using the IP from MTV to whoever else and they're making a fortune. I realized that at that moment music had to be more than just selling songs. I got to work with our artists and come up with other ways to build something incredible, other companies and that's where Beats came from.
