Beats price: $3 billion even (report)

THE $3 BILLION QUESTION: The New York Post’s Claire Atkinson reports that Apple will pay $3 billion for Beats Electronics, not the $3.2 billion initially first reported by the Financial Times earlier this month and picked up by everybody else. But hey, what’s $200 million among friends, even if Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre fall just short of actually becoming billionaires from the deal? Whether the price was reduced, as Atkinson speculates, pointing to the disparity between Beats Music’s 111k subscribers and the 10m who pay a monthly fee for Spotify, or simply misrepresented in the initial report will likely never be known. But it does appear that Apple was blindsided when the negotiations were made public. “Apple hadn’t even begun its due diligence process when news of the number came out,” one source close to the talks told Atkinson Tuesday. Speaking of large amounts of money, Donald Sterling has received offers "in excess of $2.5 billion" for the Clippers, according to the L.A. Times. (5/28a)