A look into BU Athletics’ collaboration with WHOOP

BY RACHEL ZHONG

Contributing

Writer

The rivalry between Apple Music and Spotify ran on for a long time. The end of the year is a battlefield. Spotify Wrapped occupies almost all my Instagram stories; the rest is Apple Music Replay. Somewhere along the way, listeners involuntarily fall into a category named under the music app. The market has tagged these trademarks on every one of their users. For five dollars, would you subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify?

On the basis, most Apple Music and Spotify’s monthly subscriptions are parallel — Student, Individual and Family. Besides a dollar more on Apple Music, the two services mark

Technical issues are fixable, but what about human factors?

Customer loyalty, a common theme discussed in communication and marketing, describes an ongoing and positive relationship between customers and the business, driving continuous purchases and participation. This idea is essential to subscription service providers like Apple Music and Spotify because it is a stake in

Similar to social media, the connection in music became demanding as services turned mobile, and on a higher level.

With that, the interaction also increases — the desire to find someone who also enjoys Playboi Carti or Tyler, the Creator.

Listeners of mainstream artists are less bothered, but fans of the smaller niche could really make use of this interaction.

But these interpersonal connections have a premise — the same music platform. Sure,

Headphones vs. earbuds: Price and practicality

BY ISABELLA LAPRIORE

Contributing Writer

From college students to professional athletes to gymgoers, different people with different lives utilize different technology to listen to their music.

With the market of headphones and earbuds constantly growing, the options seem endless. Each new launch seems to have more impressive features than the last.

As overwhelming as it may seem to find the ones that best fit your lifestyle, it all depends on two factors — price and practicality.

Apple’s in-ear headphones are one of the most loved and nostalgic forms of this technology.

These wired headphones, launched in September 2008, had new revolutionary features for the time — like the volume rocker attached to the wires.

These headphones may not be the flashiest or most modern, but they have gotten the job done for years. Though, it is frustrating to untangle the wires.

As an alternative to AirPods, in-ear headphones may be more reliable for some. AirPods require charging to use them, which can be time-consuming. Sometimes AirPods die mid-day if not charged. Such a mood killer. One of the most popular features of modern headphones and earbuds is noise cancellation. And tuning people out is a fair reason to spend more on a piece of technology.

Brands like Apple, Bose and Beats offer noise-canceling headphones ranging from $149 to $549.

Over-the-ear headphones are a bit pricier when it comes to noise-canceling technology, but all three companies have also revolutionized the technology to include earbuds.

The Beats Studio Buds, comparable to Bose’s QuietComfort Earbuds and Apple’s AirPods Pro, offer the option to adjust the noise cancellation of the earbuds.

Apple’s original AirPods do not offer an adjustable feature or noise-canceling. When it comes to over-theear headphones, like Bose’s QuietComfort model, Beats’ Studio3 and Apple’s AirPods Max, noise cancelation is just one of the cutting-edge technologies offered. With designs meant to fit comfortably around ears of all shapes and sizes, over-theear headphones are practical for many. From studying to working out, some prefer the size and fit of larger headphones as opposed to earbuds. AirPods lack practicality when it comes to working out considering movement may shake the earbuds from one’s ear. For studying, the noise canceling adjustment and ability to block out surrounding sounds is the key feature that makes the AirPods Max an easy choice for many.

The three most popular forms of technology used to listen to music, wired earbuds,

I thought of the question as selective exposure — the tendency to find like-minded people. In this case, it would be Apple Music users or Spotify users, and people who are consistent with your preference. The music industry has a tradition of labeling fans, even with nicknames; BTS call their fans ARMY, and Charli XCX calls her fans Charli’s Angels. But when do we start to label each other by the music streaming service they use?

BY BRENDAN NORDSTOM Managing Co-Editor

The Citgo sign. A North Star for the lost BU student. A backdrop for historic Fenway Park. An icon of Kenmore Square. However, in the fall of 2021, the red LEDs flashing through the Boston night sky had a new neighbor: five letters on top of One Kenmore Square. This caused many to wonder: What is WHOOP?

Boston University Athletics helped answer that question, announcing a partnership on Nov. 1, 2022 with Whoop Unite, offering the brand’s wearable technology and holistic-health program to student-athletes.

“The WHOOP Unite partnership with BU Athletics is hyper-focused on the student-athletes, empowering them to be the best version of themselves, both in their sport and in the classroom,” a WHOOP spokesperson wrote in an email.

Just over four months into the program, many athletic trainers, such as Jordan Ulrich, BU’s assistant strength and conditioning coach, are crunching numbers in Microsoft Excel. WHOOP’s weekly reports collect data on recovery, sleep performance, total sleep hours, resting heart rate, heart rate variability and daily practice and game strain.

while keeping their data private, and level two shares the data with strength coaches and athletic trainers, Ulrich said.

Ulrich said one of his teams, the women’s basketball team, was initially skeptical, with 10 of 12 athletes opting into WHOOP and only a few participating in level two. Ulrich had to reassure the athletes that the information shared with the athletic staff does not include specific information.

10 players now share their data.

“It doesn’t tell me X athlete went to bed at 2 a.m. on a Saturday.

That’s not our business,” Ulrich said. “It took the athletes buying into [the idea] that this is going to help them, and there is no punishment that can come from sharing the data.” is important to changing habits. performance.” mental health and more. wireless earbuds and over-theear headphones, all have pros and cons. Newer features like noise-canceling are practical for many but not all.Whether you are team wired headphones or team AirPods Max, music-listening technology is crucial to many aspects of our lives.

BU joins other athletic programs in partnership with the company, including Florida State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Tennessee and BU’s Green Line neighbor Boston College.

Tennessee’s athletic department became the first to offer the Strap 3.0 to its entire athletic program in 2020.

“We’ve been able to dictate ‘maybe today in practice we should back up a little bit’ or ‘we’re in a really good spot where we can push it a little bit harder,’” Ulrich said. “It’s definitely benefited everyone from individual athletes to myself, strength and conditioning and athletic training, all the way up to the coaches.”

Boston University athletes were given the choice to opt into the WHOOP program with one of two levels. Level one allows athletes to participate in WHOOP

Greg Adamson, the associate director of Olympic sports performance at the University of Tennessee, said the visibility of the program’s metrics has helped better prepare Tennessee’s athletes.

“We talk about a holistic approach to taking care of today’s student-athlete,” Adamson said.

“Having something that allows you to know whether or not you’re getting the right amount of sleep … or proper nutrition and hydration is helping you prepare for those rigors of the next day.”

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, wearable technology such as the Fitbit, started to gain traction. Adamson said the evolution of this technology and the impact of these measurements

“I don’t think anybody saw, a decade later, the importance or validity of numbers such as heart rate variability and what that says about your stress level,” he said.

“If I can’t measure how stressed I am, I may not really know how to manage that stress.”

WHOOP emphasizes the importance of sleep through the technology available in its band, tracking sleep down to the minute and determining how much sleep the wearer needs, according to the website.

Christopher Kline, associate professor in the Department of Health and Human Development at the University of Pittsburgh, said quality sleep for studentathletes is “absolutely essential if they want to achieve optimum

“Educating athletes on the importance of sleep and getting them to pay attention to optimizing their sleep could play significant benefits in terms of their athletic performance, but also even their academic performance,” Kline said.

Sleep is also key for improving mental health, with a “bidirectional” relationship to both stress and anxiety, Kline said.

Cue the WHOOP Journal — a way for people to track different behaviors as a way to “become more mindful of their habits,” according to the WHOOP StudentAthlete Holistic Wellness ebook.

The Journal allows athletes to monitor their recovery, sleep, nutrition, medication, lifestyle,

“Hopefully [the journal] can kind of influence them and make them more aware of all their feelings and stress and what they’re going through on a dayto-day basis,” Ulrich said.

Ultimately, the habits studentathletes build through WHOOP are not just to improve habits now, but to create lasting healthier life choices.

“Long term [it’s important to] not just better habits while you’re a student-athlete, but better habits 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years from now,” Adamson said. “Whether they’re a mom, dad, CEO, wife, husband, brother, sister, they’re operating at a higher level of understanding that with each habit they develop … it’s gonna have a ripple effect on the next thing.”