The sooner that the entire Beats brand dies, the better for the world
You know, i own a pair of beats studio 2.0 and they are fun to listen to and very fashionable. I can see why the average consumer Iikes them and why the average audiophile despises them. I try not to be critical of them and just enjoy the "fun" factor.
Love them or hate them though i think people completely underestimate all the good beats has done for the industry. In my mind, they have got your average consumer to care about audio equipment in numbers like never before (just look at their marketshare) and they have convinced people that they should be spending several hundred dollars to own it.
I think that is going to have profound affects on the audio industry. People are spending money on audio and equipment, the problem is that they just dont know any better so they spend the money on beats. I can see a company like Shure capitlizing on that aspect of educating the customer that pound for pound there are better options available. The good thing tho is that people are now willing to spend $300 on headphones. I remember in 2007 before beats, if you told the average person you spent $300 on headphones, you were nuts or some pompous audio elitist nerd. Nowadays its standard.
I really dont think something like Neil Young's Pono player and this new and upcoming wave of hi resolution audio popularoty would be possible without beats convincing the average consumer to spend money on audio equipment. The great thing is that just like people are upgrading from 1080p to 4k like crazy it seems (and the content isnt even there lol), we are going to see this mentality applied to "hd" music and itll be because of beats that it is successful.
I mean, its already rumored that apple is planning to support 24/192 soon and is building beats headphones that connect via lightning cable to support. Imagine what that will do for us?! Spotify will probably intrpduce a hi res streaming optio for $5 more, people will use tidal, and high end audio equipment will seem even less absurd than beqfore. I mean.......im still nervouse about telling most people how much i spent on my Shure 846s......
/rant