Don’t forget Steve Jobs sang the praises of John Sculley and ultimately regretted the decision to hire him at Apple. Just because Jobs anointed Cook don’t think Steve wouldn’t regret this decision today.
Bob Lefsetz, The Lefsetz Letter on Apple-Beats deal. The whole piece is worth reading.
Whether or not $3.2 is a fair price may be debatable. What isn’t debatable is this:
“The future of revenue for recorded music isn’t going to come from selling music to consumers — it will come from selling music audiences to advertisers” With that in mind, Apple is moving itself and the recording industry in the right direction. Broadcast radio’s $16 billion in revenue is under attack.
http://recode.net/2014/04/24/the-future-of-the-music-industry-selling-audiences-to-advertisers/
Some people seem to be making way to much of this acquisition. Even to the point of Iovine getting a board seat – The reality seems to be they bought a company with $1.6B in revenue for roughly double that – Mouse nuts in the scheme of things and only affects one small, small area of Apple – music downloads (now streaming). The hardware part is pocket change dropped on the floor for a company the size of Apple.
If things don’t go as Apple plans, it will not be a major deal.