Dr. Dre, Interscope Chairman Jimmy Lovine and HP have teamed up in an effort to reconstruct the entire "digital music ecosystem" starting with a new line of laptops, software and headsets under the Beats by Dr. Dre brand.
"I just want our product to sound better," Iovine said. "The record business committed many, many mistakes in the last 10 years, and I'm right in there. One of them was letting its product get degraded. It's one thing to let it get stolen, it's another to allow it to be degraded because then you really don't have a chance...video games and TV quality are getting better and the quality of our work is getting lower. If that happens, then music will become disposable. That's something we can fix."
Their goal, it seems, is to educate the iPod-owning masses about what music should sound like so that we may rise up and demand this sort of quality in the future. Details on the product line have not been released, but we do know that they will feature a premium price tag—a major barrier for adoption beyond the hardcore audiophile. While I agree that the public puts up with sub-standard sound quality in many cases, the best way to make a technology mainstream is to make it affordable. [CNET via BusinessWeek]