How Can Jimmy Iovine Misrepresent Music Curation Without Undermining Music By Beats?

beats by dre

Jimmy Iovine's recent misrepresentation of the current state of music discovery, encapsulated in repeated assertions in multiple interviews on the theme that there is no human music curation by streaming music services, surprised me for its blatant disregard for objective reality. Yet I was even more surprised to see that even the majority of both music and tech media outlets softpedaled fact checking, at best, while many otherwise thoughtful individuals in the music industry defended Iovine with a variation on the theme, "That soundbite's not important. We should be focused on this soundbite!"

Given that the tendency to forgive and even flock to the defense of authority figures, no matter how ridiculous, upsets me way more than the widespread confusion surrounding the term "indie", I felt it best to address this topic with a Storify gathering examples of relevant public statements related to the music service once known as "Daisy" that I now term "Music By Beats."