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Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#181

Post by mcintyre1994 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71
danudey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument makes sense, but it kind of falls apart when you consider that Beats aren't actually good headphones, to the point where The Wirecutter actually did an article[1] where they listed all the various Beats products and then provided examples of better deals (some of them with significantly better quality at half the price). I don't understand why Apple would buy a headphone company that makes pretty but lo…

> I don't understand why Apple would buy a headphone company that makes pretty but lousy products whose price is only justified by the brand name My wager: demographics. Apple's customer base is greying [1]. Beats likely has a younger centre of gravity. I'd also be willing to bet Apple has less penetration amongst black Americans than does Beats. [1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230179/Apple_s_bigge...

While I'm sure Beats' younger user base is enough to make this worthwhile for Apple, I wonder how much they've actually expanded in terms of buying power. I doubt many young teenagers are spending hundreds of their own dollars on these headphones, it's the parents who are already pretty much Apple's demographic.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#182

Post by zwentz »

swombat wrote: post #130
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild hypothesis. Amazon started as a book distributor. Now it is fighting to become a publisher. iTunes + iPod started as a music distributor. What if it now has ambitions as a label? How would one build that out of Cupertino? One would start with a fringe, fragmented genre, to serve as a beachhead. Fragmented by not flat - there should be a node near the top of a hierarchy which can be acquired and leveraged. $1.3 b…

You'd have to be pretty insane to spend $3b to get into the content industry in 2014. First, it's an industry that's been plummeting for a decade, secondly, the entire recording industry is worth about that much, and thirdly, the entire concept of making money from copyrighted works of art is under threat. This theory doesn't hold water, sorry.

Couldn't the same have been said before with the phone industry? The tablet industry?

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#183

Post by [deleted] »

SDGT wrote: post #44
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Rebranded mid-range electronics with pop star endorsements and hype. Do people really consider Beats to be high end?

[deleted]

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#184

Post by hackinthebochs »

sz4kerto wrote: post #42
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone marke There's zero high-endness about Beats headphones. They're all right (at least if they were priced around 30% of their current price), but really, they don't sound particularly good.

High end is all about perception as indicated by price. Technical quality means almost nil.

But even on technical quality Beats bring something new to the table. They have a built in amp for christ's sake. They lowered the bar for amped audio to something the masses would use. It is a typical story of reducing friction/barrier to entry and reaping rewards.

Every conversation I see about beats speaks of them as garbage and pure marketing etc etc. But this is entirely missing the point of what made beats a success. You can choose to bury your head in the sand or you can open your eyes and actually learn something from the beats phenomenon.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#186

Post by dublinben »

B-Con wrote: post #141
swombat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to be pretty insane to spend $3b to get into the content industry in 2014. First, it's an industry that's been plummeting for a decade, secondly, the entire recording industry is worth about that much, and thirdly, the entire concept of making money from copyrighted works of art is under threat. This theory doesn't hold water, sorry.

It's plummeting because it's run by in outdated ways by companies that haven't adapted to new technology. A forward-thinking company that embraces technology would have some advantages.

A company like Pandora or Spotify? Two debt-financed companies that still can't turn a profit from music.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#187

Post by nerfhammer »

matwood wrote: post #180
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

I said "higher-end" because it's perceived to be, even though audiophiles would never agree. Do audiophiles really agree on anything?

You're going to have a really hard time finding any audiophile anywhere with anything positive to say about beats

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#188

Post by vidarh »

graublau wrote: post #114
antr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us not familiar with Beats, what is so special about the music service compared to (for argument sake) Spotify?

Anyone think Rdio would be a much better fit for streaming?

I'm distinctly underwhelmed by Rdio. I basically started trying it because of the good Chromecast support, but their recommendations are not particularly good (I listen to a bunch of electronica, and one of the (good) choices it presented me with was a Polish artist; shortly afterwards I got a bunch of 70's Polish pop music, and it took me a day of thumbs down and skipping to get it to stop; similarly, I somehow managed to be subjected to a prolonged assault of Irish folk music where the only connection I've managed to spot was that one of the artists have a couple of track that are somewhat similar to a couple of the track of an artist I like a few other tracks of).

And their mobile app is horrible. The amount of skipping is awful; you'd think they could buffer more. Especially when you have synced tracks that it could use to "fill in". Even though I've synced a number of tracks to my mobile, it skips or fails halfway through even those tracks when my network connection is bad, unless I've marked myself as offline. Add on no ability to play my local music, and I find myself almost certain to switch from Rdio to my local player on my phone within 10-15 minutes.

It's nice for when I'm home, using it via Chromecast, and I pick exactly what I want to play, or have the patience to try to beat its recommendations into submission, but I doubt I'll stay a user very long.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#189

Post by dublinben »

smackfu wrote: post #84
jotm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really true - Sony and Sennheiser (as well as AKG and other less known companies) had the market covered already.

I think the idea is that Beats expanded the market for $200-400 headphones. Yes, Sony sold headphones in that range, but they didn't sell them to every high school student who wanted to look cool.

This just further underlines the point that Beats are not actually high-end headphones, but fashion items. As such, they're incredibly vulnerable to changing tastes. In the areas around me, Beats have already plummeted from prominence or popularity among young people and cool people.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#190

Post by return0 »

johnohara wrote: post #139

The question is not "why is Apple buying?" The question is why is Geffen/Interscope/A&M selling?

$3 fuckin billion. Eventhough everyone here goes through their post-hoc rationalization by claiming that "beats is a great company", it's way way overpriced here.
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