Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum

Author:Bruce Nussbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

AURA: EMBEDDING MEANING IN YOUR OFFERINGS

Music moves people. It lifts them out of their everyday moments and takes them to another place. Sales of the headphones that Dre created with his longtime partner Jimmy Iovine, founder of Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records, and Bob Brunner are soaring because they are giving fans of hip-hop the gift of music as it was meant to be heard. The name of the audio company came directly from the source of the sound. “Dre came up with the name Beats,” according to Brunner, because “he said ’people come to me for my beat.’”

Dre and Iovine shaped the sound profile they wanted to come out of the headphones (and later earphones, speakers, and boom boxes) and worked with the manufacturing and distribution teams at Monster Cable to develop them. The headphones—there are models for consumers as well as for professional DJs—generate deep, rich bass. And the design, too, was key: the Beats are decidedly rapper nasty, in a wide range of color: black, moody red, hot pink, white. They’re made from soft rubber, sculpted metal bezels, and soft-touch plastics that feel good in the hand. Brunner also helped design rich, intricate packaging for the Beats—a box has multiple compartments and folding doors that open easily, but slowly. Opening the box becomes a kind of ceremony culminating in the gift of authentic music.

Dr. Dre has amplified the Beats community by getting big-name athletes and musicians to wear his headphones; in August 2012, the NPD Group reported that the brand accounted for around 50 percent of the premium headphone market. A Beats store just opened in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood and, like Apple stores, it will showcase just a few products. The company is now looking to expand its success beyond headphones; in 2012, Beats Electronics bought Berkeley-based music subscription services MOG, giving Dre a way to deliver music directly to his listeners; that year Beats also dropped its association with Monster, and Taiwan-based HTC became a big investor. If current projections continue, Brunner believes that Beats will be a $1 billion company soon.

It’s perhaps no secret why the Beats have taken off: a hip-hop legend teamed up with a renowned designer-creator to build a unique set of headphones that delivered a hip-hop sound. But far more important, Brunner and Dre built a special bridge between Dre’s music and his audience. After using the Beats headphones and hearing, for perhaps the first time, the sound that artists like Dr. Dre set out to create, people sense they are connecting to something that transcends the everyday.

Which, of course, is a lot to say about headphones. Yet by creating a product that takes people closer to the moment of creation in the studio, the team that worked on Beats is giving people the opportunity to have “secular epiphanies.”

In his 1933 essay on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki describes a similar transcendent experience—albeit one triggered not by new technology but by something more traditional: rice. “A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite.

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