Beats Electronics Acquires MOG
MOG now belongs to Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. The company that the prominent music figures co-founded, Beats Electronics, acquired the music streaming service yesterday after initial courting of the purchase began in March. Partly backed by HTC, Beats Electronics is best known for making the popular, high-end Beats by Dre headphones.
Although terms of the purchase were not disclosed, HTC revealed to shareholders that Beats had paid $14 million for MOG. The music service counts 500,000 active users and the MOG ad network was not a part of the deal. (By comparison, its biggest competitor, Spotify, is currently valued at $4 billion.) MOG chief executive David Hyman will continue to oversee his 48 employees and will report to Beats president Luke Wood and Iovine.
Wood told the Los Angeles Times that the Berkeley, California-based MOG would continue to operate as an independent business for the time being. However, integration with Beats products will be explored to offer listeners a more integrated experience, “from the point of discovery to the point of playback,” he said.
Wood also told USA Today that he considered various options when looking to acquire a music service and that MOG most shared Beats’ emphasis on pushing forward the consumer electronics experience.
“They were the first service to offer their entire catalog in the 320-kilobit format,” he said. “They were the first service to be really committed to multiple access points in the deals they did with LG and Samsung for the TV and BMW for the car.” Beats has followed a similar strategy: integrating Beats speaker systems in Hewlett-Packard computers and Chrysler vehicles.