I'm sorry but their sound quality is pretty abysmal for the price; there is a reason they're lampooned. I agree that a lot of the headphone market is poor but 20 minutes of googling will get you some good headphones for a decent price. That aside, I certainly agree with you they were able to build a brand, make mostly junk products pretty fashionable and sold a lot of merchandise.
You can say that about literally any major electronics brand. About 5 years ago I googled for the new "oneplus" which turned out to be a great phone at half the price of Samsung or LG. Unknown brand. Great deal. I was happy. Bought again.
I also once bought soy sauce that wasn't kikkoman, half price and it tasted good. Go figure. This doesn't make Samsung or Kikkoman "junk." It makes them a brand name.
Maybe I should put this differently....
If Beats announced today they are putting major effort into smart watches, I would expect to soon see lots of people wearing them. I'd beats to make smart watches that people want because they're relevant piece of culture and utility.
If boss or plantronics announced the same... I wouldn't.
Yes I totally agree people really do buy things because of celebrity endorsements and don't do their own research before buying most things. Its mind boggling to me but hey to each his own. Tangent-y but I feel the worst for the people who have their iPhone/Apple headphones turned up to 11 b/c the earbuds don't fit their ears well, and you know, everyone in the bus/metro/subway with them that have to listen to their music bleeding out of their ears, too.
I think if we reduce this to "people buy things because of celebrity endorsements" than there isn't much to talk about.
Xerox invented the modern PC, Apple spent the next 30 years applying celebrity endorsements and marketing nonsense to make money. That's the story. I think this is very wrong.
If you are selecting a component to put in a device, this is a mostly objective question. Price. Objective quality, longevity. For a person to get value out of a thing, you must cross into more "subjective" territory. If you refuse to rely on anything that is subjective, nothing about humans makes sense. Why do people want to look cool anyway? Why are people listening to music?
In fact I think the psychology behind celebrity endorsements and advertising is particularly interesting and there is a lot to talk about.
Unfortunately, this topic, audio quality, is extremely subjective, yes, like someone mentioned in another comment to my original post. But objectively the audio response of Beats are very bass heavy and, in my opinion, the high end response is lacking, but other people really enjoy their beats headphones so thats up to them. Although, the divers in Beats, for the price, are objectively a poor purchase. You can get stronger and clearer drivers in other headphones at a fraction of the cost. I'm not really sure where the last bit of your posts ties in with what I've been saying but I totally agree people will be people, especially when the topic is complex and they can just buy what Harden/KD/etc. wears and be happy.
The difference here is that Beats are not as good as the audio enthusiast equipment, and they're multiple times more expensive to boot! Your comparison would only have been apt if Kikkoman was actually worse than the offbrand soysauce, still 3x more expensive, and people breathlessly defended it in forums and concerts while mindlessly repping the brand with t-shirts and other swag.
Depends on what you mean by sound quality. If you're looking for reference sound, then yes, they're bad. But if you just want something that sounds good, they they fit the bill[0].
Yeah but the other half of my point was if you want something that "sounds good" you can spend 1/4 of the price of Beats for similar ability. Its a brand effect. I personally use a pair of 15 dollar JVC marshmallow earbuds that fit my ears perfect for about 50% of my listening (gym, walking in the city in the summer, etc), but if I'm spending 200 on closed or over the ear headphones you should expect a lot better response spectrum that what Beats provide. Maybe junky products was a bit harsh and I should have said expensive for the quality.
