Dr. Dre and record label mogul Jimmy Iovine’s Beats Electronics has been rising to the top of the consumer audio electronics ranks for some time now. Today they are taking the next step to top level sound for everything. The Taiwanese based company HTC will be acquiring 51% of Beats Electronics for an investment of $300 Million. Check the jump for quotes and more on the story.

Beats Electronics will still keep its relationships with HP, Chrysler, and other companies. HTC said that some smartphones will have Beats audio in them by the end of the year. Interscope chief executive and Dr. Dre’s partner Jimmy Iovine said:

“Getting Beats audio into HTC phones is one of the first things we’re going to do,” Iovine said in an interview. “We are going to be in business with HTC and they’re going to help us and were going to help them in every way they can. And you’ll see Beats audio in just about every phone or tablet they want it to be in, but they know what we’ve built and respect the brand and will help us continue to innovate and push Beats further.”

“The idea behind Beats has always been and still is to fix the degradation of sound in digital music,” Iovine said. “TV got better with HD and movies got better with high definition and digital has destroyed audio through the speed and convenience of compressing … it. Sound is the [weakest] end of the computer and that’s what we’ve been working to change. HTC gives us a technology partner to work with to make this change happen.”

The deal has been a long time coming according to HTC’s president of global sales and marketing Jason MacKenzie:

“We’re excited about this being a much deeper partnership than Beats has had with other companies in the past,” MacKenzie said. “The phone is the one product you’re carrying with you all the time and are relying on every day. There is really no product more personal than your phone right now and we want to make the best sound phones out there, when you’re watching a movie, listening to a song, making a call.”

“It’s very important to us in the music industry that music makes the transition to the phone in a elegant way, in a quality way,” Iovine said. “Music on the cellphone should sound and feel great and we don’t want you to just download bad sounding mp3s and play them on bad sounding $3 earbuds. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a phone or a tablet and listen to music out of $3 earbuds? It just doesn’t add up.”

UPDATE: Statement From Beats by Dre

Props: LA Times