By Jacob Bernstein / New York Times News Service
You see them on every block: people being propelled through their routines listening to their own individualized soundtracks, with the outside world serving as a stage set.
Headphones are now fashion statements. Status symbols. Fetish objects on par with luxury watches and limited-edition Nikes.
William Crosson, a 28-year-old executive recruiter and part-time DJ, wears V-Moda Crossfade Wireless headphones, a $270 set that looks like something a cyberhooligan might wear to a Berlin disco.
Alexander Gilkes, a member of Vanity Fair’s best-dressed list and founder of the auction site Paddle8, wears $400 headphones made by Master & Dynamic.
Global headphone sales hit a peak of $8.4 billion in 2013, and two years later, that figure rose to $11.2 billion, according to the research firm Futuresource Consulting. The company predicts that sales will rise another $2 billion by 2018, meaning we have yet to reach Peak Headphone.
The combination of the smartphone and headphones in many varieties (in-ear, over-the-ear, shaped-to-your-ear and so on) gives city dwellers the ability to largely avoid an experience that was once arguably the whole point of living in the crowd — interacting with others.
In a fraught public sphere, headphones provide a measure of privacy. Those who fall deeply into a Spotify playlist or the latest installment of an addictive podcast enter a cocoon-like zone all but impenetrable to tourists, beggars and those do-gooders with clipboards.
“Headphones are the frontline of urban social defense,” said Julie Klausner, a comedian, actor and writer. “I’m introverted and socially anxious by nature. My worst nightmare is sitting next to someone on a plane or someone who wants to strike up a conversation on an elevator.”
But Klausner knows she opens herself to experiences she may otherwise miss when she leaves the headphones at home. “The other morning, I forgot my headphones and was on the two train going to physical therapy when I spilled water over my own seat,” she said. “Then this smiling older woman came over to talk. If my headphones had been on, that probably wouldn’t have happened.”
The experience of intense private listening in public settings is nothing new. It goes back to teenagers communing with the Shangri-Las via the earpieces connected to transistor radios in the 1950s and 1960s. It recalls the Sony Walkman craze of the 1980s. But the latest round of headphones popularity may be an expression of our disaffected times, coming during a season when people holding different views on matters political and cultural struggle to open their mouths without triggering an argument.
Some headphones are chrome and accentuate the bass. Others are gold and boost the treble. The companies producing them can go from obscure to white-hot overnight.
Enormous growth has taken place for headphones priced from $99 to $500. But companies, like HiFiMan, Audeze and JH Audio, have built substantial businesses selling headphones that retail for as much as $3,000.
Increased demand isn’t the only thing fueling the boom. Crowdfunding sites have given potential entrepreneurs new routes to capital, while manufacturing costs have fallen. The 2014 sale of Beats to Apple, for $3 billion, also ushered in a new wave of headphone hopefuls.
Steve Guttenberg, a contributing editor to the digital products review site CNET and a high-fidelity expert, said the business has changed.
By the time Jonathan Levine, 54, a former investment banker at Lehman Bros., started the headphones company Master & Dynamic in 2014, it was clear that design and marketing were key.
Levine settled on the brand name Master & Dynamic because it sounded similar to established audio brands, such as Bang & Olufsen, Astell & Kern and Bowers & Wilkins. “‘Levine’ didn’t exactly scream luxury,” he said.
To get out the message for his 1950s-inspired, produced-in-China headphones, with its cognac-colored headband, he hired Carolina Clouet, a Balenciaga-clad former consultant for Barneys and Neiman Marcus, as his director of sales.
In October 2014 Bergdorf Goodman, Opening Ceremony and Colette received the first shipments of Levine’s pièce de résistance, the $399 MH40. In December of that year, Levine’s team sent them as freebies to Art Basel Miami Beach attendees at the Edition hotel and the Standard Miami.
After David Beckham began wearing them around Los Angeles, GQ proclaimed them “The Most Stylish Headphones Money Can Buy.” By the end of 2015, Master & Dynamic’s staff increased to 36 employees, from eight, who now work in a loftlike space in the garment district, where the walls are adorned with artwork by Christian Marclay and Terry Winters. There is even a Chuck Close portrait of Philip Glass, who, Levine was pleased to say, wears Master & Dynamics. A challenge for the industry is getting women interested in its high-end gear. Amy Uaarmorn, a 31-year-old staff member at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, received a free pair of Master & Dynamic MH40s last year. Yet, she said she seldom wears them and cannot imagine spending any more than $50 or $100 on headphones.
Never mind that Uaarmorn’s former boyfriend, Brannan Mason, 24, happens to be the coowner of Noble Audio, a 2-year-old Santa Barbara, California, company that has received glowing notices for its in-ear earphones with prices that begin at $300 and go to $2,700.
Some of the ultraexpensive headphones are made to fit your ear exactly. To get a pair, you see an audiologist, who takes impressions of yours ears using a Play-Doh-like substance and ships them off to a manufacturer, like Noble Audio.
But even as the boom shows no sign of abating, there are those who, like Uaarmorn, have no interest in spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for a perfect listening experience.
Julie Klausner is also sticking to the basics.
“Apple earbuds,” she said. “I don’t really need anything else.”
Image credits: Jonno Rattman/The New York Times