Apple To Acquire Beats By Dr Dre's in A $3.2B Deal

Apple is set to acquire headphone maker and music company Beats Electronics for a reported $3.2 billion.

The acquisition could be announced as early as next week, the Financial Times reported, based on people familiar with the negotiations. USA TODAY independently confirmed the talks through a source who is not authorized to speak publicly about it.

If consummated, Apple's purchase of Beats could represent the company's largest acquisition ever. Apple and Beats declined to comment on the report.

Music mogul Jimmy Iovine and producer-rapper Dr. Dre co-founded Beats Electronics seven years ago and launched the high-end headphones craze. Earlier this year, they launched Beats Music, a premium music-streaming service.


Should the acquisition go through, it would be ironic in a way. Dre and Iovine came up with the idea for Beats by lamenting the decline in sound quality ushered in by Apple's own iPod and the MP3 era.

"For convenience and speed, everyone sacrificed sound," Iovine told USA TODAY three years ago. "The emotion of the music is almost unrecognizable to what is recorded in the studio," said Iovine, who is the chairman of Interscope/Geffen/A&M records.

The two set out to market headphones that reproduce, Iovine said, "as close to the sound I hear in the studio as possible."


Culled from USATODAY