I do wonder if that's all true though. If the beats branding was replaced with Apple branding, would we really see a sales decline, or revenue decline? I'm not so sure that would happen.
When if comes down to it, all this really is is cheap labor produced foam and plastic fantastic sold with insane mark ups. That's the difference. There's nothing truly groundbreaking or magical about beats, it's just the same stuff coming inside the same shipping containers but with different packaging and pricing.
Head phones weren't invented just yesterday, the technology has decades of history. All that's really changed isn't the technology but instead the marketing story.
My $16 no name super streamline bud earphones perform just as good if not better from my listening point of view.