&gt; And really his strength and the reason why he was instrumental to iTunes lay in his ability to negotiate and drive deals with all of the music industry players.<p>He had negotiated some great deals back in the day, but the music world changed and he wasn&#x27;t making progress at negotiating (partly due to his past success, labels didn&#x27;t want Apple to continue to have so much power). Cue not being able to make a deal is why Apple bought Beats for $3B and gained access to its streaming deal. Tough spot to be in and I think it would have happened the same way regardless of who was negotiating (scrappy iPod era Apple and current iPhone behemoth Apple are radically different negotiating partners).