Are Beats really that popular? - Page 2

Yup, Beats are popular in Canada at least the parts where I've been. Same with Bose and SkullCandy. I see beats everywhere but have only seen B&W P5, Grados, AKG, once in public and ATH a few times.

The highest concentration of Beats I've seen was when I visited Manhattan in December. Lots of them on the subways.

As for being able to try them, every Best Buy I've been into has them on display.

They also have them at all of the Apple stores.

Obviously depends on the location. Here in Austin (UT Campus), you can't go 5 minutes without seeing someone with a Beats headphone. At the gym last night, 4 different people had Beats. It honestly does annoy the heck out of me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Synkro 

It pretty much depends where they are marketed. That's why there is a ton in the US, and not so much in Europe.

They're extremely popular in Britain even without much in the way of advertising.

I've seen a number of fakes, and probably a few real ones; always gets me to see someone wearing their headphones backwards while "getting into" the music (that is, they have it turned up, they're bobbing their head, etc). What seems more common are in-ear headphones; hard to say if there's any supermajority in terms of brand (I see a lot of Bose black/white cables, a lot of Beats red or blue cables, a lot of iPod white, and probably a lot more generic black or grey cables). Also lots of Sony.

Honestly for mobile use, I don't care about fidelity that much either - if they isolate well, are comfortable, and can survive being trucked around they've got the job. I suspect that's probably the case with a lot of the people you see on the streets as well. 

Getting more objective with it, I think the most recent market survey concluded that Beats/Monster represents either the second or third largest single brand of headphones (with something like 10-15% market share - they're behind Sony and either ahead of or behind Bose; all three combined was something relatively small like 30-ish%). So, they're "popular" relative to brands like AKG or HiFiMan, and especially as a start-up, but they do not represent the majority of the market and are not the biggest kid on the block. It will be interesting to see what happens after Monster gets out of the picture; a few years ago you couldn't turn a page on Head-Fi without seeing a SkullCandy or Bose bashing thread; SkullCandy has actively worked to address that problem - Bose seems to be less "hip" to hate. Monster generally doesn't care about bad press as long as they're moving units, but if another OEM gets into the picture that might change fairly quickly (imagine if it was some outfit like Fostex)). 

Interestingly, It appears that most of the Beats models frequently get trashed by the audiophile community as one of the most reviled headphones. And justifiably so. 

Beats are preferred by listeners who also like rap - the bass-heavy sound works well with the music. The targeted audience is between 16 and 24 years. When you see a Beats user, there's a good chance they'll have something in common who are sympathetic with the sound. We're not talking about experienced headphone users. Beats users are unlikely to be into jazz, punk, or 60s. 

And what's wrong with that? They're popular, for a reason. But Head-Fi users may not fit into the Beats demographic, which for the most part are inexperienced headphone users. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by poikkeus 

We're not talking about experienced headphone users. Beats users are unlikely to be into jazz, punk, or 60s. And what's wrong with that? They're popular, for a reason. But Head-Fi users may not fit into the Beats demographic, which for the most part are inexperienced headphone users. 

To each his own. I only ridicule them if they accuse me of being unfashionable for not owning them.

The thing is, if you walk into a store, like Best Buy, the Beats are probably the best headphones in there... Unless you prefer the Bose sound. Those two cans are top of the line in a major electronics chain. For the most part, they are outrageously over-priced. Many of us know, that for the $400 you spend on Beats Pros, you can get something which, technically, sounds a heck of a lot better! ... Even for $300...

I don't think it's any surprise that Beats take a bad rap - they have an enforced MAP. It'll be interesting to see how that works out for Sennheiser in the coming months, the HD 650 suddenly got a whole hell of a lot of competition in a price range that's already fairly crowded. The Beats have the same problem - if they didn't lock the prices up, you'd probably see them drop to around half SRP (this is based on what Sony, Ultrasone (non-Edition), Koss, AKG, Audio-Technica, and Denon headphones do relative to their MSRP); they'd probably be $250 at a lot of places (and people commonly claim that they're "about a $200 headphone")). Imagine, for a minute, if everyone enforced their SRPs as religiously as Bose and Beats - AD-700s would be $250, K701s would be $500+, MDR-SA5000s would be $700, PRO900s would be $600, and most of the "upper tier" Audio-Technicas would break a thousand dollars easy (AD2000 would be around $1200, W5000 closer to $2000). Then imagine if you had to pay tax on these (as most retail customers for things like Beats do). Are the Beats still a bad value proposition? 

Of course this is all hypothetical, but my point is basically to consider everything here in context - when you're fighting a MAP agreement you can't really make judgments about "value" relative to whatever happens to street price into competition with your product (for example, the Denon AH-D5000 and Audio-Technica ATH-W1000X are not actually intended "competition" for the Beats Pro) - of course that doesn't reflect the reality of when you go to make a purchase (because you aren't going to avoid a product due to a high SRP and low actual price). And I'm not saying that if we "equalized" things like this that the Beats headphones would somehow become better than they are; they'd still be on the lower end of the value proposition, but as a first attempt they could've done much worse (and I think that matched up against their target competition in their target market, they're fairly matched - the Beats Studio against the QC15 for example; neither is really "great"). 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrTwyst 

The thing is, if you walk into a store, like Best Buy, the Beats are probably the best headphones in there... Unless you prefer the Bose sound. Those two cans are top of the line in a major electronics chain. For the most part, they are outrageously over-priced. Many of us know, that for the $400 you spend on Beats Pros, you can get something which, technically, sounds a heck of a lot better! ... Even for $300...

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidgotsa 

How can you hate something that you have never tried? 

i second that.