I notice things. It’s a gift and a curse. It’s how I’m wired. When I’m on the bus, for example, or the metro, or a train, or an airport. I notice things.
I pay attention, I see how people behave, what they wear. I see their shoes, their watches, and, more recently, I pay attention to the headphones they’re using.
I take note.
My recent trip to Paris for Paris Blockchain Week and Sui Basecamp (where the main image for this article was taken, by the way) made me realise headphones are, potentially, key metric of wealth. I never noticed that before. And here’s why.
After a lifetime spent using whatever headphones came with (back when that was a thing) or using free headphones I got as freebies at various work events, I decided to invest on a pair of Bluetooh headphones.
Or ear buds, I should say.
I started with cheap knockoffs, which is a bad idea because they never work, at least the two pairs I got didn’t work.
Then I upgraded to JBL, and they worked great, until they didn’t. One day, out of the blue, the left-hand one stopped working.
So I sent them back to Amazon, got a refund, and finally caved in and bought Apple AirPods.
They work great, but they’re not cheap. Retail varies depending on your location, and you can sometimes get them cheaper from Amazon, but they’re at least $130-$140.
That’s a lot for a pair of headphones. But it was a good idea, a good investment. They work great and make my job easier.
When I’m back home, which is the capital city of a country in the Balkans, most people on the bus don’t use those, they have old school headphones with a cable, or other ear buds.
Here in Paris, which is very obviously a city with more wealth, more money, higher salaries, more rich people in it, on the metro, I’ve noticed that AirPods are like the starting point.
I never saw so many people wearing another type of Apple headphones, the AirPods Max, which go for well over $500.
On the way here today, this morning, I saw four people with them on, and I only had to go like four or five metro stops before I got here.
I never thought of that, but it makes sense.
People who don’t necessarily have cash to splash may stretch their wallets a bit further in order to get the latest Jordans or the latest iPhone, even if they can’t afford it, because it’s considered status.
But headphones aren’t considered status. It’s like buying an expensive pair of branded jeans versus an expensive branded jacket, shirt or t-shirt . People might notice the t-shirt or the jacket, but who would notice the jeans?
Almost by definition, removing the ‘status’ element automatically changes the pool of buyers.
Obviously, buying Apple AirPods Max doesn’t automatically make them rich, otherwise they wouldn’t use the metro. But it tells me that perhaps the average metro user here in Paris has a salary that’s high enough to spend half a grand on a pair of headphones.
You can’t exactly say that about every city in the world, I reckon.
What do you think?
bitcoinea 
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