Apple has a chokehold on the iPod market. They've rocked the market with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and those products will be cash cows for a long time. But where is their next growth going to come from? A watch? I doubt it.
All the granola 16-year-old white girls already have their iPhone. There's no room for crazy growth among middle class white people. Apple needs to use it's expertise to pursue new markets, which is exactly what they're doing.
Tim Cook isn't afraid, he's strategic. Beats by Dre is a high-end consumer lifestyle brand that GREATLY appeals to black, hispanic, urban-context, young men and women. They sell expensive products. They care about design. They represent a way of living. They're Apple in another market.
Beats is about to be Apple's international foray into a completely new growth segment. And it's genius.
Apple must know something about beats that nobody else does, otherwise there is no way it's genius.
Again, this is false. Its not about "know something" its about "do something". A market-expansion play into high-growth (new) demographic is all about leveraging the existing asset base @ apple. It's not about "knowledge", its about "leverage"...and the only people who can leverage apple's existing products and asset base are...apple.
The counter-argument to targeting the "urban market" if you believe (potentialy race-tinged) NY/london advertsining and marketing professionals....is lack of buying power in this "non abc1" demographic.
But Beats has succeeded--seeling expensive price-point goods (ie, apple's specialty) into this market. That is a HUGE mark of success for beats...the fact that they are selling "junk" at high-mark-ups just underscores their marketing genius.
TLDR (1) apple is buying the marketing genius; (2) that genius already selling at Apple-esque price points; and(3) into a growth-demographic where apple lacks strong histrical expertise.
Except they don't care about quality, which is one of Apple's strongest selling points.
Could someone point me to a defacto better pair of headphones in the same price range as the studios ($200)? I'll give them a shot; I have no problem admitting that I might very well be missing something when listening to music.
So you're not paying for better noise cancelling when you pay more for headphones. You are paying for superior sound quality.
If you are going to drop $200 on a pair of 'good' headphones, even noise canceling, I'd suggest getting some Audio-Technica, which are superior to everything out there, even Bose. Most are less than $200.
My experience: I own a small broadcasting company.
Then I realized the collective delusion everyone was living in when I forced myself to double-blind test headphones and various audio formats. Audiophiles are a tiny minority and you can find all of them poo-pooing this deal on Twitter (a lot of them overlap with Apple's customers), but regular people are just fine with Beats or Bose (another derided brand among audiophiles) products.
You can easily get sucked into that world and make yourself believe that those really expensive headphones are worth it, but it will be because you want to believe it after spending all that money.
Grado is almost always a stellar choice. http://www.amazon.com/Grado-Prestige-Series-SR125i-Headphone...
Both cheaper than beats.
Both much, much better.
I had Sennheiser HD595 prior and these are even more amazing. I've listened to a pair of Beats and they pretty much were only bass drowning out everything else. You can also check out www.innerfidelity.com as they have reviews that are not only subjective, but objective.
Currently $86.00
Had these for about a year and love them. Noise cancellation is good enough that I end up getting startled by people walking up behind me that have to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention (that could be good or bad depending on your preference).
Dre is a quiet, private person, who rarely tours or produces new music. The idea that he is a billionaire now from putting his name on exorbitantly expensive headphones and marketing them to people who can't really afford them, seems wrong.
This is a highly ignorant statement.
Sampling recorded music is in fact a very musical process, from the first 20th-century musique concrete experiments to the more modern intricate, multilayered compositions of artists like The Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow, Public Enemy, etc.
Musicians always take inspiration from other music. Build a song around a chunky 'AC/DC-style' riff. Channel Quincy Jones in the drum sound. Sampling was very important in the democratization of music production because it allowed artists without access to a studio and a host of instruments to work from a baseline of recorded sound. It quickly developed into an artform unto itself.
Yes, there was and still is a contingent of artists who sample lazily and with disregard for the original music, but Dr. Dre's productions--especially his early stuff--are full of musical reverence, high-quality engineering, and even improvements over the source material. Not to mention that after the NWA days he was increasingly bringing in session musicians to replay and reinterpret source material rather than actually sampling it digitally.
edit - And to expand a bit more on the last sentence, that is exactly what music producers do. It's only in recent years that the end-to-end musician, producer, recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer has come into fruition. And that democratization of the recording process largely stems from technological advances like digital sampling.
Dre is a very talented producer with a long history of success: producing tons of music, bringing gangsta rap to the mainstream, pioneering the gfunk sound, pioneering the business model which have made hip hop labels so damn profitable, assembling super groups of studio musicians to consistently produce very popular music, finding and marketing brand new artists that have skyrocketed on the charts over and over again (eminem?), and more. Dre is an artist, but he's way more than that.
read something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_dre
Anyway, somehow who gets to be a billionaire just "by putting his name" on consumer items has got something going for him, even if it just luck.
Reading the audiophile boards, the trends seems to be that the Beats Studio is now roughly competitive to the venerable Audio Technica ATH M50 , widely considered to be one of the most popular entry-level audiophile quality over-ear headphones. The main difference is not audio quality (the M50 probably has an edge here) but rather comfort and ear fatigue, with the Beats just being more comfortable.
I love my M50s but admit they do lead to sweaty-ear.
Examples:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/683959/new-beats-studios-2013-vs-au... http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear-headph... http://www.head-fi.org/t/673273/new-2013-beats-studios http://www.head-fi.org/t/675031/new-redesigned-2013-beats-by...
The main legitimate complaint about Beats is not that they're one of the two best sounding headphones under $300. It's that the market will bear that much of a price difference when the ATH M50 is $150. But, people will pay a lot for a wide selection of colours and a bit more comfort. And price can be seen as a feature.
In short - Beats sells decent quality for its class, overpriced for what you get, but between comfort and colour selection, customers don't seem to mind. These guys will fit with Apple's philosophy well.
Thats what Apple just bought here, I'm fairly certain they could give a hoot about the technology, its the artist relationships and favorable streaming contracts that they're after.
A streaming service where the artists can sell directly and pick up a larger percentage of the pie will quickly gather a large catalogue of new music.
Doesn't seem to be room for that and iTunes radio (and iTunes itself) as separate brands.
I think it will based on, eg, the Dr Dre video where he's bragging about it -- makes me think the deal is already done.
