Dr. Dre -- 'I'M THE 1ST BILLIONAIRE IN HIP HOP'

j.troup said:
Are you KIDDING?!?!?

Of COURSE he made that cash off MUSIC!!!!


The ONLY reason that those headphones sold even 1 unit is because of the DR. DRE BRAND. Which is nothing but music...Wreckin Cru. NWA. Eazy E. DOC. Ruthless Records. Death Row. Snoop Dogg. Tupac. Aftermath. Eminem. 50 Cent. The Game.


Beats is a brand who's identity is BASED in music.



This is about a milestone for HIP HOP. And as a child of HIP HOP, for me, this is MAJOR.




#Inspiration
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A little late with a reply, this thread has jumped all over the place, lol.

This is definitely inspirational from a business and music aspect. The reason I'm skeptical to say "he made this off music", you've already said yourself. When the original marketing strategy of saying "I'm Dr. Dre, I make great quality music, and now I make headphones for audiophiles to hear great quality music the best way possible" didn't work...they(and by "they" I mean whoever the genius in the room was...Iovine? Dre? original marketing team? revised marketing team? I don't know)made the headphones into fashion accessories. To say no other artist had the branding of Dre is ridiculous. Dre's branding is not what sold beats anymore than Michael Jordan's branding sells Jordans in 2014.

Beats were well marketed. They're on artists in every video, they come in bright colors that accessorize and coordinate well with things like(ironically)JORDANS. I'm taking nothing from their genius business strategies. But Beats by Dre selling because of who Dre is sounds less believable than Ciroc selling because of who Puff Daddy is. Yup, I just said that. Even with Dre's name in the title of his product, Beats are less connected to Dr. Dre than Ciroc is connected to Puff. You buy a bottle of Ciroc, you know Puff Daddy somewhere smiling. You see Ross and French drinking it in vids you think 'they're supporting their boy". See Lady Gaga or Lil Wayne in a vid with Beats on, and you think "those lime green Beats look crazy with the purple and lime Lebrons he wearing." Dre doesn't cross average person's mind(now it will cause I pointed it out).

Again, I'm not trying to hate on dude at all. On the business end, Beats are an amazing marketable product. But if Timbo or even Quincy Jone was positioned the same way at the same time with the same product, I can't say they wouldn't have been just as successful after the same original pitfall of trying to push the brand on the strength of the producer in question.

As for my comment on not understanding Apple's decision, it's more of an inquiry thing. Because of such a big purchase, I'm assuming Apple products will now come with "beats technology" within them. The headphones may be bundled with ipods, ect. I'm wondering what big picture Apple saw before making the purchase. I'm sure the guys at Apple are smarter than I am, they'll have no problem coming up with ways to make that investment profitable, I'm just waiting to see what they do.

And again, I'm pretty sure Dre is already worth $550 Mill. All he needs is $450 mill physical cash after all the smoke clears to call himself a billionaire, pretty sure he'll get that.

Congrats to that dude, I'll never say he's not one of the hardest working guys in music or that he doesn't deserve the success.
 
Legal Dollaz said:
Let me also add that all this Dr Dre being the first "Hip Hop Billionaire" talk without any of the details being publicly released is premature. How much of this sale is cash vs stock? Preferred stock? Common stock? Vesting structure? Acceleration triggers? Liquidity preference? I can go on all day but the truth is the devil is in the details and right now the amount of details reveled publicly is ZERO. But of course in the world of Hip Hop 99% of its participants are totally ignorant to what goes on in the business world at this level so a Forbes list will suffice. Too bad because maybe one day we will stop being satisfied with "trying to come up" utilizing platforms like Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, etc...and start realizing the "come up" is in creating our OWN platforms utilizing online technology
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THIS!

That's why Dre dropped the video..he knew that majority of folks would hear.."Sold for 3.2 BILLION"....:berzerk::berzerk::berzerk::victory::victory:....and be done.

We really need to start studying money, economics, accounting and finance as a culture..here's a start..
 
The statement "I'm the 1st Billionaire in Hip Hop" expresses nothing more than the fact that Dre is both a Billionaire as well as being in Hip Hop, and while this statement may be factually correct it is also somewhat ambiguous as some people are likely to infer the statement implies that his new found wealth is derived directly from Hip Hop even though this is obviously not the case at all.

Perhaps it's a little ambiguous because it's also a little egocentric, as in Dre might view himself as being Hip Hop first and foremost, so everything he does feeds into that view...you know every success is an extension of his initial success in Hip Hop, it's all built upon that foundation....so even if something might not be stickily Hip Hop it still gets thrown onto that pile because that's where it stems from.
 
Want to get close to a billionaire.......well we know how long it would take to NOT be one as far as music......UNTIL somebody proves that statement wrong. And that's what I'm waiting on. So I see all of that accomplishment from NWA, Snoop, Eminem, 50 Cent......all of that money and a beatmaker/artist/producer/owner of record company with others under it/actor in multiple movies/anything else as far as entertainment...... still couldn't bust that billy or get close without a check with 3 of those B's on it being cut and divided? Yeah...takes a bad mfer to do that without somebody cutting a check..... right?

Shows you how much just ONE billion is right there.
 
yokuzin said:
that's funny. People did not buy beats by dre because of his music. Lmao! :cry:

it's like saying these young dudes buy jordans because they are a fan of jordan as a basketball player. Smh.

i would believe it............if this was 2002.
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what makes jordans so popular?
 
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j.troup said:
Actually, if you remember correctly, they tried the whole "hear the music as it was meant to be heard" approach when they first came out. They basically positioned them as an Audiophile product.

And they didn't sell.


But when they repositioned the brand as a fashion accessory, then they sold like hot cakes.
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They still go with that approach to an extent. It gives people justification for paying that much for headphones.
 
KelevraOne said:
nsync made JT. Not denying the power of Timbo, but JT Was a star, before they started working together
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You're right about that, I forgot about nsync. Still I feel like Timbaland made him a star and gave him credibility beyond teenage girls.

FutureSex/LoveSounds btw. was the album responsible for me even liking Timberlake, I think most Hip-Hop heads can agree there. Without Timbo's sound I don't think he would be anywhere near where he is today.
 
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Timbo is nowhere on the level of Dre. I'm not sure who suggested that. He got hits, but he can't compare to Dre's list of who's who in hip-hop.
 
First of all no one, from what I've heard, have ever called the headphones just "Beats". People call the headphones "Beats By Dre". So I'm not sure why everyone here thinks you can just "insert your favorite old crusty producer name here" and the headphones would still sell as well as they're doing now. I just don't see it. In marketing, branding is everything, and no one has a more respected brand IN HIP HOP than Dr. Dre.
 
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