Confirmed: Apple Buys That Thing Everyone Said They Were Buying

Apple confirmed on Wednesday that it will indeed buy Beats Electronics LLC, the audio company co-founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Sale price: $3 billion/

Apple confirmed on Wednesday that it will indeed buy Beats Electronics LLC, the audio company co-founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Sale price: $3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. That's only slightly less than the $3.2 billion first reported by Financial Times (and WSJ and Bloomberg) almost three weeks ago.

According to the Journal, both Iovine and Dre will join Apple as part of the deal, although Dre said he would continue to primarily be a music producer.

Here's more from the Journal on the details of the sale, which was reportedly in its final stages earlier this month:

Mr. Iovine, a longtime friend of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, said the two men's titles would simply be "Jimmy and Dre." They will work with both Apple's electronics and music-streaming divisions, spending as much time at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus as necessary, while serving more broadly to bridge the cultural divide between technology and entertainment industries.

In the deal, Apple gains a music streaming service and a high-end headphones line, just as music listeners become more and more interested in streaming services like Spotify or Pandora. They also gain two high-powered connections to the music industry who also happen to be amazing marketers. The deal will be the largest acquisition for Apple in its history.