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Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many people love their sound).
hellbanTHIS comments that he lost a lot of respect for Apple when they bought Beats. Initially, I did too, but having learnt more about the company, I think it's a perfect fit. A lot of people say that you shouldn't buy a Mac because you can buy a Windows machine with the same spec. Often, they're right. But they're also missing the point completely - you don't buy a Mac for the memory, the CPU, the SSD - you buy it for the experience, the "it just works", and for how nice the hardware is. Beats is the exact same thing. People aren't buying the headphones for the sound quality, they're buying it for everything else.
Again, I'm no fan of Beats. But somewhere like Hacker News, we ought to admire their ingenuity in taking over a market where the existing players had completely ignored (and frankly, seemed oblivious to the presence of) a large untapped audience.
The comparison with Mac seems really spurious. Apple, at its best, redesigns hardware and software to find whole new ways of interacting intuitively with really very complicated computing devices. That is not comparable to making some headphones which are bass heavy.
Beats is like Apple, but with its objective value stripped out. i.e. just the fashion and marketing without any of the engineering excellence and innovation.
I completely agree. The typical Beats buyer who just want nice looking headphones that sound kickin'. Shame on their competitors for failing to understand their audience.
(And personally I wouldn't put much stock in what the audiophiles think. The homoeopathy-grade "facts" and "truths" which pervade much of the audiophile world are in my opinion far more contemptible.)
> Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first
Haven’t people been having this exact same conversation about Bose for decades? Shitty quality, but aesthetics, a few whizzy features, and a lot of marketing that breathlessly claims they “sound better?”
Also Bang and Olufsen. Middling sound but beautiful aesthetics, and a price tag to make them the haute couture of audio?
I would say that Bose spent a lot of money trying to make their headphones aesthetically pleasing, but dealt with an aging market. Younger buyers naturally view Bose as something their parents would own.
It seems to me that the success of Beats really comes down to demographics. In fashion, it is difficult for a brand to jump generations, so there’s a natural opportunity for new brands to establish themselves with a younger generation.
Beats did everything right to take advantage of great timing.
You should check your premise. With companies like Bose and Bang & Olufson around for several decades, it's hard to imagine how your claim that they entered a market where every company was focused on sound quality first could be true.
The ingenious thing that Beats by Dre did was market the Bose sound and product to fans of hip hop, R&B, and pop electronica. All three of these genres, with their particularly die-hard listening audience, had never been able to be penetrated by a prior audio product besides extremely cheap Skullcandy offerings and the like. The profit margins are considerably higher on a $300 pair of headphones than on a $25 pair of headphones - especially if the Skullcandy and Beats by Dre options are capable of providing an equally-high fidelity output.
As an audio engineer, this of course makes me sad. But it is indeed genius.
The ergonomics seem right for walking about and catching buses/trains/trams. The Beats headphones my students sport include that socket on the headphone end so if the lead gets caught, the plug pulls out.
My huge Beyerdynamic cans would represent a health and safety issue if worn outside the house and the 400 Ohm impedance is not a good match for battery powered devices.
The humble Sennheiser HD201 headphones seem fairly popular for those less well-heeled students upgrading from the supplied ear-buds mind you. Lots of bang for the buck.
I agree, Apple is the perfect fit for something like that. They've always taken "boring" hardware and made it a fashion/status statement. They've done this with PCs, phones, music players and now headphones.
as a consumer its ridiculous. as a technologist and nearly lifelong musician its offensive.
> certain types of music - music listened to by young people
Can I feel old now? Where's my lawn?
> People aren't buying the headphones for the sound quality, they're buying it for everything else.
I find this worrying, really. Are we so desperate to consume that we're willing to buy shit just for sake of buying?
Sennheiser HD 280 Pros - best headphones for under US$100. Balanced sound, good isolation, responsive and clean, comfortable for long sessions.
http://en-us.sennheiser.com/professional-dj-headphones-noise...
http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-Headphones/dp/B0...
I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want you to know I like popular brands over high quality and my own listening experience".
You don't buy beats for the sound, you buy beats to signal your tribal membership. People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership signal. It's almost instinctual and done without a lot of thinking and good marketers know how to leverage this.
It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.
I understand purchasing anything that is highly visible on your body as a fashion statement.
> I just don't understand purchasing headphones
> as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want
> you to know I like popular brands over high
> quality and my own listening experience".
Beats aren't to my taste, although neither are $150 basketball shoes or a lot of other things. I get it, though.
> I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement.
It's not necessarily a statement. Look: I write music. I like music with a good quality. When I buy speakers, I look for reviews on GearSlutz and aim at the best and most transparent ones. The same goes for headphones.
But at the same time, from the aesthetics standpoint, these headphones look hideous. In fact, most of professional audio monitors and headphones look ugly, in my opinion. I have a pair of AKG K77 headphones on right now, and another pair of heavy, bulky, closed AKG monitors at home. They sound great. But they're UGLY.
And if I wasn't that much into sound quality, I would definitely buy Dr Dre's phones instead. Sound quality is not something any person can perceive easily, and see value in; but the visual aesthetics is something that you can actually see with your eyes.
I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement.
Do you understand why anybody buys anything for the way it looks or is it just headphones? It's no different from people wanting nice looking shoes, bags, sunglasses, jackets etc. Lots of people care about their appearance, and say what you want about Beats, but they certainly look better than the HD 280s. And realistically I bet you no one using beats headphones would get a better listening experience by changing headphones.
> I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement.
Take something mastered for MP3; then badly rip it to MP3; then play it on a phone or other low cost MP3 player, while you're on a bus or subway.
Most people just can't tell the difference.
Are there any recommendations for headphones that's aren't balanced? I'm not a studio engineer and prefer the heavy bass honestly
For just a little bit more the HD 380 Pros are much better headphones.
And for the cost of Beats I know I could spend c.£170 and get Sennheiser HD25s which are the best headphones I've ever used and I believe a lot of other people agree. This is nearly half the price of some Beats models.
I consider myself a bit of a an audiophile, and always argued that beats headphones are inferior. Their balance is abysmal, way too bass heavy, and shit plastic design. They however mastered marketing, which as it turns out wins the "game". My choice of headphones are Sol Republic (http://solrepublic.com/tracks-hd-on-ear-headphones-with-v10-...) or a nice German Sennheiser.
Not bad but check out these, they're super comfortable and I love the wood panelling! They might even sound good too...
I find the Beats-bashing to be very suspect.
It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd.
Why aren't we angry about every other thing that's endorsed by celebrities? Why this one in particular? I don't think the folks behind Activia yogurt "played everybody for a fool" or "had us over a barrel from the beginning" because they hired Jamie Lee Curtie as a spokesperson. They certainly didn't spend their budget on inventing a better tasting yogurt or one with different cultures in it, that's for sure.
"Sound quality" is not a great reason to pick on Beats. Most headphones and speakers (under $1000 or so) aren't even trying to sound neutral; they're intentionally boosting certain frequencies and suppressing others. Beats headphones are obviously massively boosting the bass, but this isn't any less "accurate" than, say, your average Grado headphones and many enthusiasts (myself included) really enjoy those things.
Marco Arment had the perfect analogy, I think.
"Beats did to headphones what Starbucks did to coffee:
while they’re not the best, they’re a huge upgrade from
what most people were using before, and they’ve
dramatically increased the market and mainstream
acceptability of spending $200–400 on full-sized
headphones and wearing them in public."
>It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd.
Isn't peddling overpriced shit to underprivileged (and underinformed) population the actual problem here? You have there a white guy, Jimmy Iovine, selling shit product to poor urban youth, and it's audiophiles who are at fault for exposing this fact?
No, we bash Beats because they are an inferior overpriced product. I'm no audiophile, but I do like to think of myself as a savvy consumer, so when I hear some 14 year old saying "Beats are better" I just might tell him that he can get something way better for the same price. I hate seeing people get duped by marketing. That story is not hypothetical, by the way.
It just shows the power of good marketing really.
Audiophiles will rant and rave about the poor quality of the headphones, and rightly so. I've not used Beats but it's pretty obvious from the reviews I've read that Beats headphones are overpriced crap.
However, I don't believe Dre played anybody like a fool. He and his co-founder simply understood that there was a gap in the market for "fashionable" headphones, and so he used his name and connections to make that happen.
It's an incredibly basic approach to launching a new product in an established market and I'm sure many other companies have sold overpriced crap in other industries to a wide consumer base for lots of $$$'s using the same technique.
Edit: Fixed typo
I can't finely distinguish sound and when I researched headphones I decided on a Bose one that was rated as having worse sound quality than others in its price segment. It's an active noisecancelling one that had great ratings in that regard. One of the best items I ever bought, I commute by train (45-50m each way) and it's fantastic for reading uninterrupted.
Recently tried a Sennheiser in the same price segment that had excellent sound ratings and couldn't tell a difference. Wouldn't be shocked if I couldn't tell apart Beats from better sound quality ones either (and I'd guess it's the same for many people). Makes sense to base your decision on other factors then (style, noise cancelling capabilities).
Pretty sure the real audiophiles self select out of buying Beats and most people who do think the sound quality is sufficient.
"#4. They looked at what consumers wanted, then made it"
How is this a bad thing?
And in any case - I like my Beats, I had even more expensive Sennheiser headphones and I prefer the muddy, dirty, over-amplified bass of the Beats, because it works well with the music I listen to while programming. Yeah I know the Sennheiser headphones are probably "better" but I prefer something else. I just wish people didn't care as much, it's just headphones in the end.
The article's title is "How they played you like a fool" but in the article I feel like all I see are marketing gimmicks for the brand over and over.
Each item is basically a small marketing paragraph why beats did it in spite of the nerds telling them they had inferior quality and were overpriced, and then a big picture of a celebrity trying to look cool wearing beats.
#1. They found the golden niche
#2. They Ignored the critics and naysayers
#3. They pulled on the biggest celeb names they could find
#4. They looked at what consumers wanted, then made it
#5. They trusted their gut and risked it all
#6. They moved fast
#7. They had BIG brand help
#8. Don’t get cocky, never think you are done
This list reads like they are writing for the what used to be the underdog (Apple) but instead selling garbage to people who dont know any better.
Why should I laud this company?
Isn't this just same old same old?
We have a fantastic independent coffee shop at the end of our road. When a major coffee chain opened a few doors down, I asked him if he was worried. His reply: "No. The kind of people that drink coffee in Starbucks don't pay for coffee in independent coffee shops.".
It's the same here. Beats' target market is not people that love good quality headphones, but people that want fashionable headphones.
You can see the same argument over cars, phones, clothes, luggage, etc. It's hardly new.
I lost a lot of respect for Apple when they bought them. Beats are what a lot of Apple haters used to accuse them of being, overpriced junk that caters to gullible fashion victims.
I won't be switching to their new music service.
it costs Beats a mere $14 to make according to some experts
I'm reasonably sure that Beats does not actually design nor make these headphones - they chose a design already produced by one of the many Chinese manufacturers, using existing parts, and asked for their brand to be put on it. This is common among many brands and is known as "OEM". Look at these, for example:
http://www.ovleng.com/index.php?m=index&a=productList&id=34
The extreme bass was also not something Beats invented - these generic/OEM manufacturers were producing headphones with the same type of sound before Beats, because of the general impression among most people that more bass means stronger, more powerful sound and therefore is more desirable. Beats just took this "generic cheap high-bass headphone" sound and used marketing to turn it into a fashion statement.
It isn't hard for most technically savvy people to see that these headphones are over-priced and over-rated. But it should make us think about all the marketing we do fall for.
I wonder what effect Beats will have on a generation of listeners already experiencing noise-induced-hearing-loss (NIHL). With the amplified bass, aren't users exposing themselves to low-end rumble all of the time?
I'm pretty sure we'll be confronted with a generation of deaf people pretty soon, given the extreme bass and the personal music players that can output high volumes, and the incessant barrage of noise (radio?) wherever you go.
Additionally, when mastering and mixing, does anyone take into account what their record would sound like on these things? Everyone buys excellent quality reference monitors with as close-to flat response as possible for revealing midrange, non-fatiguing high-end and punchy/deep (non-flabby) bass so they can produce the best sounding record. Some might even listen to it weighted for FM radio broadcasts and have a range of different speakers like those famous Yamaha NS10s (yuck!) to get a feel of how good/bad it sounds on normal home-users equipment. But does anyone mix/master for these? Those records will sound as thin as a pancake on other speakers if they did; where's the balance?
Furthermore, since bass is mainly felt with the skin, is increased bass in these headphones really as effective as listening to a real speaker?
Guys, taste needs time to develop. That's why kids are a target for scumbags. Its not the kids fault. They buy what they understand. If they really love their music, they'll too buy Sennheisers in 20 years.
Its the fault of Dr.Dre. He uses the inexperience of kids to get the cash of their parents into his pockets. Nothing to admire. Kids have become business targets for the reckless. Dre belongs to these.
Imho beats headphones don't sound good. The bass is ridiculously overpowered and distorts nearly constantly.
Now, tastes are different, and you might want exactly this experience with that distorted bass.
If you create both the music and the speaker, like Dre does, and you wanted that experience, the right approach would have been to add such a distorted bass to your track during mixing/mastering, and then create headphones that faithfully output this signal.
This would ensure that you could enjoy Dre's tracks with that distorted bass on all your music equipment, like with your home hifi system, and if you used the beats headphones with other music, it would also output that other music truthfully.
So it becomes a bit of a standards issue. It's as if a very popular computer displays brand made displays where pixels that are 100% white will flicker wildly, but the displays brand was created by a guy known for his lowpoly wireframe art style, and this particular style looks great on those displays. So that combination might be fine, but you cannot use the displays to faithfully assess other images, really.
Indeed, (and I am only mentioning this because Plantronics is also on the chart) I bought a pair of Plantronics GameCom 367 and they were absolutely abysmal. They were hooked to a Yamaha RX-V373 audio receiver which in turn was optically connected to a PC so it couldn't have been a question about the configuration. Anyway, the sound was completely flat, almost no bass - certainly no punch whatsoever, the highs were absurdly cut and the middles painfully mediocre to say the least. The entire range was so bad that I was really frustrated I couldn't return them due to a hideous store policy at that time in RO. Not to mention that when you would pass the 75% volume mark the sound was completely distorted. What a complete disgrace. :(
The big takeaway: always test the product before you buy it never fall for the hype.
I had a support ticked open with Apple for long enough that they gave me a store credit to buy something. The amount was just enough to get a Beats Pill XL Bluetooth speaker, so I got one.
Wow, the thing changed my relationship with my music library. There are so many more occasions that I can listen to music just because of the convenience of being able to place the speaker wherever I am. Good build quality, great battery life, and I am happy with the sound quality.
I tried the free trial of the music streaming service, and it is a cut above the others. I decided to wait for what it becomes post-acquisition, though.
I had no prejudices about Beats prior to this. I don't understand the hate.
My laptop has a Beats by Dre logo for some reason, I have no idea why because the sound quality is no better than any other laptop I have used with bog-standard speakers.
Yes, my first reaction is "oh, what a bunch of idiots"
But then again nobody is listening to the 5th symphony on Beats headphones (and, tbh, they probably sound better than Apple's, just because of size)
It's a fashion accessory. Like sunglasses, which sure, you'll protect your eyes, but that's not all there is to it.
It's easy to complain about marketing and dumb people, the lesson that needs to be taken is, what I may be missing in creating or marketing a product.
Essentilly, instead of spending money on R&D to create better headphones, they spent it on marketing and celeb endorsements because people are sheep.
I receive a pair of these headphones this christmas, when I had no idea what Beats was.
I listend to some classical music for a couple minutes: it was terrible and I can't really stand for the hiss always on in the background.
The next week I sold them and bought a mechanical keyboard.
sigh $14 in components for a $100 product seems like a really tight margin and not exploitation to me. The tooling chain for these things (injection molding, etc.) is really expensive.
Not that these are a great product, but I don't see them outright ripping anyone off.
Both sound and production quality of the “beats” (down to the very plastic) are crappy. But the marketing hype is done by artists. Even Apple fell for it.
Marketing and politics, they work the same.
And now we know that pulseaudio.net uses CakePHP as their web framework. http://i.imgur.com/BbR63sK.png
They should turn debug off.