@DrDre @mrInterscope
Tuesday, music executive Luke Wood announced that he is leaving his post as Chief Strategy Officer of Interscope Geffen A&M but not necessarily changing bosses.  He will be  joining IGA chairman Jimmy Iovin and Producer Dr. Dre at Beats Electronics, the company responsible for the very successful Beat By Dr. Dre headphone line of high-fidelity headphones.

If you don’t have a clue who Luke Wood is, don’t worry its not essential to the story.  Instead consider the move in its symbolism.  While Dre’s very very long-awaited “Detox” album gets set to drop sometime this millennium he has said that it will be his last.  Given the success of these headphones everyone suddenly is wearing as if a $100 fashion accessory I think its pretty clear now that he’ll soon be concentrating full-time on audio technology.

What Iovine and Dre have discovered is the first successful corporate cultivation of the Digital Music Revolution.  Beats sales have grown over 100% in the last year, with consumers purchasing more than 1.6 million headphones.   Until now, digital downloading has evolved almost exclusively on the black market without corporate America finding a way to profit.

While the compressed quality of today’s torrent downloaded actually renders the enhanced performance of Beats Technology useless, its the promise of a better quality future for its fans.  Given the technology now available for fans via Beats and other copycats, demand for better quality music will soon grow.

While Dre is undoubtable one of the best producers of our generation, the Wood aka robbing Peter to pay Paul announcement today, however subtle, is a referndum on where Dre feels his talents are best apportioned.  When Detox finally drops, savvor it because it will be his last project but it could just be the tip of the iceberg for Dre and Iovine.  No longer will it be about what we hear but how we hear it.