In 1937, the first dynamic headphones – known as the DT-48 (Dynamic Telephone), were produced by the German audio company called Beyerdynamic, and are still being made today with modern innovations, that make for a pleasant listening experience.
Beyerdynamic had a healthy share of the headphone market up until twenty years later (1958), a Jazz-musician by the name of John C. Koss invented the first stereo headphones, which were constructed so consumers may listen to new-fangled stereo LPs in the comfort of their own home. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, Koss’s headphones dominated the headphone market, largely due to the fact that home records were very popular throughout these two decades, and Koss’s headphones complimented them perfectly. A key part of John Koss’s marketing strategy was celebrity endorsements. Here, we can see the famous American singer, Tony Bennett, wearing a pair of Koss headphones in 1963. Other famous musicians who were fans and endorsers of Koss headphones included Mel Tormay and Bobby Hackett. However, Tony Bennett remains an active fan of Koss headphones to this very day.
Shortly after the SP/3 Stereophone was invented, John Koss became a successful & iconic inventor of headphones in the mid twentieth century. His domination of the headphone industry was known as the Koss Takeover. The increase of record players in the home gave rise to the popularity of Koss’s headphones throughout the 1960s and 1970s, because the two products complimented each other. As mentioned, John Koss was a great marketer, and utilized celebrity endorsements; including Mel Torme, Bobby Hackett, and Tony Bennet, to drive sales.
By the end of the 1970s, John Koss had completely dictated the headphone market, as he implemented celebrity endorsements, clever advertising, and electrostatic headphones – which were light-weight & crisper-sounding than previous models.
In the 1980s, Koss made a common mistake that big companies tend to make; that is he diversified his company into other electronic gadgets, which did not prove successful. The 1980s belonged to Sony Entertainment, who introduced the revolutionary Walkman (debuted in 1979), which defined the portable music era. Moving forward, the lightweight MDR-3L2 headphones were innovated upon through use of foam, circumaural padding, which ended the twentieth century with cheap, lightweight headphones being available to the public. These headphones were lightweight, stylish, and more comfortable than their earlier counterparts. The MDR-3L2 headphones were the predominant headphones used from the 1980s, up until the turn of the twenty-first century.
[1] Source: Visually. “The History of Headphones.” Visual.ly, 21 Feb. 2012. Accessed Oct. 10, 2019 visual.ly/community/infographic/technology/history-headphones.