Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles • Hacker News Board

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#41

Post by miranda_rights » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #35

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rap music has a strong history of building your brand then licensing products with your name/brand on them or even to the extent of Kanye where he actually designs his own fashion line/shoes.

> even to the extent of Kanye where he actually designs his own fashion line/shoes. There is no way he does that himself, just like all the other wannabe fashion/perfume/merchandising brands. They just use their fame to tack on another revenue stream.

Kanye interned at Fendi about 12 years ago - he's definitely pretty involved in fashion beyond just lending his name

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#42

Post by joshstrange » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

slashink wrote: post #31

azinman2 wrote: post #23

The Soulja watch is interesting to me. I see very similar ones coming from China, but it’s pretty amazing that at any hardware spec a “smart” watch could be sold as little as $10, let alone with profit. They’re shameless rips of Apple, but at $10 damn that’s crazy.

The really interesting part is that the highlight marketing photos are using pictures of an Apple Watch and when you actually check the product, the "real" photos is nothing like it. This is basically adding a known brand onto cheap tech knockoff products.

Here is a video [0] of him with it on, yeah, nothing like the Apple watch. Also on the topic of cheap Chinese watches I would read the section of this article on the smartwatch [1] and note this was published 2 years ago. That whole article is interesting but the smartwatch and their contact who said it only cost them $6 to make (note they bought the watches for just under $10 each):

> If the factory sold the watches for $7.49, how much could they possibly cost to make? That’s a question that can be awfully hard to get answered. Not really expecting an answer, we asked our friend to ask his friend. She was happy to tell us: $6.

> Six dollars for: a GSM chipset, a CPU, an LCD screen, a battery, a PCB, a metal housing, a molded silicone watch band, a MicroUSB cable, and a box. And the labor to assemble and test all of that.

[0] http://www.xxlmag.com/video/2018/12/soulja-boy-watch-brand-s...

[1] https://medium.com/newco/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the...

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#43

Post by joshstrange » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

fb03 wrote: post #16

I would sincerely love to know how he got this idea. I mean, he is a renowned musician. Why would he out of nowhere sell something that reeks of piracy and can get him into problems? I fail to understand.

He got the same idea from the people who convinced various "celebrities" to rep ICO's. By which I mean someone flashed a bunch of money in their direction to be a spokesperson for some drop-shipped, cheap, buggy emulator.

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#44

Post by joshstrange » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

ug02nice wrote: post #17

Where do I invest?

Step 1: Take money out of wallet

Step 2: Set money on fire

Step 3: You've just saved money but not investing in something that will be mired in copyright infringement cases.

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#45

Post by okmokmz » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

fb03 wrote: post #16

I would sincerely love to know how he got this idea. I mean, he is a renowned musician. Why would he out of nowhere sell something that reeks of piracy and can get him into problems? I fail to understand.

He's broke and a glorified scam artist at this point. Has been selling all sorts of garbage Chinese products marked up under his own "brand", as well as the scams where he offers to buy everyone products for "free" and you just pay the shipping.

https://twitter.com/souljaboy/status/814639677550362624?lang...

https://news.avclub.com/we-can-all-learn-something-from-the-...

http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2017/02/soulja-boy-sean-kingston-...

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#46

Post by pkulak » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #24

The article handily links to the Alibaba store: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/3850034 I suspect what happened is that someone approached him with the idea of putting his brand on it, and he was flattered; otherwise it's basically the Amazon drop shipping business.

Yeah, to me he seems like the gullible victim here. In addition to anyone who buys it, I suppose.

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#47

Post by bigtunacan » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #40

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not being sold by Best Buy, it says "sold by CC Trading Bridge".

Regardless of what it says, that’s Best Buy’s store, Best Buy gets your money, and Best Buy gets your phone call or email if there’s a problem with the purchase. I’d call that “sold by Best Buy.”

That is certainly not the same as "sold by Best Buy". It is sold and shipped by CC Trading Bridge. IANAL, but I would suspect the fact that this is a 3rd party seller that is not even using Best Buy fulfillment centers would provide Best Buy a certain level of protection from legal ramifications. This isn't much different from EBay.

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#48

Post by chmod775 » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #46

pjc50 wrote: post #24

The article handily links to the Alibaba store: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/3850034 I suspect what happened is that someone approached him with the idea of putting his brand on it, and he was flattered; otherwise it's basically the Amazon drop shipping business.

Yeah, to me he seems like the gullible victim here. In addition to anyone who buys it, I suppose.

Except he's probably getting paid...

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#49

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #24

The article handily links to the Alibaba store: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/3850034 I suspect what happened is that someone approached him with the idea of putting his brand on it, and he was flattered; otherwise it's basically the Amazon drop shipping business.

What makes you think he isn’t just interested in video games, discovered emulators and liked the product and saw that it wasn’t being marketed to his audience?

Are you familiar with the ways musicians, particularly in hip hop, diversify their business portfolios by selling product lines?

Are you familiar with Fenty, Beats by Dre, etc?

Re: Soulja Boy Is Selling Cheap Emulators as His Own Consoles

#50

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

LMAO this is funny as hell