Back in March, it was announced the Beats Electronics, the headset manufacturer founded by Dr. Dre, was eyeing MOG, the subscription-based music service.  Beats finally announced that the acquisition fell through and they’ve officially acquired MOG.

“Beats is a company as obsessed with sound quality as we are and we share a common goal of creating a more premium sound experience and emotional connection with music in the digital era,” MOG founder and CEO David Hyman said.

As for the reason why Beats chose MOG, it’s quite unclear.  Some say that MOG was looking for a buyer, while some say the Beats was impressed at how “it was the first music service to offer its entire 16 million song-catalog in the 320KB format as well as its ability to scale across multiple platforms and devices .“  Others are just saying that the acquisition was just a way to sell more headphones.

But we could look at it in another way: maybe HTC’s just looking into beefing up their cloud music offering.  If you recall, HTC invested $300 million on Beats, making them a majority owner of Beats.  This could be another step towards competing with Apple iTunes and other integrated music cloud services from rival OEMs.  You see, HTC’s not the only one who’s investing in cloud music service for mobile.

Apple

News last week broke that Apple plans on overhauling iTunes to make it seamlessly integrate with their iCloud service.n  The goal of the overhaul is to make files on iCloud be more manageable and shareable via iTunes.  They are said to be in talks with music labels “for rights that would let a user listen to a song sent to them from a friend for free.”

Though these labels have been urging Apple to offer a streaming service like Spotify, another source stated that it would be highly unlikely for the iPhone maker to give in to their requests at the moment.

Amazon

Last month, Amazon launched the Cloud Player app that allows iOS users to stream or download music stored in Cloud Player to their iPhone or iPod touch, play music that is already stored on their device, and manage or create playlists.  This is just one bite into Apple’s shares of users as the company is said to be preparing to introduce a cloud service that would take on iTunes and iCloud.  Amazon made agreements with four major music labels for a music service that would allow users to store songs on a remote server and access them online.  The cloud service is ready to launch during the first week of July.

Sony

Sony Corporation of America, along with other investors, the Estate of Michael Jackson, Mubadala Development Company PJSC, Jynwel Capital Limited, the Blackstone Group’s GSO Capital Partners LP and David Geffen, announced that they have acquired EMI Music Publishing from Citigroup.  Sony/ATV Music Publishing, a joint venture between Sony and the Estate of Michael Jackson, will administer EMI Music Publishing on behalf of the investor group.

“Music publishing, along with the rest of our entertainment companies, has been a bright spot in our business portfolio, and we expect that trend to continue with this important acquisition,” said Kazuo Hirai, President and CEO, Sony Corporation.  “Through our Sony/ATV Music Publishing joint venture with the Estate of Michael Jackson, Sony has become the world’s preeminent music publishing operation, administering the most prolific and diverse catalog in the world.”

This acquisition could prove to be quite profitable for Sony as they can now have access to EMI’s database of music, making it easier for them to establish a cloud music service and offer free subscription to it to every Sony mobile device user.