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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If I'm the kind of person who buys expensive stuff to signal my membership, then buying Beats headphones is being myself, no?
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…
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-har…
Beats by Dre are made by PCH International, a contract manufacturer.
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…
> 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 the…
I jest...
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…
>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…
It's not a shit product. You're just unable to appreciate what the buyers see in them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 the…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or the ultimate in form-over-function: women's footwear.
And ties - what purpose do they serve other than social signals?
Here is an answer: 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)))).
Well, you are right, its also a social signal.
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.
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...
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=produc…
Anyways the design actually was fairly novel, you can read more here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-19/designer-o...