(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 24 October 2025 20:30, UK
As I write about a person in music being officially titled as a billionaire, I feel obliged to tell you that I am not, in fact, joking.
No, as musicians count the pennies earned from their Spotify streams, I am going to break down the life of one Jimmy Iovine, who, despite the desperate state of the music industry, is worth a reported $1.5billion.
To his credit, Iovine’s story is truly one of rags to riches. He’s had his finger in every musical pie since the 1970s, and in those early days, he became a recording engineer, working at the New York City faction of the Record Plant, hustling his way into working with the likes of John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks.
He was at the very beginning, a creative, like so many who get into the music industry, but it was clear he had a sixth sense that might just take him someplace. As ‘The Boss’ once described, “Jimmy knows great songs, and he knows who can sing them. He has one of the greatest guts for talent and is one of the greatest sponges for learning I’ve ever met. Jimmy misses nothing.”
But he used his gut to make a very important, and later, lucrative decision when it came to picking a career path. After making a name for himself as a prominent producer in the ‘70s and ’80s, with tracks any producer would kill for, ‘Stop Dragging My Heart Around’ and ‘Edge of Seventeen’, he decided to use his nous to conquer the world of music business.
In 1990, he co-founded Interscope Records with Ted Field, and together they signed off on monster distribution deals that essentially saw them with a grip on all the major releases in the world. Everything from U2 and No Doubt, to Eminem and 2Pac, had their shadow, with the latter artist being the fruits of a relationship Iovine struck up with Death Row Records, which ultimately led him to Dr Dre.
Iovine helped Dre release his masterpiece, The Chronic, which garnered a total of 19million records sold and skyrocketed the man into becoming one of the most influential and sought-after artists in the world. But more importantly, it laid down the foundations for a partnership that would ultimately make Iovine, a billionaire.
How did he become a billionaire?
In 2006, Dre went to visit Iovine, sharing that a friend of his had been trying to get into the sneaker industry, to which he delivered what has now become a famous line: “Forget sneakers, how about speakers”.
It was an epiphany for Iovine, who himself had been looking to leave the record publishing industry, due to the rapid digitalisation of music and subsequent piracy problems, and hence, the pair manufactured the famous Beats speakers and headphones, which stormed the market in the late noughties and early 2010s, making them a highly prized asset in the music industry.
Then, on May 28th, 2014, Apple Inc announced the acquisition of Beats Electronics, which resulted in Dre and Iovine bagging a share of over $3.24billion, becoming the largest acquisition deal in the history of Apple’s timeline and making the duo billionaires.
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