Beats cofounders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are creating a new high school that they say will be aiming to attract kids who feel disconnected from the current schooling experience.
It will be modeled after the University of Southern California academy they funded, and which they said was geared to the vision of Steve Jobs …
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Beats was purchased by Apple quite a while back. With that being said, Apple has yet to design any Beats products in-house, continuing to use the original Beats designs. Today, Apple’s Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have been hit with damages in the millions over a Beats case from 2016.
Apple employees Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have been planning an undergraduate academy for entrepreneurs at the University of Southern California for a few years now, and this week the Beats co-founders officially broke ground for the project, ABC reports.
Apple continues to expand its video content line-up by extending its partnership with Vice today as the duo have released the first episode in a new documentary series. Apple Music and Vice’s series, The Score, take a focus on various music scenes around the world. Episode one looks into the life of Minnesota’s Native American hip-hop scene and artists.
When Apple bought Beats back in 2014, it got a headphone/speaker line and the foundation for what became Apple Music. Now it appears that Beats co-founder and rap legend Dr Dre is going to be playing an even bigger role in the company. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Apple is currently producing an original series called Vital Signs with Dr Dre as the show’s star. It’s a new move for Apple, creating original video content, and one that is expected to be used to promote Apple Music.
Luke Wood, left, pictured with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre (photo: Kevin Mazur/Wire)
Beats President Luke Wood, who runs the audio products side of the business, told Mashable that the acquisition was a great fit because the company shared DNA with Apple.
We’re looking at our little audio slice of the world and trying to focus on creating a stellar product experience. I think that’s also the fundamental DNA of everything Steve wanted to accomplish at Apple. By product experience, that includes ID, design, technology, innovation, simplicity. Those are always things that have been fundamental to our DNA, too.
He said that the early days of low-quality digital music resulted in a ‘lost generation’ for premium audio, but that we now live in a very different world …
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Hip-hop artist Dr. Dre’s controversial and storied past was bound to become an issue for Apple at some point after it bought the company he co-founded for $3 billion last year. Now Apple is hoping it can let the rapper’s history live in the past, which is especially tricky as it promotes the biofilm “Compton” depicting the rapper’s entrance into fame.
The biographical film, which was produced with close cooperation from Dr. Dre, has been criticized for omitting decades old allegations that the artist physically abused women. Today both Dr. Dre and Apple released statements addressing the controversy, Dre saying that he deeply apologizes for his actions 25 years ago and adding that “it has forever impacted all of our lives” while Apple said that “we have every reason to believe that he has changed.”
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Wired’s new cover story featuring Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre includes interviews with the Beats co-founders turned Apple executives and also some quotes from others on the Apple Music team. The article has a lot of backstory on the duo pre Apple’s acquisition of Beats, much of which we’ve heard in the past, but mostly discusses the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, an undergraduate program the two Apple executives have started at the University of Southern California.
“If you tell a kid, ‘You’ve got to pick music or Instagram,’ they’re not picking music,” Iovine says. “There was a time when, for anybody between the ages of 15 and 25, music was one, two, and three. It’s not anymore.”
The school aims to create a new generation of creative executives by assembling a faculty drawn from the schools of art, business, and engineering in an ambitious new curriculum. This, Iovine says, will be his true legacy, a pipeline of professionals, equally at home in the worlds of tech and culture, who can steer the music industry through whatever displacements lie ahead. “If the school doesn’t work, to me the whole thing failed,” Iovine says. “Because then you’ve got to pray for freaks, and that’s no way to run a business.”
You can read the full Wired cover story online here.
Apple is continuing its promotion of Apple Music this weekend. After putting out a trio of television advertisements promoting Apple Music and its artist-integrated Connect platform, the company has announced a pair of statistics for the launch weekend of its employee Dr. Dre’s new Compton Album. In a statement, Apple says that Compton was streamed 25 million times over the course of its opening week as an Apple Music exclusive. The album was also downloaded half a million times via the iTunes Store.
In a new interview with Billboard, Beats 1 head anchor and “special creative” Zane Lowe has shared some new information and backstory regarding Apple’s (almost) always-on radio station and streaming music service. In the interview, Lowe discusses the motives behind playing the music he plays on his show, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of being in charge of the entirety of Beats 1.
Update: The stream is now live, an hour early.
Earlier this week, Dr. Dre announced that his first new album in 15 years while hosting his show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 station. While the album has been available for preorder since then, it will be available to stream for free on Apple Music later tonight at 6PM PT. The album, entitled Compton: A Soundtrack, is entirely exclusive to Apple and is being described by Dre as his “grand finale.”
Would you switch to Apple as a cellular provider? That’s the big question this week. Apple denied these reports, but there may be some details in this denial that lead other places. Speaking of unannounced and rumored Apple products, it looks like there’s new information on Project Titan, which could be a Cupertino-made electric car. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217880645″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]
Dr. Dre joined Apple as part of the Beats acquisition last year. Dre’s contribution to (aside from branding) is questioned by critics but fans of his work will be pleased to know he announced his first new album in fifteen years, entitled Compton A Soundtrack. The album can be preordered on iTunes now ready for release on August 7th.
Dre announced his long-awaited new release on his Beats 1 radio show yesterday with rapper and former colleague, Ice Cube. The album will be exclusive to Apple, available to buy on iTunes or stream on Apple Music.
Dr. Dre with Apple’s Eddy Cue
[Update: Apple tells us that The Chronic will definitely be available tomorrow on Apple Music.]
[Update #2: The Chornic is available on Apple Music and available to purchase digitally for the first time on the iTunes Store.]
Taylor Swift’s 1989 album isn’t the only high profile record exclusive coming to Apple’s new streaming music service when it launches tomorrow. Apple Music is said to include Dr. Dre’s classic album The Chronic for streaming, Rolling Stone reports, which will be a digital first for the hip-hop album.
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Along with today’s announcement that Zane Lowe’s first Beats 1 interview will be with Eminem, a New York Times profile on the DJ revealed the titles and hosts for other shows on Apple’s upcoming music streaming service.
As you might expect, Apple’s own Dr. Dre will be hosting a show of his own called “The Pharmacy.” Rapper Drake, who appeared on stage at the Apple Music announcement, will also have a show on the streaming radio service.
Apple is aiming to sign up a massive 100M subscribers for its streaming music service, according to a source cited by the Associated Press (reproduced in the NY Times). This would be more than double the subscriptions for all other streaming music services combined.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says that existing worldwide streaming subscriptions total around 41M across all services. The market leader, Spotify, has around 4.7M subscribers in the USA …
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Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off. On Monday, June 8th, company executives will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to provide their annual roadmap for Apple’s software, services, and devices.
Traditionally, Apple has used the conference to introduce major upgrades to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system iOS, as well as the Mac operating system OS X, along with new services. Of course, 2015 will be no different. Apple has been preparing a new version of iOS 9 codenamed “Monarch,” a release of OS X 10.11 codenamed “Gala,” a new streaming Apple Music service based on Beats Music, and updates for the Apple Watch.
Over the last several years, we have provided advance reports on the lion’s share of announcements that will be made at WWDC, as well as a comprehensive roundup ahead of the event. Read on for our roundup of what’s coming, along with fresh new details not found in our earlier reports.
Apple is ready to show the first fruits of its Beats acquisition next week. As we first reported in early March, Apple is planning to introduce its long-awaited Beats-based streaming music service at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, June 8th. Blending Apple interface design and features from the Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine-created Beats Music app, Apple’s service, known internally as “Apple Music,” is built to take on Spotify and Pandora with several new features and a subscription model. Additionally, Apple is working on overhauling its widely panned iTunes Radio service by striking deals with popular artists and DJs. Below, we detail Apple’s plans for both Apple Music and the new iTunes Radio in an extensive roundup.
Apple won’t take the wraps off of its upcoming Beats-based music streaming service at its March 9 “Spring Forward” event, according to music industry sources briefed on the launch timeline. Instead, Apple currently plans to introduce the service, at least in beta form, at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June. The WWDC keynote likely takes place on Monday, June 8th, and that’s the event where the debut will occur. The new iTunes music streaming service is based on technology acquired from Beats Music, including curated playlists, cloud-based libraries, and offerings customized to the musical tastes of individual users. The service will be priced as high as $7.99 per month, which is less expensive than current $9.99 pricing for Beats Music, Spotify, and Rdio…
Image: Forbes
When Apple enters a new business, you know it’s not going to do so in a half-hearted, small way. When it launches its Apple-branded Beats Music service later this year, it’s a no-brainer to predict that it’s going to be a big deal for the music industry. With Apple’s deep integration of Beats into its existing iOS/iTunes ecosystem exclusively revealed by Mark Gurman added into the mix, I wonder whether the unique selling points being notched up by Apple could be enough to leave existing big-name players like Spotify, Google Play and Rdio dead in the water?
That’s rather a grand idea, of course. As of last month, Spotify reached 15 million paid subscribers–up 50% in the last six months alone. Beats Music had only a little over 100,000 subscribers at the time Apple bought the company, and is rumored to have only 2-3 times as many now. But an Apple-ified Beats Music service has four things going for it …
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrlLcb7zYmw]
Before there was his current Apple gig, there was Dr. Dre’s storied rise from the streets of Compton to global hiphop sensation and producer which eventually led to the headphone, speaker, and streaming music brand and Jimmy Iovine partnership with Beats.
This is the Hollywood version of that story which Dr. Dre co-produced.
Straight Outta Compton – Red Band Trailer with Introduction from Dr. Dre and Ice Cube (HD) (Official)
The Story of N.W.A. – In Theaters August 14th
http://www.straightouttacompton.com/In the mid-1980s, the streets of Compton, California, were some of the most dangerous in the country. When five young men translated their experiences growing up into brutally honest music that rebelled against abusive authority, they gave an explosive voice to a silenced generation. Following the meteoric rise and fall of N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton tells the astonishing story of how these youngsters revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the hood and ignited a cultural war.
Starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, Straight Outta Compton is directed by F. Gary Gray (Friday, Set It Off, The Italian Job). The drama is produced by original N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who are joined by fellow producers Matt Alvarez and Tomica Woods-Wright. Will Packer serves as executive producer of the film alongside Gray.
Six months after buying the subscription music service Beats Music, Apple is actively working to launch a completely new paid streaming music service that will compete with Spotify and Rdio. Yet to be named, the new service is entirely Apple-designed, yet leverages Beats’ technologies and music content, a collaboration that has thus far led to personnel challenges and delays. Multiple sources within Apple and the music industry have provided the first in-depth details of Apple’s upcoming streaming service, which we share below.
Beats Electronics has definitely faced its share of lawsuits after being acquired by Apple, but today yet another company has announced that it’ll be taking the electronics maker to court. Rival Monster has filed a claim against Beats that alleges the latter stole its headphone tech.
The original Beats headphones were designed in conjunction with Monster, but Monster CEO Noel Lee says that Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre took what they learned from his company—and the technology that powered the headphones—then simply slapped Dre’s name on it.
You can see the full complaint below:
The undergraduate academy for entrepreneurs created at the University of Southern California by Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine is geared to fulfilling Steve Jobs’ vision of operating at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, say the duo in a WSJ profile.
There’s a new kid in town, and he’s brought up on an iPad from one and a half years old. But the problem with some of the companies up north [in Silicon Valley] is that they really are culturally inept. I’ve been shocked at the different species in Northern and Southern California—we don’t even speak the same language. The kid who’s going to have an advantage in the entertainment industry today is the kid who speaks both languages: technology and liberal arts. That’s what this school is about.
Iovine said in a USC commencement speech that The Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation was there to “inspire, challenge, and satisfy the curiosity of the next wave of game-changers” …
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