Blue

Blue Microphones was founded in 1995 by the American session musician Skipper Wise and the Latvian recording engineer Martins Saulespurens. The company name is an acronym and stands for "Blatic Latvian Unversial Electronics". Blue Microphones is headquartered in Westlake Village, California.

The first microphone Blue released on the market was the "Bottle", a versatile XLR microphone that was an excellent microphone for many professional musicians and achieved relatively strong success. Later in the company’s journey, Skipper Wise’s daughter came up with the idea of making a microphone that could record and transmit audio over the internet. Due to his daughter’s interest in softball, Skipper and Martins created a microphone shaped like a softball, now world-famous as the "Snowball", which is available in several price ranges and quality levels. The idea of an "internet-friendly microphone" was based on the fact that, as a creative person, you could share and use the microphone to share creative projects via audio, while also recording music in e.g. GarageBand.

Blue Microphones designs and manufactures condenser, ribbon, dynamic and USB Microphones, as well as preamplifiers, microphone accessories and headphones. The best-known models are the Blue Yeti and Snowball iCE condenser microphones.

After Logitech acquired Blue Microphones, they have collaborated on a wide range of products, often sold as "streaming bundles" where you get a Blue USB microphone and a Logitech webcam. A perfect starter streamer bundle. They have also produced, among other things, the excellent Blue Yeticaster microphone, which a great many streamers use today.

Blue Microphones was acquired for approximately 117 million dollars, which was clearly a strategic move for Logitech. Logitech is known for its computer gear such as mice, keyboards, headsets, etc. They were essentially missing this additional piece in microphones, which they could conveniently get from Blue Microphones. The acquisition has primarily been intended for Logitech’s gaming division: "Logitech G". Logitech states:

"For us (Logitech) this is a new area, but at the same time not a new area at all."

A great many gamers are already very familiar with Logitech G, so being offered a USB microphone with very easy connectivity and excellent performance is often a no-brainer for gamers.