经济学人商业 || 大话AirPods
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The buzz around AirPods
大话AirPods
英文部分选自经济学人20191221期Business版块
Schumpeter
熊彼特
The buzz around AirPods
大话AirPods
Why is the ear worth so much less than the eye?
为什么耳朵远不及眼睛“金贵”？
Until recently the ear was a part of the body relatively unconquered by commerce. The neck long ago fell to the necklace, the ruff and the tie . The wrist surrendered to the bracelet and the watch. The eye sold out to spectacles, shades and mascara. But the ears were a low-rent zone for business, good mostly for cheap jewellery, earphones and hearing aids. Walk around any big city and it is clear how quickly that is changing—thanks to headphones, earbuds and a torrent of new stuff blaring through them.
相比于身体其他部位，耳朵直到最近都还尚未被商业降服。很久以前，脖子就屈服于项链、飞边和领带；手腕则受制于手镯和手表；眼睛则委身于眼镜、墨镜和睫毛膏。然而耳朵不过是商业的廉租区，其利益主要来自于便宜的珠宝、耳机和助听器。不过，如今漫步于任何一个大都市，人们都会意识到这一切正在迅速改变：这多亏了耳机、耳塞以及大量通过它们传播的新事物。
注：
1. ruff: a wide stiff white collar with many folds in it, worn especially in the 16th and 17th centuries 飞边（尤盛行于16和17世纪的白色轮状皱领） 如图
2. A torrent of 大量的
Apple, as usual, caught the trend early. The number of its AirPods, mocked for looking like broken q-tips when introduced in 2016, is estimated to have doubled to 60m pairs this year. They have spawned a wave of imitators, from Amazon’s black Echo Buds to Xiaomi’s Airdots (popular in China) and Microsoft’s Surface Earbuds—which creepily link directly to its Office software, including PowerPoint. The devices grow symbiotically with another craze: for streamed audio content in addition to music, such as podcasts. Apple helped popularise this genre. But Spotify, a Swedish streaming service, and big American broadcasting conglomerates, such as Liberty Media, are muscling in.
苹果一如既往地早早抓住了这一趋势，在2016年推出了AirPods, 当时曾被戏谑为折断的棉花棒，然而今年其销量预计将增加一倍，高达6000万副。这催生了一波又一波的跟风者，从亚马逊的黑色Echo Buds到小米的Airdots（在中国颇受欢迎），和微软的Surface Earbuds（可怕到竟能直接连接包括PowerPoint在内的Office软件）。而与这些设备共同增长的另一股热潮是流媒体的音频内容，它不再局限于音乐，播客等也纷纷加入其中。苹果对播客等音频流的普及起到了推波助澜的作用。瑞典流媒体服务商Spotify和美国广播业巨头们（如Liberty Media：自由媒体集团）也纷纷摩拳擦掌、竞相入场。
注：
Q-Tip: Trademark for a cotton swab consisting of short, thin, flexible plastic rods with a swab of cotton wool (UK)/cotton (US) at each end; they are typically used for cleaning the ears and other hard-to-reach places.
Industry executives contend that audio is undervalued—especially compared with video. As Spotify’s co-founder, Daniel Ek, said earlier this year, time spent on each is about the same, but the video industry is worth $1trn versus $100bn for audio. “Are our eyes really worth ten times more than our ears?” he asks.
行业高管认为音频行业被低估了，尤其是与视频行业相比。正如Spotify联合创始人丹尼尔·埃克（Daniel Ek）在今年年初所言，人们花在音频和视频上的时间大致相当，视频行业产值1万亿美元，而音频行业仅为1千亿美元。他问道：“我们的眼睛真比我们的耳朵值那么多钱吗？”（另一种译法，我们的眼睛真的比我们的耳朵金贵10倍吗？）
The eyeball plainly still dominates. The number of screens dwarfs that of “hearables”. Between them, just three Tinseltown groups—Warner Media, Disney and Netflix—have spent as much as $250bn on visual programming since 2010. Audio, including music, comes nowhere near. That said, the battle to “monetise the ear”, as Greg Maffei, Liberty Media’s boss, puts it, is in full swing. These days no one would lend Mark Antony theirs; they would rent or sell them.
显而易见眼球仍然占据着主导地位。屏幕数量使音频媒介（给耳朵用的）相形见绌。自2010年以来，仅华纳、迪士尼和网飞三家好莱坞巨头就在视频节目上耗资高达2500亿美元。这是包括音乐在内的音频内容所望尘莫及的。话虽如此，“耳朵商业化”进程却正如火如荼地进行——如同自由媒体老板格雷格·马菲（Greg Maffei）所言，如今不再有人会把耳朵免费借给马克·安东尼，他们要出租或卖掉它们。
注：
1.Tinseltown: Hollywood, especially its movie industry.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Tinseltown
2.Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: “各位朋友，各位罗马人，各位同胞，请你们听我说”是戏剧《凯撒大帝》中马克·安东尼进行的演讲。
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%87%B1%E6%92%92%E5%A4%A7%E5%B8%9D_(%E6%88%B2%E5%8A%87)
Take hardware first. Apple does not release figures for any of its “wearables”, but AirPods are the fastest-growing of all of its products, with profit margins above 50%, says Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, an investment firm. With the new noise-cancelling AirPod Pro, which costs around $250 a pair, he reckons Apple’s ear-ware may generate up to $15bn of sales next year. That would be about four times the revenues of a headphone veteran like Bose. Horace Dediu, a technology analyst, predicts that this quarter AirPod sales could exceed those of the iPod at its peak around Christmas 2007. With iPhone sales slowing, AirPods are a new way of generating revenue from Apple’s legions of loyalists; they even allow Siri, the company’s voice-activated virtual assistant, to worm her way closer to listeners’ brains. The overall market is spreading to the masses, too. Some wireless earbuds sell for as little as $20.
先说硬件吧。据韦德布什证券投资公司的丹·伊维斯（Dan Ives）称，苹果通常并不公布“可穿戴设备”的财务数据，但AirPods是其中增长最快的产品，利润率高达50%。最新推出的降噪款AirPods Pro每副售价高达250美元，他估算明年苹果公司借助该产品，将会获得高达150亿美元的耳戴设备销售收入。而这将是Bose等老牌耳机厂商销售收入的4倍。科技分析师Horace Dediu预测，本季度AirPod的销量将超过2007年圣诞节期间iPod的销售峰值。随着iPhone销量趋缓，AirPods成为从苹果忠粉赚取收入的新途径，AirPods甚至让Siri（苹果公司的语音激活虚拟助手）慢慢为听者大脑所接受。整体市场正趋向平民大众，有些无线耳塞式耳机仅售20美元。
Audible content is likewise undergoing a mini-revolution. For the third year in a row, revenues from recorded music in America grew by double digits in 2018, largely thanks to subscriptions to Spotify, Apple Music and the like. Podcasts have grown both more numerous and more compelling. This year Spotify has set out to rule the roost in this medium, which Apple first streamed via iTunes in the mid-2000s. The Swedish firm acquired Gimlet, Anchor and Parcast, three firms that serve different aspects of the podcast market; it now hosts a staggering 500,000 podcasts; hours spent listening to them grew by 39% year-on-year in the third quarter. In October it boasted that the conversion of podcast listeners to paying subscribers is “almost too good to be true”.
同样，音频内容也正在经历微变革。截止到2018年，美国录制音乐收入连续3年以两位数增长，这主要归功于Spotify、 苹果音乐（Apple Music）及类似（App）的订阅。播客数量增长惊人、内容更加丰富。今年，Spotify已经开始在流媒体领域称雄，而苹果在2005年左右就借助iTunes实现了第一次流媒体化。这家瑞典公司（这里指Spotify）收购了三家在播客行业中提供不同服务的公司Gimlet、 Anchor和Parcast。目前Spotify上的播客（档案）高达50万条，同比上年第三季度收听时长增长了39%。10月份，Spotify夸口道，由播客听众转为付费订阅用户（的情况）“好到令人难以置信”。
注：
1. rule the roost：(informal) to be the most powerful member of a group
2. Spotify：https://baike.baidu.com/item/Spotify/3266385?fr=aladdin
3. 延伸阅读：Spotify Gimlet, Anchor https://www.tmtpost.com/nictation/3749550.html
The battleground stretches beyond earbuds to the car radio. On December 12th the Wall Street Journal reported that SiriusXM, a satellite-radio arm of Liberty Media, had sought clearance from the Department of Justice to raise its stake in iHeartMedia, America’s largest radio broadcaster and a big podcasting platform. The aim would be to compete more effectively against Spotify and other audio-streaming services both for subscribers and advertising revenues. Previously Mr Maffei has talked excitedly about podcasting.
各方厮杀的战场已经从耳塞式耳机延伸到了车载收音机。12月12日《华盛顿日报》报道称，Sirius XM（自由媒体的卫星收音公司）已经向司法部申请许可，要求增持其在iHeartMedia的股份，iHeartMedia是美国最大的广播电台及大型播客平台。此举意在与Spotify及其他音频流媒体服务，就订阅用户和广告收入展开更有效地竞争。稍早前马菲先生（Greg Maffei）在谈及播客服务时就表现得相当兴奋。
The proliferation of digital-streaming devices has spawned the growth of other listening formats. This year, for the first time, the Audio Publishers Association, an industry group, reported that half of Americans listened to an audiobook, a trend it said was boosted by the popularity of digital-streaming devices, as well as podcasts. Audible, owned by Amazon, is the market leader. Malcolm Gladwell, an American author and podcaster, has turned the audio version of his latest book “Talking to Strangers”, into what seems like a supersized podcast, with his own narration, actors and music. Romantics see it as a return to the oral tradition.
数字流媒体设备的激增助推其它收听格式的发展。今年，行业组织音频出版商协会（Audio Publishers Association）首次报道，有一半美国人收听有声读物，正是数字流媒体设备和播客的普及助推了这一趋势。亚马逊旗下的Audible是行业领头羊。美国作家兼播客播主马尔科姆·格拉德威尔（Malcolm Gladwell）把自己的最新著作《与陌生人交谈》的音频版本转化为一个超级播客，里面有他自己的旁白、演员和音乐。浪漫主义者认为这是对口述传统的回归。
Though small, some of this spoken word has better economics than the sung variety. As Ben Thompson of Stratechery, a tech newsletter, has pointed out, the more music Spotify’s customers download, the more its costs rise because of payments to record labels. Podcasts are different. Spotify has more bargaining power over myriad individual podcasters jostling to reach its 248m-odd users than it does over record labels. It also buys its exclusive podcasts at a fixed cost. The problem is advertising. Ad revenues are paltry. In America terrestrial radio still accounts for 82% of an audio ad market valued at more than $17bn. Siriusxm and Spotify have just a sliver of the pie.
尽管市场不大，但播客行业的经济价值却高于音乐市场。正如科技通讯公司Stratechery的本·汤普森（Ben Thompson）所言，Spotify需要支付唱片公司费用，因此其用户下载的音乐越多，成本就会越高。但播客不同。相比唱片公司，Spotify对奋力争取其2.48亿用户的众多个人播客更具议价能力。与此同时，Spotify也以固定价格购买独家播客。问题在于广告收入微乎其微。这个价值逾170亿美元的音频广告市场中，美国地面广播仍占据82%的份额。而Sirius XM和Spotify占有的市场份额不过是九牛一毛。
A back door to the brain
通向大脑的后门
Apple has the clout to make the industry more profitable. It could use its strong position with AirPods, Apple Music, podcasts and Siri to create a swirl of audio content around the iPhone—an ecosystem in the jargon—and take the lion’s share of advertising. For the time being, though, it appears to be more focused on creating video content, in its battle for eyeballs with Netflix. That is lucky for Spotify. It gives it a bigger opening in the audio market. It is good for listeners, too. The last thing anyone wants is a Big Tech behemoth controlling the next best thing to a brain implant.
苹果有能力使整个产业有利可图。它可以利用其在Airpods、Apple Music、播客以及Siri中的强势地位，围绕iphone创作大量音频内容（用行话来讲就是一个生态系统），并占据最大的广告份额。话虽如此，但苹果正在和网飞争夺用户，似乎更专注于视频制作领域。如此一来，Spotify就走运了，这让它在音频市场获得了更为开放的空间。同时，对听众来说这也是件好事。毕竟没有人希望仅次于脑植入芯片的好东西只由一个科技巨头掌控。
翻译组：
Hannah 女 教书匠 经济学人粉丝
Elle, 女，靠着土豆腿前行的small potato
Megan, 女，外事民工，热爱是唯一的信仰
校对组：
Yao， 男， 准英专研究生， 二笔三口
Forest，女，自由职业，保持与自己的距离
VeRy，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者
Li Xia, 女， 我视英语为初恋，英语瞧我像备胎
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观点|评论|思考
本次感想
Rena，坐标墨尔本的留学生，爱笑爱摄影爱看书
AirPods——苹果妙的不同凡“响”？
“大背头BB机，舞池里的007”，这首充满着复古气息来自东北的《野狼Disco》似乎揭示了在90年代电子产品方兴未艾之际，对品牌的疯狂追逐已经引领了一代时尚。在千禧年的第二十个年头，众多弄潮儿所信奉的“时尚哲学”早已不只是腰间的BB机和大哥大。
从古驰的渐变色墨镜，到香奈儿的黑五淡香，只有想不到，没有时尚品牌无法触及到的领域。仿佛“占领消费者身体的每一寸”，已经成了所有奢侈品争相追赶的终极目标。在Ins上网红博主们秀出的一个个时尚新品似乎在对每一个消费者宣告“Buy or Die，it’s a question”。于是消费的选择权渐渐从消费者的手中转移到了市场的潮流中，买与不买从来都不是一个全权自由的抉择，而是在努力追赶潮流和是否被时尚狠狠甩下中做一个送命题。
惊世骇俗般地推出了AirPods后，在一片非议声中，苹果以其傲人的销量一骑绝尘。仿佛在每一个社交媒体上，当更新的状态没有一张耳戴AirPods的照片时，都羞于说自己是一个时尚达人，在层出不穷的测评文章和体验视频中，更是把AirPods的性能夸出了一个新高度，无论你是否是一个音乐发烧友，当你走在2016年的大街小巷，每个人耳朵中赛着的小巧白色耳机对你一定不陌生。
用耳机性能带动产业，也并不是苹果的创举，前人索尼将游戏软件和操作硬件相结合，把每一个游戏的玩家死死拿捏，后有铁三角以耳机音质和体验获得一帮死忠粉丝的簇拥。
然而苹果却不屑于此，在2019年推出带有降噪功能的AirPods后，苹果露出了对市场的勃勃野心。如果你曾经历过被不同音乐软件上歌曲版权所困扰的问题，当你体验过一次自己喜欢的歌曲被下架或因没有资源而无法欣赏时，你就会想到是否有一款软件可以一次性解决所有类似的问题？苹果给了你一个永久性的解决答案——Apple Music。在当下市场歌曲保护版权意识日益抬头，消费者消费习惯日趋多元化的情况下，苹果公司旗下的Apple Music却以雄厚的资本和独到的品味把市场主流的音乐版权都纳入囊中。
直到这时市场才猛然醒悟，苹果的“以小见大”早在AirPods横空出世那一刻就被表好了价格。苹果的野心，不在硬件的捆绑，而在于以耳机作为依托，拓展流媒体平台的用户数量，并死死捆绑住每一个带着AirPods的死忠用户。
“一如苹果深似海，从此别家是路人”——在百家争鸣的流媒体市场下，苹果是否能以一家独大的姿态一骑绝尘？还是在网飞和亚马逊的夹击下艰难求生？网飞和亚马逊在过去四年内以优质的独家平台内容（原创剧集和音乐产品），精准的客户定位，以及不断提升的客户体验死死捆绑住了一批黏性极大的粉丝群体。在此番角逐中，苹果能否真的依托硬件优势，打通流媒体平台的任督二脉，创造出一个“软硬兼具”的庞大帝国？
而当下随着消费者的品味日渐挑剔的趋势下，流媒体平台的内容仅仅只有一次创作的音乐是否真的能够满足市场的需求？也许苹果在大浪淘沙的内容导向型消费下，如何把多元的视频音频做大做强是下一个阶段需要打磨的问题。
无论如何，随着新的AirPods出世，在欣赏音乐的同时还可以获得一款降噪耳机，何乐而不为？
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