Ian Rogers, Executive at Apple Music and former CEO at Beats Music, has left Apple for an unspecified job in an unrelated industry in Europe.
He was part of the executive team that joined Apple when they acquired Beats last year for $3 Billion USD.
Following the acquisition, he has led the development of Apple's Beats 1, hired radio DJ Zane Lowe from BBC Radio, and helped develop the overall product of Apple Music.
His resignition "caught colleauges off guard," according to financialtimes.com.
He formerly worked as a General Manager for Yahoo Music and was CEO of Topspin, a company that provides direct-to-consumer retail and marketing software for content creators.
Rogers will be leaving behind a successful product for all of us users. Beats 1, Apple Music's live radio station, has accumulated millions of daily listeners. Billboard looked at 155 tweets about including #Beats1 and only 9.7% were negative, suggesting a mostly positive feedback from listeners.
Apple Music reportedly had 11 million people sign up for their free trial within four weeks of its' launch, and more than 75% of those users are "active users". This compares to Spotify's 75 million active paid listeners and Pandora's 80 million active paid members.
However, in September, early users will see the end of their free trial, and must pay $10 a month to continue using the service.That will be when we will start to see just how successful the service is.
Apple has declined to comment on the situation other than to confirm that Rogers is leaving the company.
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Jack Griffin is a writer for the VAVEL USA Technology and Music sections. Follow him on Twitter at @jacksonlgriffin.
