In 2014, Dr. Dre made an infamous video celebrating Apple’s acquisition of Beats in which he called himself “the first billionaire in hip-hop,” but it almost killed the entire deal, according to Tripp Mickle’s new tell-all book After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul.
Nick deCourville for The Mac Observer:
Mickle explains that CEO Tim Cook discovered Beats and wished to acquire it… [He] had to contend with Jimmy Iovine. Finally settling on a price to purchase both Beats Music and Beats Electronics, the book reveals that the only thing that could spoil the situation would be for word of the deal to publicly leak.
Iovine was especially persistent on this issue, going so far as to quote the film Goodfellas to Dr. Dre. Iovine said to the rapper, “Remember that scene in Goodfellas where Jimmy tells the guys, ‘Don’t buy any furs. Don’t buy any cars. Don’t get showy’?” He said. “Don’t move.”
By 2 a.m. the following morning, Iovine was on the phone with Puff Daddy, where the rapper explained that Dr. Dre and artist Tyrese posted a video on Facebook that revealed the deal… The video also shows Dre when he famously announced that Forbes needed to update their rich list, as he was now the first billionaire in hip-hop.
MacDailyNews Note: See: Dr. Dre boasts of Apple-Beats deal in YouTube video, on Facebook – May 9, 2014
Video (language NSFW, depending on where you work):
Mickle’s book reveals that Cook leveraged the situation to demand adjustments to the terms of the deal. In total, Cook used the video to shave $200 million off the final price.
MacDailyNews Take: The $200 million boast. Oops.
As we wrote at the time of the video’s release, “Historically, the best way to lock up a deal with Apple is to make a YouTube video about it and prematurely blast it all over online. Apple absolutely loves that sort of stuff.”
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I still don’t understand the purchase at all. Tim Cook sucks, in more ways than one.
Total waste of money. Apple Beats is a joke and Apple unworthy.
I see that some armchair accountants here have run the numbers that they don’t have and concluded that it was a bad purchase. Well done.
The Beats music service was much better than Apple Music, they should have just kept the brand and UI, and kept our personal iTunes libraries separate damnit.