WHAT HAPPENED TO BEATS BY DRE?

Beats was one of those audio brands that were essentially an instant success right from the start. But, in 2021, they seem pretty much non-existent, so what happened to Beats by Dre?

In 2006, the American rappe,r Dr Dre, realised that the Apple iPod was one of the best music products ever to be offered to consumers. But there was one major problem he had with them, the quality of the earphones offered by Apple. He, and many other music artists, spend countless hours in music studios perfecting their art, wanting to sound as perfect as they possibly could. Unfortunately, most people listen to their hard work through poor audio quality earphones, so this sparked an idea.

Dr Dre then founded an exclusive headphone brand called Beats by Dre. Initially, the audio quality wasn't necessarily great, but they were specifically designed to offer a more aggressive bass frequency. When compared to the standard Apple earphones, the Beats were substantially better. However, just manufacturing his own headphones wasn't going to sell them.

What Beats did first was one of the best marketing strategies ever. Through Dre's connections, they sponsored custom Beats headphones to major celebrities, which included famous NBA players, as well as music artists such as Niki Minaj, Justin Bieber and Lil Wayne. Usually right before a new record was to be released, a tour or even prior to a music video. Suddenly, the Beats brand was seen all over mainstream media.

Furthermore, in 2014, Beats released their own music streaming subscription service which was hugely popular.

By this stage, Apple was slightly behind in the music game as they still believed that consumers saw more value in owning their own music as opposed to "renting" it. But they soon realised they were wrong, judging by how successful Spotify and Beats Music were at the time. But they were far behind.

This ultimately lead to Apple making an offer to buy the Beats brand that Dre simply couldn't turn down. An exchange of $3 Billion was made by Apple, and they became the proud owners of Beats.

However, the first thing Apple did was reverse engineer Beats Music and rebrand it into Apple Music. To this day, they still use the same music taste algorithm and search functionality as what Beats Music used.

Although, this is Apple we're talking about. Soon, Apple started offering more and more music-related products such as Apple AirPods, AirPods Max and the Apple HomePod. Although Beats are still offered in the Apple Store, they will never allow Beats to outshine Apple products. Essentially, they are more than happy to let the Beats brand die off.

Take a look at the video below by the YouTube channel, Mr Who's The Boss, on What Happened To Beats By Dre?