There ’s never been anything like Beats By Dre . The bulky rainbow headphones are a gaudy staple of shopping centre , planes , clubs , and sidewalks everywhere : as mammoth , dear , and expensive as their namesake . But Dr. Dre did n’t just hatch the flashy card from his loading train bureau : The speculation began as an improbable partnership between a record - manufacture powerhouse and a boutique audio company best known for making overpricedHDMI cables .
The Truth About Monster Cable , Part 2 ( Verdict : Cheap Cables Keep Up … Usually )
You might know this ; you might own a pair of pulsation that still has Monster ’s petite , subjugated logo printed on them . But what you do n’t know is how , in ink the business deal , Monster screwed itself out of a luck . It ’s the classical David vs Goliath story — with one minor edit : David get his ass plain and is laughed out of the arena . This is the inside story of one of the all fourth dimension worst deals in tech .
The road to a rapper - convenience sensation does n’t start in the VIP section of a club over a bottle of Cristal . The idea was n’t hatch in the back of a Maybach or in a council chamber whose wall are deck out in atomic number 78 records and shark tanks . Before Dre got paid , and red ‘ group B ’ logos clamp million unseasoned heads across the globe , the son of Chinese immigrants start up toying with audio equipment in California .
cadence begins with Monster , Inc. , and Monster begin with Noel Lee . He ’s a friendly , incredibly impudent piece with a comic - Bible hairstyle and a handicap that adds to his supervillain height : Lee is ineffective to take the air . alternatively , he glide around on a chrome - plate Segway . Lee has been make things for your ear since 1979 , after he drive an engineering education and spun it into a components clientele with one moneymaking premise : your music does n’t voice as good as it could .
In true Silicon Valley manner , Lee initiate out in his family ’s cellar : gustation - testing different varieties of copper wire until he found a character that he recollect enhanced audio caliber . Then , also in Silicon Valley fashion , he marketed the shit out of it and jacked up its cost : Monster Cable . Before it was ever bring up in the same pant as Dre , Monster was trying to get music fan to buy into a superior sound that existed mostly in imaginations and marketing brochures . “ We came up with a reinvention of what a talker cable could be , ” Noel Lee boasts . His son , Kevin , describe it differently : “ a cure for no disease . ”
Monster expound into pricey HDMI cables , surge protectors , and … five different sort of concealment - cleansing agent . Unnecessary , overpriced point like these have earned Monster a reputation over the years as ripoff artists , but that belies the company ’s power to make audio products that are actually pretty great . The Sojourner Truth is , audio recording cable television is a lot like expensive basketball game shoes : There are a couple hundred multitude in the macrocosm who really need the beneficial , and the rest of us credibly ca n’t differentiate the difference of opinion . Does n’t matter : Through a combining of slick persuasion and status - fight , Noel Lee carve out a small imperium .
monstrosity Knows You Need Five Different Sprays to houseclean Your iPhone , Camera , Phone , GPS and Laptop
But you may only sell so many $ 200 cables . The next step was Speaker , but the company depart in on speaker unit too lately ; the hullo - fi era was over . Plenty of masses were content with the phone their TVs made , or at most , a soundbar . Monster involve a bath .
But speakers for your nous ? This was the infrangible , legit next big affair .
( The Lees : Noel ( Left ) and Word Kevin ( Right ) at the MTV EMA 2012 Awards )
Noel began prototyping headphone , and dispatch his boy to LA to book partnership for a proprietary high - definition audio data format . The audio data format never saw the twinkle of sidereal day , but the meeting were deserving the ticket . “ You experience ta go get Usher , Mary J. Blige , U2 , ” Young Lee was instructed . And from there , as he tells it , fate took over : “ Sometimes thing just happen a certain way … the value of serendipity , ” Kevin say through a halcyon smile . If he had n’t been sent to tempt artists with a vaporware environs - sound euphony data formatting , “ [ he ] would have never met Jimmy Iovine from Interscope . ” And it was this meeting that spawned the best bad idea in gadget history . rhythm began .
( The Industry : Dr. Dre ( Left ) and Interscope Chairman Jimmy Iovine ( Right ) )
Jimmy Iovine is a top executive par excellence ; a homo who helped mastermind the works of Bruce Springsteen and 50 Cent likewise , co - give rise 8 Mile , and today sits as the Chairman of Interscope Records . Dr. Dre is Dr. Dre . When hawking Beats at press events , the two work as a span : Iovine , fast - talking and dagger - sharp , rave the same corny origin story every sentence . Interscope require Dre to indorse sneakers . Dre reply : “ shtup sneaker , let ’s make verbaliser . ” The almost - surely - apocryphal moment make for partly because it ’s cute , and and mostly because it rhymes . From there , they ’ll have you conceive , Beats was carry .
But the Lees say this is only half true . After Kevin ’s seeking for surround sound partners , Iovine and Dre approached Monster with a dazzling fling : lease ’s build electronics . “ They came up and loved all the technology my dad did around sound , ” Kevin call in . Noel says he and Jimmy snap instantly : “ You screw how medicine is supposed to voice , I know how music is supposed to sound , and the rest of the world is pretty screwed up . ” It was a “ love fest ” from the start , says Kevin . What followed was an “ pedagogy in auditory sensation , ” with a didactic monstrosity demoing the company ’s speech sound technical school to yarn-dye upon Iovine and Dre , its ability to reproduce skull - bludgeoning sea bass , let in an in - ear prototype . And the Interscope dyad needed the education , enounce the elder Lee :
Dre and Jimmy needed to sympathize why it was n’t a speaker world anymore . They had no musical theme why people would n’t want to buy speaker system . [ They ’ve ] generate big verbaliser , and always had them in the studio . Why substitute headphone for loudspeaker system ?
Monster accept the pat duad ’s vague audio aspirations and pointed them in one very lucrative direction : high - end headphones . Bose was something your dad bribe . Everything else was either horseshit or too obscure and complex for consumers to break up out . “ lease ’s build earphone together , ” Noel decreed .
Love fest or no , this was never going to be a Steve and Woz moment of geek kinship . This was occupation from the offset — and while Noel know it now ( Jimmy want to “ own both end , ” he says ) , Monster did n’t show much acumen when it mattered . Monster want to jumpstart its headphone business . mischievously . In the turmoil of the mid-00s , Dre and Jimmy want to regain something other than record to monetise . Badly . But the money arrangement was destined to be dominated by Iovine , a man who ’d gone school principal to head with Steve Jobs , and run a music empire — not some small deluxe cable television firm . The Monsters knew that if they could harness Dre ’s “ entertainment and mutant ” impinging they could launch their company into the mainstream . They were right-hand , but they were also woefully underprepared for the course to success ; in the process , they blew almost every patronage decisiveness potential .
When Kevin Lee went to LA to negotiate , he had nothing but a bachelors stage , and no business experience outside of go for his father . Kevin Lee fly solo against a effectual , financial , and incarnate monolith that dwarfed him . And that was clear from the start — as soon as the two firms tried to ink a deal , they bumped up against the negotiating might of Interscope . Monster had audio engineering chops , but so did plenty of other companies . “ [ Jimmy Iovine and Interscope Marketing President Steve Burman ] want a sure set of numbers , that we , as a small telegram company that had just lost $ 50 million trying to make talker , could n’t give , ” says the young Lee . Monster was offered a money snag it could n’t live off of . The music titans were underestimate . discourse fare to a standstill . Radio silence . Iovine walk , take Dre and the amusement industry with him . They ended it with a call : “ We detest to do this to you , but we ’re belong to do the deal with someone else . ”
Monster was alone .
Six calendar month exceed . Steve Burman , calls . Team Dre had tried to go withSLS Audio , a better - established firm with a data track track record in speakers , and it had n’t worked . Burman wondered , was Monster still interested in making headphones with a rapper ? They for sure were !
But a lot had chance in that half a year . The full term “ Beats by Dre ” was already coined through the fail quislingism , and SLS had come up with a rough paradigm headphone that would shape the entire lineup though the present daytime : giant ear cup , a thick , flowing headband , and enough annotate for a Formula 1 motorcar . But it was way too big , Kevin Lee says — it even attend elephantine on Dr. Dre ’s enormous figure . “ Put it on your school principal . Look in the mirror . You do n’t look good . ”
Kevin was whole over his headway , forging the time to come of his father ’s society without oversight , and really , without a sturdy clue : “ At the time , we did n’t really have sex what we were going to make , at what price points , [ and ] at what monetary value . ” Kevin Lee was build an integral electronics production line in secret before he had the line partnership to actually do anything with it . He was making Beats By Dre before Dre said he was allowed . And he was panicking . “ It was beyond insubordination , ” says Kevin . “ [ I was going to ] lose the trustfulness of my don . I already had one thousand thousand of dollar bill of inventory . He would have pour down me . ”
Young Lee face financial and familial self - destruction if he could n’t seal the hatful . So he sealed whatever he could — what he says was “ the most complicated contract [ Interscope ] had ever seen . ” And he faced it by himself , with his BA , against a phalanx of corporate lawyers who arouse each twenty-four hours to do nothing but negotiate contracts that privilege Interscope .
There ca n’t be two winner . Monster solidify an correspondence that amaze Beats Electronics alive and transportation phone , but not without gigantic forfeiture : Jimmy and Dre ’s side of Beats would retain permanent ownership of everything that Monster evolve . Every earphone , every headband , every cup , every driver , every distant control — if there was a piece of metal or plastic associated with Beats By Dre , Noel and Kevin Lee surrender it to Jimmy and Dre . Monster would also be entirely responsible for make up the products — a hugely expensive recession of the deal — as well as distributing them . The heavy lifting . “ I was a piddling intimidated by Dr. Dre , ” Kevin Lee take on over a child - sized component of chicken noodle soup . Noel sits beside him without a Good Book .
What ’d Team Dre do ? Let Dre be Dre . After month of ontogenesis , Kevin Lee present Dre with the first last unit , visualise here for the first prison term ever .
Dre put the earphone on , played In Da Club , and said “ That ’s the cocksucker . ” That ’s all anyone need . Beats By Dre was greenlit .
Kevin Lee want to line up a fleet of musician to do promotional education — trying to de - jargonize the upward - nosed macrocosm of the audiophile and make it something shopping center - compatible . Think Nelly Furtado explaining the importance and risk of distortion , Robin Thicke whisper in your capitulum about the note value of soprano . That was n’t going to materialise .
The Partners
The Dr. Dre task force take on Monster ’s audio gearing and pimp it , tirelessly , as a widget status symbol without rival . That was the plan — period . merchandising , Iovine told Kevin Lee , would take too long . Education would take too long . Instead , the strategy was to enchant the world : Beats would be “ the hottest product to have , and sound will be a Trojan horse . And that ’s what we did . beatniks was in every single euphony picture , ” sound out Kevin . Iovine made certain Beats had prominent emplacement across Interscope ’s sterling roster , infiltrate the money and product lust - woolly-headed mentality of video - determine America .
It work . Disposable income was fling of in the hundreds upon hundreds of meg . “ Kids did go into a Best Buy and bought Beats not because it sounded coolheaded , but because it made them calculate cool , ” admits Kevin . The Lees were place their audiophilic necks on the channel to prop up what was , fundamentally , a fashion ship’s company . Beats ’ authorization is decipherable whenever you walk down an American sidewalk — the Bs drove . Jimmy and Dre take decent headphones that could inundate your ears with downcast - remnant , sequester you from street noise , and keep your skull relatively comfortable during a foresightful walk , and made all of these timber irrelevant under a sheen of doorknocker - lure . Beats might be overblown and overpriced , but these were n’t sneakers , they were complex , miniaturized electronics . They were engineering projects that took millions of dollars , tons of image , and years of back - and - off hassling from Iovine to Kevin Lee to finesse .
But if you ask Monster ’s collaborators , they ’ll play down Kevin and Noel ’s function to little more than FedEx and Foxconn — celebrated partners , but a group that was responsible for small more than building the things and getting them to your local big loge . Beats Electronics deny Monster had any role whatesoever in the industrial or audio design of the headphones : “ We have our own factories . We have ascendance of everything . The sound … was always our affair — we have our own patent strait key signature , ” says the society . “ It ’s definitely us . ” Beats Electronics CEO Luke Wood more or less repeats the claim , though insists all political party are still Friend . But the friends on the Monster side were responsible merely for “ source ” part and pluck out “ materials ” under the instruction of “ tune ” the Beats vocalise .
False , enjoin Monster , who provide us with confidential purpose document that show Monster ’s work on both audio engineering and industrial mockups :
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admit eminent - profile whizz power deals with artists like Lady Gaga :
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Monster burst at the suggestion that Beats had everything , even anything to do with engineering : “ dead not , they do n’t have any engine driver , ” says Noel . Kevin plenty on : “ Beats [ had ] zero [ engineering role ] , ” a realness of the deal he suppose is “ undisputed — Monster engineered the speech sound in Beats by Dre headphones . They told us what they desire and they approve it , but we made that sound possible . ” That “ favourable reception ” role is one that ’s reprise throughout Noel and Kevin ’s recounting : They brought ironware to Jimmy and Dre , there would be a back and away , and off the headphones would go to someone ’s credit wag handbill , pack by a gust of music picture bluster and rapper inhalation . It worked so , so well .
Until it didn’t — until HTC , a balloon Chinese electronics giant star worth billion , take an interest in Beats . Jimmy and Dre saw an opportunity for a money burst instead of a money torrent , with $ 300 million on the mesa for a 51 % stake . Luckily for the Interscope son — and alas for anyone at Monster — that slapdash contract Kevin put together let Beats waltz around right into HTC ’s arms . A Beats rep articulate the legal separation let it to be more “ nimble ” and have less “ report structure to go through , ” but there was more incentive than pleasant Logos dump the Lees .
Monster received some money as part of the separation — more severance payment than hard currency - out — and Beats walk away with everything : all of Monster ’s sound recording piece of work , every individual patent , the trademarked design , and more than anything else , the name . Iovine had once fight Monster to scrub its name off the very packaging of the phone it ’d plan — he wanted ‘ Beats By Dre ’ on the box and nothing else . No Monster logo . No reference of Monster whatsoever . With the HTC deal , Monster was out for good in every possible way , unable to use the engineering it created to compete against the leviathan it ’d helped birth . The same year Beats Electronics dropped Monster , the company put up $ 519 million in sales ( versus $ 298 the year before ) , capturing a commanding 64 % of the “ exchange premium ” earpiece market ( $ 100 and higher ) . That ’s beyond a cult — that ’s a conquest .
It ’s hard to decide where Jimmy Iovine being a shark begins and the Lee boy hamstringing themselves ends . It ’s also strong to summon the slightest decibel of sympathy when everyone have-to doe with made a lot of money and keep on to be rich . There ’s no reasonableness to trust Beats Electronics will switch its expression or stir its branding in the tenuous , short of some sort of flagitious dirt involving Dr. Dre . There ’s even less reasonableness — as much as they abnegate it — that Kevin and Noel Lee will try anything less than clawing back at what they once had . They depone they enjoyed their years on the Beats gravy geartrain , but are n’t after another menage name cash - in or conspicuous fad gadget .
Yesterday , Monster announced that it is partnering with knocker , mega - manufacturer , and all - around celebritySwizz Beatz . The company ’s new flagship line of headphones are call the “ Diamond Tears , ” plated in mirrored , gem - faceted plastic with a plump fake jewel stuck on each side .
BeatsHeadphones
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