A report in the New York Times says Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine may add to their $500 million headphone empire by purchasing MOG's streaming music service.
According to the New York Times’ “Media Decoder” blog and The Hollywood Reporter, Dr. Dre’s Beats Electronics is in the final stages of negotiating a purchase of MOG online music service. While the purchase price to acquire MOG has not been made public, Beats Electronics already holds a significant share in the personal electronics industry. Previous reports have listed Beats Electronics annual revenue at $500 million, and in August of 2011 Beats struck a $300 million partnership with Taiwanese corporation HTC. This would add to previous partnerships with Chrysler and HP.
In line with Beats advertised claims to offer a superior audio experience, MOG streams at a higher bitrate (320 kilobits per second), than competitors such as GrooveShark and Spotify. In theory, this would support claims to offer a higher quality of streaming music.
Ross Rubin of marketing research firm NPD speculated that such a move “would close the loop in terms of a vertically integrated offering. The playback device, the service and the listening device could all be optimized for Beats.”
Monday, HTC issued a statement denying a report by Business Insider that HTC was in talks to purchase MOG. At press time, neither MOG nor Beats Electronics could be reached for comment on the potential deal.
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