Actually, Beats by Dre have superb sound quality on par with competing headphones in the same price range and above, even. The reason many people complain is because they make the mistake of attempting to listen to genres such as Rock N' Roll, Indie Music, Punk, etc. when the product is clearly advertised as "The Hip Hopper's Head Phone". The sound profile simply isn't synchronized with the waves associated with those genres, so it's no wonder that the listening experience is unpleasant.

> I guess you can argue that they make people pay more for an already useful product vs buy the product at all..

Yes this was my point. "Cool" is something that accelerates buying behavior, not something that you should rely on as main driving factor.

Headphone market already exists. People buy headphones to listen to music. So headphone companies can charge more for "cool" headphones.

But smart watch market didn't exist as a mainstream market. And creepy hidden camera glasses market didn't exist as a mainstream market.