Bang & Olufsen - B&O Play

Life Must be Lived Like Play - Make Beautiful Music

What is Play?

B&O Play delivers stand-alone products with clear and simple operations - portable products that are intuitive to use, easy to integrate into your daily life, and deliver excellent high-quality experiences.

To us, Play means curiosity, positiveness and energy. We believe Play precedes any real progress.

… and Play is also what you reward yourself with after hard work.

Marrying the values of Play with the substance, quality and luxury of Bang & Olufsen characterizes what we stand for:

Bang & Olufsen + Play = B&O Play

A Brand Driven by Passion - Since 1925

Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen began a modest production of radios in 1925. Working in the attic of the Olufsen manor house in northwest Denmark, their dream was to create a brand built on innovation, quality, design, and performance.

More than 90 years later, our products are still at the heart of our brand. But our continued success is due to our independent network of retail partners - those who share our passion at more than 700 stores worldwide.

Brand Manifesto

We don’t just make headphones.
We don’t just design speakers.
We’re not simply in the business of electronics.

We’re in the business of goosebumps.

The ultimate test for our sound engineers.
That’s where our design department is graded.
And how our craftsmanship is measured.
Does it move ? Does it touch ?
Does it change someone’s world a little ?
Do all the pieces play together ?
Does it add that something that makes it a symphony ?

Spirits should be lifted, friendships forged,
Creativity let loose or focus made possible.
Let one find comfort and another fall wildly in love.
Life made a little more colourful.
To fully live up to the magic of music, this is how we set our bar.

Make Beautiful Music

Our Heritage

Firmly grounded in our 90 year history in Bang & Olufsen, we interpret the same core values for a new type of contemporary products.

Design

We seek design that matters. Design that naturally makes our products express how they want to be used. To us, design is not just the beautiful shape we wrap our technology in. Our design approach flows through all aspects of product development – from crystalizing the fundamental user needs in early concept development through the engineering phases. This allows us to deliver products where we never compromise on the basic product idea.

Performance

We deliver best sound and acoustic performance in our class of products – natural and balanced to best reproduce the emotions that the artist wanted to convey.

Humanization

We adapt technology to fit human needs, not the other way around.

Craftsmanship

We are always honest in our material choices and pay attention to every detail in the design and assembly.

Craft Matters

At B&O Play, our unique approach to conceptual design drives us to think in terms of experiences – and we use that story in the way we craft our products. If you stimulate the senses through sound and beautiful design, the brain releases endorphins and you become happier. Natural materials, colour hues, saturation, lightness, surface treatments, textures – each of these matter. Having the right material in the right place matters. Together with sound and design, craftsmanship lies deep in our heart and soul.

Aluminium

As one of the lightest and strongest materials in the world, aluminium brings both portability and rigidity to our products - and as an efficient heat dispenser, it works perfectly with our acoustic designs. It can also be coloured uniquely. In the anodization processes, both surface treatments and colour hue, as well as saturation and lightness, can bring out different depths and add so much more than just a painted colour.

Leather

Your first touch of a B&O Play product starts with leather and it’s important it’s soft to the touch and comfortable against the skin. We also wanted a material that ages with beauty. We even differentiate our leathers based on where and how they’re used. On our headphones we use soft and flexible lambskin for the ear pads while the headband is made from structured and thick cowhide to withstand wear and tear.

Fabric

We use the richness, complexity and warmth of wool on many of our products. Working together with Kvadrat, one of the most iconic brands in the world of textiles, we use textures on the covers of our products that closely match the interior design palette. Several colours are then used to achieve greater depth. Did you know that there is a small amount of light green threads in our standard black colour?

Wood

Conceptually, the use of wood in B&O Play products comes down to how we believe technology should fit into your home. The Scandinavian heritage of bringing natural wood inside the home is reflected in the use of structural elements such as legs in smoked oak, pine, walnut or maple. The woods we use are treated with natural oils so as not to cover their rich texture and structure, which always feels smooth and warm to the touch.

Honesty of Materials

This is how we see it. If it looks like aluminium, it is aluminium. If it looks like leather, it’s authentic leather. If it looks like wood, it’s natural wood. We never mimic materials. We use the properties to make the products what they are – experiences. So not only do they look good, but the materials themselves are selected for functionality, quality and comfort.

Functional Intelligence

Knowledge is the essence of beautiful craftsmanship. Together with the concept behind our products, knowledge is what drives our craftsmanship. With Beoplay A1 the concept was about making a product as a perfect travel companion. So we chose aluminium because it takes on all dents and scratches with beauty – the imprints of travel memories.

Attention to Detail

We spend a lot of time going into detail. How will this material look under this light? How do saturation and hues affect the surface finish? We know that great design is about the unity of everything coming together as a whole. But miss one detail and you lose the whole. So again and again we pay special attention to the details.

Soundtrack

Beautiful craftsmanship inspires beautiful music. Instead of using standard tracks for our films, we invited four composers to interpret our materials musically. So each was given a unique material – aluminium, leather, fabric or wood – and four hours to compose a track. The result is pure craftsmanship.

Bang & Olufsen Concept & Vision

Products Bang & Olufsen - B&O Play