61–70 of 139 posts
Not that these are a great product, but I don't see them outright ripping anyone off.
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…
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.
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.
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 m…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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…
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.
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 m…
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.
> 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.
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 hea…