While Iovine was the public face of Apple Music and held meetings with employees and artists in Los Angeles, in recent years “most of Apple Music’s operations” had been designated to Robert Kondrk and Jeff Robbin, overseeing business and engineering sides respectively. Cue is said to now be deciding on whether to continue divvying up responsibilities between Kondrk and Robbin, promoting one to a more public role, or hiring someone outside of Apple to become the new Iovine.
I’m not really surprised with the move, whether it’s Jimmy or Apple that made the decision. Jeff Robbin is a trusted and longtime Apple employee that already has a lot of responsibility in Apple’s media business, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Eddy Cue lean on him a bit more.