How Beats By Dre Became A Multibillion-Dollar Brand

This is a $59,000 pair of headphones. They are known as Sennheiser's H e and they are the most expensive headphones in the world, but these are Dre's

beats

. Hello what's going on? Dr. Few

brand

s have risen to the top of American pop culture like Quickly or as thoroughly as Beats did in the late 2000s. Beats By Dre had a novel idea: use the principle of hype culture to sell headphones. That strategy turned hearing aids from a niche product into a cultural phenomenon. This is how Beats leverages the strategies of sneaker culture to become one of the most recognized

brand

s in the world, this suddenly

became

obsessed before the Sony Walkman debuted in 1979.

Headphones were primarily a utility used by the military and engineers of professional sound and that's where consumer headphone technology remained until October 23, 2001 and Today we introduced a product called the iPod. You can carry your entire music library right in your pocket. To be fair, there were other mp3 players on the market at the time, but the $399 iPod classic and those white headphones

became

something of a status item. The token people had these white headphones everywhere, it was on the sides of buses and subway stations in TV commercials and everyone needed these white headphones that showed you had an iPod.

Sales took off, but audio files were unimpressed. The base did not exist in the middle. -The range was confusing, they let in a lot of outside noise and were uncomfortable to use. It seemed that Apple and its competitors were more focused on the functionality of the mp3 player than the sound quality of the headphones, creating an opportunity for higher quality headphones. Suddenly everything came with cheap headphones and they said, Oh, we'll just make headphones a part of every piece of technology and what happened was the audio experience was like that, but the nice thing about the world of digital recording is that we were doing more, more. interesting stuff in the studio but the sound was getting small In October 2003, Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine approached Luke Wood, the chief strategy officer at Interscope Geffen A&M.

He even wanted to talk about the state of the music industry. He would make a name for himself. throughout the industry working with famous bands like Nirvana Weezer and Yaya, but he still admits that he felt intimidated when speaking face to face with Iovine. He was pretty terrified, to be an understatement, because I love my job. I had the best job in the world. I was making rock records for a living and I was like, "Oh, here's the biggest guy in hip-hop, yeah, he made Patti Smith and worked with Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon, but now he's pretty much known as the guy of hip-hop and I'm not.

I don't know that he will have time for me. He was even interested in Woods tackling music piracy. Instead, they got into a discussion about music production. The headphones never appeared. The first thing he says is to play me the records you're working on. I put a record on it. I basically got to the bridge of the song and he immediately identified that the problem was super technical. In that conversation, towards the end of breakfast, he started saying what are we going to do about piracy, how are we going to fix the business and you know, he found. a kindred spirit of mine like any other entrepreneur, like how we took this and how we did it in 2006.

One called me and I told him that he and dr. Dre was building a headphone company and it seemed super absurd to me because he wasn't afraid to make jeans or sunglasses or something interesting like that because it's like a new space and you know we can find people who are experts, but suddenly if we're doing something audio, that's what we did, we had to get that out of ourselves. Beats by Dre was born. He says there were two key problems the company was solving for the loss of revenue from digital music in the poor sound quality of headphones that were available at the time.

Beats partnered with Monster Inc to develop its first pair of headphones on the 25th. July 2008

beats

by dre released the monster beats which were priced at three hundred and fifty

dollar

s we had no idea how big the opportunity was but what we knew the headphone space had been treated like something sold at Office Depot gray, solving a utilitarian problem that didn't make sense because the headphones were like an Air Jordan, it wasn't a stapler, so for us it was like bringing energy to the iconography of fashion design and then underneath that, bringing sound and innovation , that was the opportunity, so Beats would release different colors for sports teams or different sizes and things that attracted people not to the headphones, but to the actual look of the headphones themselves, it was in itself a fashion accessory, since Whether they sounded good or not, celebrities and athletes were clamoring to get their hands on a pair, but it points to a specific moment in Beats history that made over-ear headphones go viral.

Something incredible happened in 2008. The Beijing Olympics LeBron James was in Jimmy Iovine's office there working on a documentary and he casually mentions that he and his manager Maverick Carter are going to Beijing. Could I get a pair of headphones? and then LeBron says: Can I get 12 to give away? For the team, we gave 12 headphones that seem small now, but four beats that were iconic, like the last pair of Air Jordans, everyone wanted them often, we basically say they are sneakers on the head and that's how we look at it . Because sneakers have a lot to do with identity, we have the other part where we really want to bring great technology and innovation, it's that thing that tells the world who you're a part of what community you're a part of who you want to know who your tribe is, that's what headphones can be tennis in February 2011 Iovine and Dre officially named president and CEO of Beats in August of that year, Beats signed a $309 million deal with HTC for a 50.1 percent stake in the company, giving HTC rights exclusive to manufacturing smartphones with Beats brand audio.

Beats would later buy back its Shares Beach released its first Bluetooth headphones in October 2011, called Beats by Dre Wireless, priced at $279.95 in late 2011. Beats had a 53% market share, but even with mixed reviews, sales continued to increase. I think Beats was able to charge a lot because they wanted to market it as a premium product that people had to pay for, whether the technology was available or not, in some cases it was. I know producers liked the high-end versions, but the ones consumers bought are often quite similar. which could be purchased for much less without the beats logo in july 2012 beats acquired the emoji music service for $14 million that same year in october beats unveiled its first pair of active noise canceling headphones that executives from Beats use Beats Noise Canceling Passive Noise Isolation Technologies which essentially blocks ambient sound through physical barriers such as extra padding around the earcup.

An active noise cancellation that reduces ambient sounds. Digital microphones located inside and outside the headphones measure the amount of ambient sound around you and reproduce a specific frequency level. To negate noise pollution, other companies like Bose, Sony and Panasonic offered comparable technology at a similar price, but the Beats had one thing they didn't like: dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine the buzz generated by a series of hits caught the attention of investors in September 2013, Beech received a $500 million investment from the Carlyle group, raising his value to $1 billion, a figure that would triple in less than a year.

Do you have a pair? Not me, we have. That's great. In January 2014, Beats launched a streaming service called Beats Music that offered better sound quality than Spotify and other streaming services. It offered music recommendations based on users' listening habits, as a result, the emoji was shut down. Later that year, in March 2014, Beats had reported 57% share of the premium headphone market. Apple is in talks to buy headphone maker Beats Electronics and that would be Apple's biggest acquisition, but moments before the official announcement by dr. Dre and Tyrese Gibson went to Facebook to prematurely spread the news that the stunt didn't go well, however, on August 1, 2014, Apple acquired Beats Electronics and beats music for three billion

dollar

s, they basically own this market , so Apple is buying into the trade now is Jimmy.

Iovine will be great for the streaming side, it's dr. Dre's endorsement will help if it's just the music business or a toe in the fashion clothing industry and I know he seems crazy that people wear them as a fashion statement. He is trying to enter the streaming music market three months later. Apple closed the pace. Apple's music streaming service, however, Apple's launch of the iPhone 7 in 2006, the teen might have unknowingly helped gain it an even bigger share of the headphone market. Theorists argue that this removal of the headphone jack is not only to make the phone slimmer but also to create an environment where beats wireless headphones actually become a much more important part of the equation.

I mean, this is all about Apple getting smarter about leveraging its ecosystem for profit. Those same months they released the solo through Wireless and power beats 3, which Apple used. The w1 chip allows your headphones to immediately pair with an iPhone and extend battery life. This was the first time Beats incorporated Apple technology into its product design. In September 2017, Beats launched the Studio 3 line and in October 2009, Teen launched the Solo Pro, which used Apple's h1 chip, but as Beats grew, it began to face a series of lawsuits in 2014, the company was sued by Bose Corporation, the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money in January 2015, Monster Inc sued Beats saying it had fraudulently terminated its relationship with the company, but the case was dismissed and In 2018 a jury awarded former hedge fund executive Steven Lamar twenty-five point two five million dollars for his role in designing the headphones.

Now Beats faces a more fundamental problem of changing consumer preferences. When Apple got rid of the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack with the launch of the iPhone 7, it was laying the groundwork for a new line of high-fidelity Bluetooth headphones. , the air pods, these are maybe small wireless earbuds that are basically the size of a twin and they will work through a wireless chip and they will have to be charged separately Apple will provide a charger but you will have to pay for them they will cost around a hundred and fifty nine dollars this is Apple's second foray into wearables this is a winner here pods are a runaway success and we're making them as fast as we can in 2018 airpods were apple's most popular accessory with 35 million units sold In 2019, that number skyrocketed to nearly 60 million, which is equivalent to about $6 billion in Since then, Apple has released an even more expensive version called Air Pods Pro and will release additional versions later in 2020.

The current lockdown Apple in the Air Bud market is putting beats into uncharted territory to catch up in May 2009. Teen Beach released a high-end line of Tru in-ear wireless headphones called power beats Pro will directly compete with air pods, but can May it be too little too late. Analysts estimated that Air Paws accounted for 71 percent of the global wireless earbuds market in 2019, which is even more worrying for the accounts. Apple is expected to launch a pair of over-the-ear headphones amid rumors that the company could kill off the Beats brand entirely, and legacy brands like Sure and Sennheiser are also looking to capitalize on the recent surge in popularity of headphones to place over the ears. for us it is absolutely about audio and our challenge is what else, how can we increase durability?

It's quite a challenge, which means I should be able to throw these headphones in a backpack and not worry about them breaking. The same goes for Sennheiser headphones. It's been around for 75 years, so to stay relevant we really focus on the customer who understands audio and wants more than just noise. The impact the beats had on pop culture is undeniable in eight years. dre Iovine and Wood, but it is one of the most recognized brands. inthe world, but even with its enormous success and popularity, the future of Beats remains uncertain. I don't think the Beats legacy has been personally written yet because as long as people make music, we have the right, responsibility and opportunity to create a playback. device to automate music music has been around for thousands of years and the more you feel disconnected from the world, the more you want to connect to something yourself when Apple bought Beats, it not only bought the company, it bought its cultural prestige, but In August 2008 , teenager Jimmy Iovine quit a consulting position and left the Beats role at Apple a little less secure, he told the Times in December 2019.

When I went to Apple, it was a new creative problem for me, how do we make this The future of In the music business I ran out of personal red light, someone else will have to do it, so the big question remains: is there room for two premium headphone brands at Apple? Only time will tell.