JBL was today celebrating its 75th Anniversary with a live-streamed event that reflected on JBLs heritage and looked to the future. JBL has been involved in the music industry for this time and their founding father, James B Lansing (JBL), could not possibly have foreseen that a 75th anniversary event would be held in such circumstances.
In the live JBL event, they reflected on their involvement in the music industry from their first drivers in Fender monitors, to their pivotal role at Woodstock and other iconic venues such as the Vatican where they claim to provide public address services for the Pope. JBL is continuing its involvement with outdoor venues at this time with their involvement at Tottenham’s new stadium and in New York’s Madison Square Gardens. JBL also has a significant presence in the automotive sector with its relationships with Toyota, Kia and Smart Cars as well as JBL Pro’s involvement with Ferrari. As a consumer brand, JBL has sold over 150 million Bluetooth speakers worldwide and currently lead the market in Party Boxes (whatever they are!).
JBL had three of their top Execs on the show who were totally on point with their messaging on aspiration, heritage, quality, and passion. They were Katy Templeman-Holmes, Director, Global Market Strategy, Armin Prommersberger, Senior Vice President Product Management Automotive Division and Dorothee de Backer, Product Marketing Director Lifestyle Audio EMEA at HARMAN International.
The most interesting part of the event was when their big Execs discussed their thoughts on the future of JBL and music in general. Dorothee de Backer focussed on the personalisation of products going forward, such as adjusting sound curves to suit individual tastes, as well as personalising the fit of an earbud in the ear, with an App (I think!). Armin was interesting talking about sound field control at venues but thankfully Katy Templeman-Holmes hit the mark for me by saying JBL
will follow the music, as they always have done.
I thought it was interesting Katy then started talking about gaming, suggesting gaming was the future of music. It is a huge market I guess, even bigger than the film industry.
JBL is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a Limited Edition release of its L100 speaker as first reported here at HF&MS in January. If anyone would like to send me a pair, do feel free. There are other anniversary products available as well.