Fascinating inside scoop on being a full-time Synth YouTuber

Sick tune.

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I thought it was bear rather than bar, but he does drawl it out to an outlandish degree. Bar makes sense in the context. Awesome now I have to go watch it. And maybe have a nap.

I believe that itā€™s ā€œbearā€ in the original quote but the accent makes it ā€œbarā€, at least thatā€™s what Iā€™ve read once somewhere.
that movie is pure gold, canā€™t rewatch it enough!

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This has been an interesting read. I have been doing YouTube for around 9 years in the outdoor/camping genre. Itā€™s evolved over the years with sponsorships and/or gear reviews. As of the last few years it is pretty standard to have gear sent by the company at no charge and paid a minimum of $300 for a dedicated video review of said gear. These companies advertising budgets are generally quite high and $300 plus giving away the product is a very low expense for the exposure. Iā€™ve always been surprised in the music world, that these youtube channels are doing it without any additional compensation over just receiving the product.

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ā€˜Is that some kind of eastern thing?ā€™

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Regarding the Jeremy Blake video: IMHO it came across as heartfelt, genuine and justified.

Iā€™m no synth YouTuber but as a creative professional, I can relate to the relentless need to prove your value to potential clients, especially those who fail to allocate adequate budget for your expertise but expect you to do it for exposure or some other bullshit.

Making this video should hopefully save him the ball ache of repeatedly managing expectations. He can just say, ā€œWatch this and if youā€™re still interested in working together, letā€™s talk numbersā€.

In the wise words of Mike Monteiro, ā€œF*ck You, Pay Meā€.

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And in the wise words of Arturia: Weā€™re not gonna pay you.

Having watched some of the excruciating Arturia live stream announcement for the MiniFreak launch, maybe they should have reconsidered.

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I always enjoy Noir Et Blanc Vieā€™s 1 minute synth reviews - he has a lot of fun with them and so much effort goes in ONE MINUTE SYNTH REVIEW!!! Ep. 22 IK Multimedia Uno Synth Pro Desktop (Halloween Special) - YouTube

The Jexus documentary was eye opening too the effort he pours into those vidoes is crazy - and theyā€™re pure art.

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The real scoop is that most these people donā€™t seem very interesting, I wouldnā€™t mind being stuck on a sofa next to cuckoo at a party but otherwise Iā€™d rather be forced to talk to a dentist or an accountant.

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Like Gibby? Gibby was going to be an accountant.

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He should offer basic accounting classes to artists. Iā€™m sure a lot of us could use them!

I wonder if he keeps a spreadsheet of his fake blood and lighter fluid expenses.

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Basically none of these companies are good at making promotional material :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: So many odd choices. But I donā€™t know that itā€™s much better to choose one of these YouTubers. Some of them make cool music that shows the products off in a good light. But I would say many of them seem to be more technically inclined than they are interesting musicians.

Excited to see the flying lotus video for osmose.

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Thank you.

I am re-reading it again today and I agree. There were several comments early in the life of the thread that are gone now. My overall perception was shaped by those and I couldnā€™t shake that impression after they got removed or moderated. I donā€™t remember if they were particularly more mean or if it was just the sheer number of similarly critical comments that left the bad taste. I guess I can put my bad vibes taser away :policeman: :laughing:

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Yeah, Thats a Good Channel as Well.

I made this comment (not as nicely put as yours) in another thread. I certainly donā€™t go to them for their music. Iā€™m so sick of all of these guys (RMR, Beato, Huang, etc., etc.). Now, Iā€™m seeing people with like 1000 subscribers mentioning theyā€™re getting free gear. Wtf?! Why? Some of these people got their subscribers by directly copying the style of someone who came before them. I just did a massive purge of subscriptions on YouTube but these people still pop up, I guess because of the algorithm. Meanwhile, Iā€™m a teacher, working an honest job and I am barely keeping my head above water. Anyone noticed how much groceries cost these days?
Everything sucks.
Sincerely,
Eeyore.

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Difference here I see is whether it was done out of general good for community at large or for self serving/monetary gains.

A ā€œfalse binaryā€ means that you are mutually excluding desire for a healthier synth community, or that youā€™re ā€œself-servingā€ and hoping for ā€œmonetary gainsā€. Iā€™m not saying youā€™re framing this as bad faith so much as suggesting thereā€™s plenty of nuance without reducing a more complicated scenario (certainly for him) to one-or-the-other and nothing in between.

In reality, someone who does this their own way generally loves the community or theyā€™d be optimizing for ā€œmonetary gainsā€ using the same dark patterns as any large scale ā€œinfluencerā€.

Someone can try to pay bills on this stuff as ONE of their jobs and still want to enjoy synths and other humans who own synths.

Weā€™re not talking about Jake Paul being a creep and scamming his viewers here.

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Iā€™d sell you all down the river for a pack of free patch cables

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One thing to keep in mind subscriber counts are meaningless.

Thereā€™s a whole shady underbelly of buying subscribers and many subscribers for various platforms are bots that do not engage or buy anything.

Iā€™m not saying any of these people are using those but even if they donā€™t a lot of bot accounts still end up as subscribers on various channels, especially those with a degree of popularity.

Thereā€™s not really an incentive for any platform to cut back on those either as they artificially inflate numbers and provide more ad revenue.