It&#x27;s simple:<p>a) Good headphones only bring marginally better sound over mediocre ones for most of the source material and format people hear (not to mention if you listen to pop hits, they&#x27;re often mastered to sound good to mediocre headphones in the first place).<p>b) Appearance matters. Being trendy and following fashion is good for your social life (yeah, other people are often that shallow: don&#x27;t fight it, hack it to your benefit).<p>c) For most people their social life is way more important than something like better frequency response. So optimize what&#x27;s actually important to you, not what should be important in theory.<p>Heck, I&#x27;m a heavy DAW user and I have AKG and AT monitor-grade headphones, but I&#x27;m still tempted to get a pair of Beats, a) to hear mixes through a headphone &quot;in vogue&quot; producers of pop&#x2F;hip-hop&#x2F;r&amp;b optimize for, b) for the fashion part.<p>(And no, &quot;everybody has one&quot; doesn&#x27;t diminish the fashion factor, except to fashion snubs people who you&#x27;d want to avoid anyway. Fashion works better when you conform -- to put it another away, nobody was seen in a bad light wearing Nike because &quot;tons of other people have Nikes&quot;).