Beats-Monster divorce

BEATS, MONSTER TO SPLIT: Beats by Dr. Dre is parting ways with Monster Cable at the end of this year, Bloomberg reported. Beats accounted for 53% of the $1-billion headphone market in 2011, according to stats from the NPD Group. “It was always planned,” Jimmy Iovine told Pop & Hiss from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. “It was always a five-year deal. It was a manufacturing distribution deal. We were with Monster for headphones and speakers. It was always a plan to turn into a freestanding company.” Iovine assured the Times there’s no “weirdness” between the two camps. “I don’t run my businesses like that. I just sort of do my own thing,” he said. “The growth of Beats has been so good. We are about the transmission of music, and sort of what we consider fixing the destruction of audio due to the digital revolution. This is important to us. We’re very proud of setting in motion. It’s important to Dre and I, and to people in the music business, for our sound to be transmitted properly.” Beats will retain the rights to the headphones' sound technology, design and brand. Dre and Iovine have now aligned Hewlett-Packard, HTC and Chrysler. Here’s Iovine being interviewed at CES by Times tech reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles. (1/17a)