Sam Oliver
Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers will assume control of Apple's iTunes Radio service, according to a new report, uniting both of Apple's streaming music services under a single executive as the company gears up for a renewed assault on incumbent industry leaders Spotify and Pandora.
The purported leadership change comes on the same day that Apple officially welcomed Beats as a subsidiary, and less than one week after reports of Beats staff being laid off as Apple identified synergies between the two companies. Rogers's new role was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Though Rogers has been notably absent from the media circus surround Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Beats, Apple CEO Tim Cook specifically called him out in a tweet earlier Friday. In the missive, Cook welcomed "Jimmy, Dre, Luke, Ian and the entire beats team," including both Rogers and Beats Electronics CEO Luke Wood, who has kept a similarly low profile since the deal was announced.
Rogers made his bones in the music industry as a website developer for the Beastie Boys, eventually being hired by Yahoo to lead the portal's music division. Jimmy Iovine tabbed Rogers to run the new Beats Music division January of 2013.
With Rogers's new role confirmed, the only Beats executive left in the lurch is Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who doubled as the music service's Chief Creative Officer. It is still unknown what role, if any, Reznor will fill at Apple.
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64 Comments
"Rogers made his bones in the music industry as a website developer for the Beastie Boys, eventually being hired by Yahoo to lead the portal's music division." See? Web development isn't necessarily a dead-end job after all!
Ok Apple now hire someone to oversee Apple TV so we can finally get a new product there. Let Eddy focus on back end stuff like iCloud, maps and Siri.
[quote name="Rogifan" url="/t/181661/brains-behind-subscription-beats-music-to-also-oversee-apples-itunes-radio#post_2572610"]Ok Apple now hire someone to oversee Apple TV so we can finally get a new product there. Let Eddy focus on back end stuff like iCloud, maps and Siri.[/quote] The only thing Eddy should be focused on is retirement planning. Since Steve died he's proved to be ****ing useless.
Your proof of this is what?
[quote name="MacVicta" url="/t/181661/brains-behind-subscription-beats-music-to-also-oversee-apples-itunes-radio#post_2572616"] The only thing Eddy should be focused on is retirement planning. Since Steve died he's proved to be ****ing useless.[/quote] I thought it was interesting thar Cue didn't get any stage time at WWDC even though there were a number of iCloud/App Store announcements. I still think he has too much on his plate. iTunes, AppStore and Apple TV should be split and given to someone else. App Store still isn't great for app discovery and it doesn't seem like Cue is making much headway on content deals for Apple TV. Cue has more than enough to focus on with iCloud, Maps and Siri. All there have room for improvement. What will be most interesting is when iOS 8 and Yosemite go live. If all this iCloud stuff doesn't "just work" there's going to be a lot of unhappy customers. Depending on how the roll out goes this fall I think we'll know whether Cue is planning retirement or not.