(Image via Re/code)

It’s typical in any acquisition for both parties to sing the praises of their new partner, and Eddy Cue was certainly playing his part at Re/code’s Code Conference, saying that Beats’ curated playlists were a key strength and would help music grow again. As Mark Gurman reported in his live blog coverage at Code Conference:

Cue said Apple bought Beats because “music is dying. It hasn’t been growing.” He said combining the two companies will help it grow again […] Cue said what makes Beats good is that it provides users with curated playlists. He said: “When you bring what Beats has got and what we’ve got it’s not two plus two is four. It’s something much more than that” …

While many would disagree, Cue also said that Beats made “amazing premium headphones.”

Iovine, however, was less fulsome in his praise of Apple products, saying of the EarPods supplied with new iPhones:

You listen to ‘Apocalypse Now’ and a helicopter sounds like a mosquito […] They make them to see if the machine works.

Cue took it well, saying that “we make the best headphones that come in the box.”

Cue’s admission that Apple’s music business was in decline followed an analyst report yesterday suggesting that year-on-year iTunes sales had declined 24 percent. He did, however, point out that the service recently hit a total of 35B songs sold, and also had 40M iTunes Radio listeners.

Business Insider , meantime, put the size of the acquisition into perspective:

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