Jimmy Iovine's high-profile run with Apple Music is coming to an end in 2018, according to a report from Billboard.
Unnamed sources disclose that Iovine is planning a departure from the streaming service in April. This timing is believed to coincide with his Apple shares fully vesting, allowing Iovine to exercise his stock options. The move comes less than four years after Iovine sold his Dr. Dre joint venture, Beats, to Apple for $3 billion.
On the premiere episode of Complex's Blueprint series in July, the former Interscope CEO commented on his life-long history of career-altering decisions. "I like to pivot. I was always someone like that," he explained. "I get complacent and bored. I got bored of producing records. I got bored of running a record company. I wanted to move on."
At the end of his Blueprint interview, Iovine looked at his future and said, "I promised [Apple executives] Tim Cook and Eddie Cue that I would do everything I could to make Apple Music successful. And I'm going to do that. But at some point... I'm not young anymore. I'm 64 years old. You know, I'll see what happens." You can watch the full interview at the bottom of this page.
This report comes on the heels of big news from two of Apple Music's biggest competitors. Spotify was hit with a $1.6 billion lawsuit for using tens of thousands of songs without license and SoundCloud is receiving heat from users for changing its audio codec. Looks like 2018 will be another interesting year in the ever-evolving streaming war.
