In a new interview, Beats President Luke Wood — the man in charge of hardware for the Apple-owned brand — talks life after the Apple acquisition, and answers long-standing criticisms about the bass-heavy quality of Beats headphones.
Woods, who began his career doing publicity for bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth at Geffen Records, says of Apple:
“It’s fantastic. One of the great surprises was the level of integrity and honesty of the people that work at Apple. It’s unique to the company. I think that’s the bar Steve set, and that’s the bar Tim [Cook] sets.
We were always enormous Apple fans. In the audio business, Apple was always the platform of choice. When Steve Jobs and Eddy Cue were building iTunes, Jimmy was one of the first people they reached out to in 2003. There was a tremendous amount of like-mindedness.”
He says that he is not directly involved with Beats 1 and Apple Music, but notes that, “As a user … [Apple] Music is great. There’s so much that we believe in at Beats about curation and discovery that’s being driven through Apple Music.”
Finally, Wood responds to the often-heard criticism of Beats headphones, which are often viewed as big on price and style, but short on sound quality:
“We came out with the first Beats’ headphones to address a specific problem: No one was tuning headphones to replicate the excitement of modern albums. Music has significantly changed because of digital recording. The advent of sampling, for example, or the advent of digital synthesisers. The creation of sub-amplifiers too, it’s a technological innovation that lets you hear the bottom end [of music] in a different way.
The headphone was this kind of missing link. We’re really proud of that first headphone, but we’re probably prouder of the second version because going from the Studio to the Studio 2.0, we really learned the tools of our trade. With every one of our products, the desire is to become better at what we do. Sonically, I’m really proud of our current portfolio.”
If you’re interested in Beats, the rest of the interview is worth checking out.
Despite the launch of Apple Music, a number of Apple watchers are still somewhat bemused about why exactly Cupertino proved willing to shell out $3 billion for the brand. While this interview won’t answer that question, it does at least highlight how similar both brands are with their view of where they want to be positioned in the arts and tech worlds.
Sadly, there’s no discussion of why Apple Music senior director and former Beats CEO Ian Rogers recently left Apple, however. Guess that one will remain a mystery for a bit longer.
Source: Mashable
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
5 responses to “Beats president on life at Apple and criticism of Beats headphones”
I’ll stick to my Bose, thank you.
Audio isn’t an easy thing. I like the willingness that they have to learn. That’s vital. We’re all learning and realize things over time. Audio is a beast. If they keep chipping at it, they’ll keep getting better and give us the vision that they’re going for.
I feel like beats is not bad. I mean they are pricy but not bad.
Can you grab better headphones for the same price? Sure…but you are not buying them for their quality, but are buying them for their brandname anyway.
Beats makes a Billion a year on hardware, so in 3 years it will pay for the acquisition, not to mention the brain trust and cool factor that came along with it.
You’re confusing gross sales with net profit.