How Beats by Dre played you like a fool | Hacker News Reader

How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

pulseradio.net

65 pointsgmays134 comments

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.

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.

Hey, but apple computers have a great operating system and they do perform very well.

Now read about the comparison of beats with other headphones - or listen yourself - and tell me where the match is?

While Apple stuff has become a fashion statement, it also performs. Apple products look good because they are very well designed and made. Beats on the other hand don't perform, at least not sound quality wise. And they are certainly not very well made. Carefully designed, this may be true.

The better comparison for beats would be H&M (or Zara, or Mango or whatever is fashionable now). Cheap fashion that attracts easily, to throw away.

Oddly though, Beats are nowhere near cheap!

For the daft money they throw at headphones with an inline EQ, they could get some great Beyerdynamic headphones that sound brilliant.

Fashion over functionality.

EDIT: Yep, I missed the point! Functionality = fashion. You can clearly tell I am not fashionable.

You're completely missing the point. Fashion is the functionality.

You nailed it: for beats, fashion is the functionality indeed.

"Oddly though, Beats are nowhere near cheap!"

Point taken. True. Select an expensive fashion company instead.

Beyerdynamic headphones are chunky, resilient, and you can buy spare parts and effectively replace the whole headset piece by piece. But they are not ergonomic for city walking/metro/bus/train. Lots of trailing bits of metal &c depending on model. And many models are high impedance (200 Ohm/400 Ohm) so less useful for portable devices with limited voltage swing.

So my point is: not just fashion. Suitability for job as well.

Hehe yeah, was worried my comment would come off like that, not what I meant. Apple products of course perform very well, but they also share that fashion and design edge that these headphones seem to have.

Is that really true though? From what I gather Beats are a step up from most headphones non-audiophiles traditionally use, and generally on par with headphones of around 80 bucks. Which is definitely better than kind of earbuds/headphones I and most people tend(ed) to buy who don't really think about this kind of stuff.

I think the comparison with Apple makes sense, looking at it that way. As a 'technophile' I used to pay more for my laptop (Dell, at that point) than most people around me. They would work on really crappy laptops, curse how slow or loud or hot they were, but stick with them and not spend a premium on something better. Apple changed that, and made it 'fashionable' to spend a bit more to get, at the very least, a mid-range laptop. Those who did get one understood the benefits after the fact. Beats are similar. They might not be 'great' to audiophiles, or worth their money, relatively, but for many people they are the first experience of, at least, decent sound.

> 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?

It's not for the sake of buying; it's for the sake of showing them off. Like we did with jewelry for millennia.

Or the ultimate in form-over-function: women's footwear.

And ties - what purpose do they serve other than social signals?

Useful for blowing your nose on?

I suppose if you wear one around your head it signals something, socially.

"And ties - what purpose do they serve other than social signals?"

Here is an answer: <exaggerate>I am the slave of my company, that's why I wear an expensive, totally useless thing around my neck, that lets me sweat in summer and breathe hard all year round. My company asks that and I do what they say, because I always do what everybody does. And I rather shit my pants than to hold the minority opinion :o)))).</exaggerate>

Well, you are right, its also a social signal.

Depends on the quality. A $300 silk tie sends a different signal to a $2 tie from a supermarket.

It's still a very expensive, very soft, noose around your neck.

You'll notice that ties are (thankfully) finally starting to die out. I've just spent a few weeks in back-to-back meetings with very senior execs, and maybe 1 our of 5 people bothered with a tie.

Industry reports show that the neckwear business is hemorrhaging after peaking in 1995. Good riddance.

> I find this worrying, really. Are we so desperate to consume that we're willing to buy shit just for sake of buying?

There's no need to worry, this isn't a sign that society is going downhill. Buying Beats for something other than sound as the primary purpose is no different than buying something purely for fashion sake, which is a centuries old human practice.

This comment reminds me of how every generation finds the next generation's actions worrying.

edit: Grandpa Simpson nailed it: "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY

Yeah, makes me want to cuddle my Pet Rock till I feel better.

Why is buying headphones based on their audio quality superior to buying headphones based on their aesthetics?

because headphones are for listening not for looking

Not necessarily if you're buying them as a fashion accessory, which is the whole point of the article. Beats saw a gap in the market, much as Apple did 10 years ago.

Because their main job is to reproduce sound in an acceptably accurate manner? Owning a pair of Beats is like owning a Ferrari or a Porsche powered by a 75BHP 1L engine with suspension made of play-doh. Nice to look but drives like crap.

  > Because their main job is to reproduce sound in 
  > an acceptably accurate manner?

Check the frequency response graph of almost any speaker or headphone in the sub-$1,000 range (and quite a few over that price as well). Peaks and valleys all over the place. They're not trying to sound "accurate," they're trying to sound pleasing.

And this isn't even a bad thing. Just understand that sound quality isn't objective, unless you're judging things by how flat their frequency response curve is -- and the headphones/speakers trying to achieve that are generally aimed at audio engineers.

Sure, but the GBP169(!) Solo's (not tried the full sized Beats) really don't sound good (I used a pair for an afternoon and was hugely disappointed by them), they are truly the epitome of a high performance car body wrapped around a lawn mower engine. I mentioned this in another comment, my 15 quid Sennheiser CX300 buds sounded way better than these overpriced fashion statements.

I agree that sound quality isn't objective when it comes to hearing what passes through one's ear holes, but the sound reproduction that passed into my ears from these Solos was noticeably and objectively bad. I don't need a fancy graphs to tell me that.

I should add that I did actually like the construction and build of the Solos.

Did you just time-travel here from the 1930s?

Our consumer culture (good and bad) goes all the way back to the post-war boom.

Tell ya what, I'll get off your lawn if you get off mine... :-)

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.)

But, really, most audio companies were never properly positioned to offer the type of product that Beats has anyway. Bose could probably have made the connection, as could a few other broader electronic brands (Sony, Panasonic, etc.), but most brands that are primarily focused on speakers/headphones operate by courting audiophiles, because traditionally that's where the money has been.

Certainly, Beats has done an excellent job of generating a brand image and marketing a product. However, many other companies in the headphone market would have had a challenge doing the same, because if they were to court the casual listener market, they may risk losing the traditional audiophile market.

True, though nothing was stopping any established company from creating a new brand to differentiate markets.

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.

That's a good point. Maybe the comparison with Mac wasn't such a good one.

Nevertheless, I still think there's something to admire from a business perspective.

I have to say, however, that the latest Apple earbuds are VERY POOR "one size for all" design, a clear step backwards for a very personal interface.

While not the best comparison, there is a bit of truth in it. I consider myself a discerning 'consumer' and I've switched to an Android phone, away from the iPhone, a few years ago. I switched back to iPhone last year. And while the main reasons were functional (better camera, an OS that I prefer), aesthetics and the 'feel' of the iPhone (5S, in my case) definitely played a role. I don't think it's a stretch to say that these factors are even more important to the non-tech crowd. Fashion is important enough to many people that it can be considered part of 'objective value'.

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.

Funnily enough Bose are a tad unhappy about how successful Beats by Dre has become and are suing them: http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/caseys-pch-sue...

Beats by Dre are made by PCH International, a contract manufacturer.

it's Olufsen

> 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.

"No highs or lows? That'll be Bose!"

I jest...

no, Bose headphones sound much better … :o)

as a consumer its ridiculous. as a technologist and nearly lifelong musician its offensive.

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.

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".

I understand purchasing anything that is highly visible on your body as a fashion statement.

Me too. I own some Bose QuietComfort 15 which have made my work life much better because of the active noise cancelling, and they have made my flights more comfortable.

But with that said, I would not wear them in public. Apart from walking around in traffic with noise-cancelling, which is dangerous, the headphones looks a bit big on your head, so I use the headphones that came with my iPhone.

Bose invented the game that Beats perfected. Bose are over-priced for the sound you get but "just work". Beats just added the fashion element.

I don't much about Bose, I bought them for the noise-cancelling, not the sound. QuietComfort 15 was the product most people recommended.

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.

Best for DJs perhaps. But certainly no the best headphone for sound reproduction / comfort.

But thats the thing, there is no best headphone.

Best for DJs Best for producers Best for listening Best comfort when wearing for 8 hours a day Best for travelling with Best for bass Best neutral sound

For just a little bit more the HD 380 Pros are much better headphones.

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 agree it's dumb, but the important thing to realise is that pretty much everyone is falling for it pretty much all the time.

It's hard to argue that this same motivation isn't driving sales of iPhones over Android and vice versa. Or Canon versus Nikon. Nike versus Adidas. Harvard versus Stanford. Obama versus (!Obama). Ford versus Toyota. We can rationalise many of these decisions, but so can the people who bought the other thing.

Well, like I said. It's basically instinctual. Humans are social animals that form into groups and groups need in-group out-group signaling to define themselves. Joining a group identity like this is basically our animal bits controlling what we do. It's subtle, and people are often surprised when they realize that this is what they're doing. But if you buy into a group identity and you can't rationally explain why, or have to post-rationalize, it's probably this effect.

But it's also one of those things that, whenever you see it, is a reminder that humans have a long way to go and aren't as different from the rest of the animals as they'd like to believe.

Why Apple purchased beats, is that it helps tie together several different social tribes, with Apple now able to try to cross-sell between them, something very hard to do.

If I'm the kind of person who buys expensive stuff to signal my membership, then buying Beats headphones is being myself, no?

No, by definition, group identity replaces and/or subsumes personal identity.

How is that personal identity formed, if not by social interaction? I think the dichotomy you refer to is illusory.

social interaction != group membership

I think you're confusing the two.

I don't think the two are dissociable.

Of course they are. Even if you belong to a tribe, interacting with anybody outside of your tribe is by definition social interaction.

If you've never had a non-inter-group interaction, then I feel terribly sorry for you. For most people, that's the normal mode of interaction.

I'm guessing you're overly restricting your definition of social group. "Americans" is a group. So are "men" and "women".

Let me review what you've said, in case I misinterpreted any of it.

I stated the group identity replaces and/or subsumes personal identity.

You replied, "How is that personal identity formed, if not by social interaction? I think the dichotomy you refer to is illusory." I believe this indicates that you think all collections of people are "groups" regardless of the way that they formed, the size and any notion of in-group out-group membership status.

So I replied "social interaction != group membership"

To which you replied "I don't think the two are dissociable" which reinforced my understanding of your previous statement -- that you believe all collections of people, regardless of the size or reason for their formation, are interchangeable. A society = team = club = class = mob = airplane full of people = global population = tribe = clan = family = nation = citizenry = company = group = like-working tradesmen = guild = union = etc.

My claim is that this is patently absurd and a remarkably oversimplified model of how the world works, one that's so wrong as to be virtually non-functional. It doesn't provide any workable estimates or cause-effect relationship that apply even trivially across almost any pair of those words. We've decided that these things are so different that we even give them different words, definitions, legal status, philosophies, fields of study, and so on. In fact it's unusual when any of these two words even start to smell like the same thing.

For example, a team doesn't play a game against a tribe, people don't organize labor into a citizenry, a train-car full of people aren't a global population, a nation-state isn't a guild.

These concepts are vastly different and any model that conflates them is so useless as to not be considered.

I believe most of those are social groups, yes. That hardly implies I believe they all work the same way, just that they have some characteristics in common, as social groups.

Most of those "collections of people" lead to certain behaviors, simply from the fact that people self-evaluate and even construct their identity based on their membership and hierarchic position in them.

When you can have a feeling of belonging or not belong, social incentives to reject those not belonging, feelings of pride in your actions as a group, etc, you have a social group, be it a tribe, a company or a family.

Self-categorization theory explains how these groups are formed, and why they are a social group, and not just a random collection of people.

It does, but it's not crazy to say that personal identity barely exists outside of group identity. Sure, some groups are less defining than others, but from what I gather the general consensus is that there is no such thing as 'personal identity' that doesn't also overlap with group identity. We're social creatures.

Of course, some people might have a more defined personal identity than others, but those are outliers. The vast majority of humans define their self based on groups that are important to them (with parents/family usually being dominant, followed by friends and culture).

Basically, I'd argue there is not much self left if you take away the different group identities.

> People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership signal...

> 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.

Cough. Written on Hacker News, but not Reddit or Digg or Facebook. Cough.

C’mon, we’re sitting right in the middle of a tribe. Even writing that Sennheisers sound better is sending a tribal signal. That’s why people write it instead of just buying a pair and listening to them in private.

I'm not saying I'm not dumb at times.

FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in.

But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with things that signal that they're part of this group. The trope is "yet another photo sharing app" right?

I don’t think it’s dumb at all. Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. Just try doing a startup in Somalia.

> Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe.

That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.

Where? Alaska in an old bus? Even there, humans benefit to a small degree from law enforcement that strongly discourages the next hunter from shooting them and taking their possessions.

There are some survivalists who may or may not be able to operate for a while on this basis, but even if they aren’t “joining” a tribe, they are protected by tribes. get rid of all the tribes, and new ones would spring up and we’d be back to this.

You clearly don't understand the distinction between a tribe and a society.

Excluding hermits, living anywhere is living within a tribe.

The largest tribe is currently that which accepts a commonly defined currency in exchange for providing value of some sort.

No its not. That's why people think it's important to signal tribal membership. You don't understand the difference between a tribe and a society.

Do you know anything about Somalia.

right - the marketed.

Are there any recommendations for headphones that's aren't balanced? I'm not a studio engineer and prefer the heavy bass honestly

I'm really enjoying the V-Moda Crossfade M-100! Tons of bass.

Head-fi.org (the biggest, most active forum for headphone people that I know of) has some good (although overwhelmingly long) threads on the topic, such as: http://www.head-fi.org/t/716711/the-best-bass-headphones-are...

> 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.

  > 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".

Are your shoes and the rest of your clothing chosen strictly for their functional ability, with zero regard for fashion? If you have a car, what about that? Is your home painted in the cheapest and most durable paint, with zero regard for appearance? What about your laptop bag?

Beats aren't to my taste, although neither are $150 basketball shoes or a lot of other things. I get it, though.

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...

http://www.thehouseofmarley.com/legend-anc.html

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."

While the changes brought by Beats and Starbucks haven't been entirely positive, even if you don't like them, they've definitely expanded the market. The net effect of Beats is that there are TONS of great headphones on the market now, more than there were ten years ago. For a guy like me who's a fan of that stuff that's good news even though I'm not a Beats customer.

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.

Inferior and better are subjective. I'm not sure the 14 year old judges by the same metric as you.

>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?

There's nothing to expose. Go show some measurements of the sound quality of Beats vs cheaper brands that those users believe in, and the next day you'll still see them buying Beats.

It's not a shit product. You're just unable to appreciate what the buyers see in them.

Nearly all headphones and speakers intentionally boost some frequencies and suppress others. Some genres like hip-hop and electronic music sound really good with comically exaggerated bass like that offered by the Beats. Clearly that company is giving some music fans what they want.

They're not exactly producing a product I want, but I'm pretty okay with that. I don't feel the need to "expose" them or claim that they "have everybody over a barrel." I just... don't buy them.

  > 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?

Well, I'm not going to look inside your head and tell you what you're thinking. So maybe this doesn't apply to you but in general the negative feelings towards Beats seem to be best summarized as: "oh, we hate this product whose sound and looks are tailored to urban tastes."

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

Not really marketing alone. Geeks always seems to miss the form part of form and function. Look at the year of the linux desktop for years on end. Geeks see how much function linux has and think everyone should use it regardless of the form. See the original iPod or the iPhone not having removable batteries.

Beats headphones sound okay and often deliver the music the way many of their users want with heavier bass. Beats also makes headphones that have a much nicer form than any others I have seen.

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.

You could probably tell the difference as Beats is designed to change the sound, much like putting an equalizer setting would.

Of course whether or not that is a good thing... eh.

Speaking as a wee bit of an audiophile, though not a brand snob....

Some folks can't tell, don't care or may even have a personal preference to the type of sound they like that "real audiophile" types would consider inferior. Personally I'm fine with this, it's your money you're free to spend it how you like, and if you enjoy what you bought and they make you happy then that's all that matters.

However...my friend's daughter was given a pair of Beats Solo's as a present and I tried them for an afternoon keeping an open mind and ignoring the celeb brand nonsense. Now whilst being well made and quite sturdy, they don't sound any better than the Sennheiser CX300 buds I picked up for GBP15.00 a few months earlier. In fact I thought the sound was inferior, and these Solo's retail for a whopping GBP160!

I think the point I'm trying to make is that these Beats things are definitely style over substance and the Beats project is basically a massive marketing scam. I think you could definitely tell the difference between Beats and similarly priced non-celeb unfancy workhorse cans.

Personally I own a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80's, they're damned ugly things but by god they're comfy and have nice sound reproduction. I tried other makes in the same price range (AKG, Koss etc) but settled on the Beyers. I will admit I was slightly biased towards the Beyers because I used Beyer DT100 cans when I did radio broadcasting (they're pretty much industry standard, sturdy and neutral sounding) a few years back and I probably associate them with being "professional tools".

For walkabout MP3 listening I have a pair of Tesco own make in-ear buds. They cost me a fiver in-store and they sound just fine (I applied the principle of "ShitTronics" when I made that purchase decision :) Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017)

"#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?

I think the "you" here is both the customer, and the reasonable person who thinks you should make money buy selling the best product for the best price possible.

Beats has more money than you (probably) and me (definitely), and for some people, that's what's important. Not the "how" or "why" or "should", but "can".

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.

Interestingly, both Starbucks and Beats have prices similar to nice, higher-end products in their respective markets.

Exactly. They both focus on design and marketing, on giving users more conspicuousness in their 'conspicuous consumption'. If you want people to know that you pay a lot for coffee, then coffee in a generic white cup is missing a key feature.

Similar to Psycology by Dr. Phil - it's not for everyone but there is a market.

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.

I still wouldn't by them, since I dislike looking like a tool, and in every category there is a better option, but take a look at these measurements for the Studios: http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear-headph...

It was once fashionable to wear them, now its fashionable to hate them. Truth is, they have gotten better - a lot.

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.

While for many products you would be right, for Beats you are wrong. They really did spend quite a while getting the design right. The design was also very controversial, while low end headphones had bass forward designs, they had build costs far lower than $14, and had lots of sound quality issues. (Beats is colored, but relatively cleanly so)

Anyways the design actually was fairly novel, you can read more here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-19/designer-o...

They chose their words very carefully in that article. Saying that they're "working on" a design doesn't mean they're the only ones doing it locally. It's very common to choose a design from and then work with the manufacturer to customise it - which does count as "designing".

The OEM doesn't get credited, since it's all part of the contract and their reason for existing. After all, why would Beats "break the illusion" they created?

I'm sure they worked with an OEM (they pretty much had to, to work within their manufacturing processes), but your implication that they grabbed a part off the shelf is just not accurate.

Keep in mind that doing an original design is not a terribly high bar, but yes beats were a custom designed part. They worked with an OEM the same way Apple worked with an OEM. That doesn't mean it is good, just custom.

http://puu.sh/gYMIa/799fe60b8e.png hmm

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.

Why is a mix of the songs (with extra bass) less "truthful" than the mix made by the record company employee? Both are valid interpretations of the music. If you prefer the former, why shouldn't you listen to it?

Oh you can listen to anything you like. Any mix is fine, and any headphones are fine.

When I say truthfulness, I refer to playback equipment. Truthful means that it outputs something that is close to the input.

My argument is that if a headphone doesn't add deliberate distortions, it can be used for all kinds of music, enhancing its utility. And at the same time, with such a more useful headphone, you can still have the same experience as before, if those distortions are added at an earlier time.

Yeah, I really concur with the sound quality argument. I got a pair of Beats on the cheap from a friend, but I got tired of wearing them after awhile and eventually switched to earbuds to just listening to my music cause of the sound quality. Ordered a pair of Sennheiser Momentums though, should be getting those by Saturday, so I'm hoping to return to a solid pair of over-ear headphones again.

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.

"Beats capable", probably. Means about as much as "Vista ready".

I really hope not, it's a pair of headphones. It's not like you're plugging in a new type of RAM.

Beats licensed their name to bunch of computer manufacturers and included some kind of software equalizer presets that would make the sound more 'Beats-like'. As far as I can tell Beats had nothing to do with the actual audio hardware.

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.

The quote from the article is actually "...it costs Beats a mere $14 to make according to some experts." I'm assuming they factored the tooling costs into the cost of making these.

At the scales Beats is operating the tooling chain costs, while initially high, get distributed over millions of units.

That bit of the article is not particularly detailed, but it sounds like the $14 would include the molds and everything else. It doesn't say "$14 in components", it says "it costs Beats a mere $14 to make".

$14 might include the tooling chain - unless I read the article wrong. Even if it doesn't the injection molding, etc in China will be nothing after the first few thousand units and even less after millions of units shipped.

No, I interpret that as being Beats paying $14 for them from the OEM (the real manufacturer), and the manufacturer is still making a profit at that price.

That price is about right for OEM price of this style of headphone, see e.g.

http://www.dx.com/p/ovleng-ov-x1-stylish-stereo-headphones-w...

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.

Apple didn't "fall for" the marketing, they bought the company because the brand actually has a lot of value due to the marketing. And the value of the Beats Music streaming service, especially the deals that it had with labels already to allow streaming.

I think they overpaid, but they can afford to.

Marketing and politics, they work the same.

They are the same.

Politics is just marketing with taxes and nuclear weapons.

And now we know that pulseaudio.net uses CakePHP as their web framework. http://i.imgur.com/BbR63sK.png

They should turn debug off.

First, it’s “pulseradio.net”, not “pulseaudio”.

Second, what framework anyone uses is hardly a secret – anyone can see that, either by looking at the source code, or by simply installing the Wappalyzer browser extension.

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