IB tease: Beats/Daisy

SMELLS LIKE A WINNER: As Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine turn their attention to the Beats streaming service, code-named Daisy, observers are debating whether it’s possible for a late entry in this highly competitive sector to emerge victorious. Spotify, the consensus pick to achieve dominance when it launched in the U.S. 18 months ago, is now seen as vulnerable. Spotify doesn’t even pretend to be artist-friendly, and it lacks iTunes’ sexiness and elegance—the very qualities Iovine and Dre employed to transform the moribund headphone business. In this sense, their hiring of Topspin’s Ian Rogers, who has a similar M.O., could prove to be a savvy move. This according to HITS in-house pundit I.B. Bad, writing in his latest column, posting tomorrow morning. (1/17p)