In recent years, with the gradual clarity of the market situation, more and more manufacturers have begun to enter the headphone market. Whether it is a domestic and foreign audio manufacturer, such as BOSE, AKG, Iron Triangle, Wanderer, or various mobile phone manufacturers, such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc., as long as it is a manufacturer that can call out the name, it is basically involved in TWS headphones, and also hopes to occupy a place in such a huge market.
In addition to hardware manufacturers, some Internet manufacturers also want to get a piece of the pie. Following the netease cloud music, Kugou music and other music platforms have launched their own brand of TWS headphones, recently, the well-known video platform beep announced the establishment of headphone consumer brand bilipods, has been bought in the B station members of the brand's first headphone products, the official account was also officially launched yesterday.
Station B officially said, "Bilipods is a headphone consumer brand from Bilibili, focusing on creating an immersive experience, exploring classic styling, voice actor lines, and drama sound effects, and conveying it from a deeper understanding of the second dimension." Putting aside these metaphysical statements, consumers may be more concerned about whether the first TWS headset launched by Station B is worth buying.
The first headset of the "second dimension"?
According to the product page, bilipods' first headphone products are jointly named with "Devil's Blade" and are divided into two styles: "Stove Door Tanjiro" and "Stove Door You Bean". Among them, the "Tanjiro" version adopts the emerald green color represented by the protagonist and is decorated with the plaid pattern on the protagonist's clothes as an embellishment, while the "You Bean" version uses the pink color represented by You Douzi and adopts the cherry blossom pattern on the clothes as an embellishment.
In addition to the design of a large number of works related to the design of the work, this product also comes with a headset protective case that fits the original design - the original Tanjiro carries your beans in the wooden box, which is similar to the Chrome backpack that was included in the Redmi AirDots 3 Pro Original God Custom Edition some time ago, which is a common practice of increasing the degree of customization of joint goods.
In terms of sound quality, according to the official introduction, this headset uses a 12mm dynamic unit. Theoretically, the larger the moving coil unit, the larger the space, and the more open the stereo field, so the moving coil unit should be as large as possible. The problem is that, considering the loss of audio quality during wireless transmission, the size of the dynamic unit has little impact on the actual sound quality of TWS headphones.
So what has a greater impact on the sound quality of TWS headphones? The first is the Bluetooth solution, bilipods "Devil's Blade" customized version using Qualcomm QCC3040 + Bluetooth 5.2 scheme, which is currently a mainstream cost-effective Bluetooth headset on the market commonly used in a connection scheme. Thanks to the blessing of Qualcomm QCC3040 Bluetooth chip, this headset supports aptX Adaptive dynamic adaptive codec protocol, and the latency is not high and the stability can also be.
The second is the noise reduction ability, in this regard, the performance of the bilipods "Ghost Blade" customized version is very subtle. This headset does not have active noise cancellation function, coupled with the fact that the headphones themselves use a semi-in-ear design, so there is basically no noise reduction ability. Even if you're singing, noisy outside noise will still come into your ears, and the immersion of the music will naturally be greatly reduced.
Finally, look at the function, in addition to the common call noise reduction, tapping and cutting songs, the product also relies on the advantages of B station's own brand, adding a linkage function with B station clients, allowing users to tap the left ear earphone to like the video. Let's ignore the practicality of this function, from the official introduction, this product is likely to have no custom voice, pop-up animation and other functions common in other linkage headphones, which is obviously a deduction point for the target user.
Interestingly, in the product detail page, we can know that this product is manufactured by Dongguan Hunter Sound Technology in the Xiaomi ecological chain. Open the official website of Hunter Sound Technology, we can see a lot of familiar figures, including Xiaomi true wireless Bluetooth headset Air2 SE, Redmi Airdots 2, etc., and the bilipods "Ghost Blade" custom version is also in it, from the appearance, configuration to function is basically completely consistent.
In other words, the so-called bilipods "Ghost Blade" custom version is essentially a haylou MoriPods skinning product.
Familiar with quadratic commercial law
At a time when everything can be co-branded, co-branding seems to have become a thing that is no longer surprising.
As early as March this year, Redmi, a brand of Xiaomi Group, announced at the press conference that it would link up with the current hot mobile game IP "Original God" and launch the Redmi AirDot 3 Original God Customized Edition. Based on the popular character of the original god, Keli, the product is deeply customized from packaging, accessories to product appearance. The final product sold well, and even once developed to the point of buying at a higher price on idle fish.
Some readers may ask, obviously they are all the same product, why is the price of the joint model generally more expensive than the normal product? In addition to the appearance, what is unique about these co-branded products that people would rather increase the price than rush to buy?
Personally, I think the reason lies in two points. First of all, users who are willing to snap up co-branded headphones are not buying headphones, but buying for the name of "peripheral goods". For example, the Redmi AirDot 3 Pro Pro features not only custom headphones, but also a specially designed Curly backpack-type storage box, and a box based on the exclusive weapon of The Colle, all of which are available as stories.
As a popular character in the game, The popularity of Keli naturally goes without saying. The super high popularity has also made the surrounding prices related to her rise. Compared with the official handmade one priced at 788 yuan, the linkage headset priced at 399 yuan has suddenly become cost-effective. This also leads to us as long as we casually stroll around in the MiYouSha and Xiaomi Mall, there are original god fans who hope to buy the exclusive small backpack and the toot toot story collection that they want to buy separately, which is quite a modern version of the meaning of "buying the pearl and returning the pearl".
On the other hand, compared with other peripheral goods, co-branded headphones also have the function of storing customized voices. Most of the co-branded headphones on the market will be equipped with the exclusive system voice of the corresponding character, such as the Redmi AirDot 3 Pro original god version equipped with Keli's system voice, the Sony Xperia Ear Duo headset "Sword Art Online" version equipped with Yasna's system voice and so on.
For second-dimensional enthusiasts, custom voice is a very common commodity, and the custom voice of various popular characters is even more than 5,000 yen (equivalent to 256 yuan) at any time. For them, with a little extra money, they can hear a unique, customized voice, so why not? As for the quality of the headphones themselves, perhaps not many people really care.
New business ideas
According to the data released by the previous B station financial report, the net loss of the B station in 2021 was 6.8 billion yuan, compared with 3.1 billion yuan in the same period last year, an increase of 119% year-on-year, and the annual loss in the past three years has expanded by more than 5 times, successfully achieving a "feat" of 7 consecutive years of losses from 2015 to 2021.
The lack of growth of the game business and the inability to make ends meet the income of film and television copyrights are forcing Station B to seek new growth points. According to the above, it is not difficult to see that Station B hopes to make efforts in the field of e-commerce, and the purpose of their establishment of the bilipods headphone brand is naturally to share a piece of the linkage headset market with good prospects.
Interestingly, Station B did not enter the headphone market in the near future. As early as the launch of the headset brand bilipods, Bilibili had launched the cultural and creative brand BEMOE, and joined hands with many manufacturers such as Xiaodu Technology and Hunter Sound Technology to launch co-branded headphones with popular IP such as Hatsune Mirai and EVA, when these products were all classified as BEMOE's headphone products.
However, although there are many linkage products backed by B station, BEMOE, a cultural and creative brand, seems to be rarely recognized by consumers. According to Xiaolei's survey, even in some QQ group chats with a high concentration of two dimensions, not many people can have an impression of the cultural and creative brand of BEMOE, let alone BEMOE's headphone products.
This is obviously not the situation that B station wants to see, in order to enhance the attention of the headphone category, B station first launched bilipods, an independent headphone consumer brand, the original BEMOE headphones are logically classified into bilipods, and then give it the definition of "transmission from a deeper understanding of the secondary element", and strive to build its products into a new quadratic marker.
Now it seems that at least in terms of attracting attention, Station B has done it. The problem is the product, bilipods' first headset product is a lackluster quality of the custom product, in addition to the same wooden box storage box of The Bean, even the voice actor custom voice is not, the degree of care of the whole product is even lower than the Redmi AirDot 3 Pro original god version, it is difficult to cause the target user's desire to consume.
Personally, I believe that the brand or product to which fans are oriented should go deeper at the level of "fan customization". How to improve the product's fixed system, figure out the appearance design that the audience likes, and integrate the featured system voice into the product core is expected to become the future development direction of the brand's products.