LG’s take on big and loud party speakers is getting a celeb artist to help out. Can former Black Eyes Peas’ will.i.am revitalise the brand?
There’s a lot of competition in speakers and earphones, and making a dent often requires more than just audio expertise. Outside of the audiophile world, the best consumer-focused sound gear typically needs someone to talk it up.
Someone who has been there, done that, and is gracing the world with the presence to say this gear is worth using.
Take Beats for starters, which has for a long time relied on musicians and athletes to help boost its cred, wearing the headphones and using the speakers to gain attention in the world.
Back when Dr. Dre started really turning up the pressure with the original Beats gear, this strategy made even more sense: the original Beats gear was overly bassy and not to everyone’s liking. Getting athletes and celebrities to use and wear the tech made it in demand, and helped give Beats a solid footing.
Now that Apple owns Beats, the brand has changed. The designs don’t look majorly different from the old days, but the engineering sure is.
Most Beats gear is designed to be balanced rather than big and bassy, and the company has delivered some excellent headphones and speakers since Apple took over. More interestingly, Beats gear is typically an Apple-made headphone that works on Android. It’s surreal.
But the celeb angle works to get the headphones and speakers on the ears and in the hands of more people, and manufacturers know it.
There’s a Marley brand, there’s a Ludacris brand, and Olivia Rodrigo also lends her name and colour scheme to earbuds by Sony.
So what’s LG to do? Bring in a Black Eyed Pea.
Lowercase X-Boom for lowercase Will.i.am
We may not necessarily understand why William James Adams Jr uses a full lowercase naming convention for his artist name “will.i.am”, but who is this journalist to talk? He has a happy face emoticon in his name.
However LG appears keen to adopt the naming convention for its upcoming will.i.am tie-in, as X-Boom becomes “xboom”, with new gear set to launch at CES in 2025.
That’s what LG has previewed recently, announcing a partnership with will.i.am as the LG’s xboom “Experiential Architect”, who helped tweak the sound and design of LG’s upcoming xboom earphones and speakers.
The technology will also integrate with something will.i.am has been working on: an AI-powered music experience called Raidio.fyi, essentially creating a personalised music system that aims to let you have what is ostensibly a two-way conversation with a station you tweak.
This isn’t will.i.am’s first audio rodeo
It’s worth pointing out that the X-Boom/xboom range won’t be will.i.am’s first time fronting audio gear. He’s done this before. More than once.
There was a pair of earphones in the i.am+ Buttons, a Bluetooth-connected facemask with earphones built-in, and a technology to change how sound is played back inside of a car.
In short, will.i.am’s collaboration with LG won’t be his first attempt at making audio different, and the hope is that this is more than just a celebrity tie-in. As it is, LG’s inclusion of Raidio is another of will.i.am’s concepts, and will likely catapult the technology in front of more eyes and ears.
As for what the LG collaboration will yield, that remains to be seen, though it has raised eyebrows. Hopefully the results are more than just another pair of earphones and a speaker. We’ll know soon enough.
