I really don’t think anything at all would happen if the Tubers stopped tubing. We’d still get our kits and enjoy them equally much.
Like that final scene in the Truman Show.
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But that is where they make their money, already. Jeremy sells educational content and mastering services. He’s chosen to hide his earnings on his Patreon page, but he has 795 patrons with subscriptions ranging from £2 - £210 per month. Based on a quick calculation his youtube ad revenue is somewhere ranging from £150 - £1500 per month. Combined he’s probably making more than most musicians - so I don’t think he’s financially struggling (but couldn’t possibly say).
What I find most difficult to grasp with the whole thing is that his YouTube channel is a sales funnel for these services - and one of the things that helps to make it a strong sales channel is his access to gear, that gives him an advantage and helps him sell more subs and get more views. They’ll also often use affiliate links for stores so that they actually do directly profit from sales they generate.
I’m all for people being paid but that’s the mechanism in which it happens for content providers - their customers pay them via ad eyeballs and subs - synth companies aren’t his customers unless he wants to fully commit to being a marketeer, which I gather he doesn’t?
No hate, I mostly find it a bit confusing.
I also think we’re falling into the trap a little bit. Jeremy’s last commentary video was his most popular video of the last 6 months (aside from, funnily enough, the Elektron song mode video ha). This video is already ranking closely behind it - now that could be a complete coincidence, or it could be that he’s a smart content creator that worked out these videos generate a lot of buzz and we’re buzzing our little bee butts off haha
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I think some youtubers take themselves to serious. In the end we don’t need them. I like watching some of their stuff but i was buying gear before youtube was invented. (Maybe not as much though.) 
And the companies don’t need them either. Youtubers help them to sell their devices but we would buy them anyway because we love making music and enjoy playing instruments.
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Sure, they make some money from these platforms, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. Technically Spotify pays artists for their music but it doesn’t mean we’re done thinking about how streaming revenue is distributed.
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There has been an influencer gold rush going for many years now. When you have so many people vying for the same space in a niche market, it’s going to be an uphill battle. I remember many years ago reading about how the travel writing market was so saturated because everyone wanted to make a living traveling that you couldn’t really make money doing it anymore.
I don’t wish any of these people ill will. At the same time, it does feel like they have sold themselves very cheaply and a lot of what they do is more than a bit disingenuous. I think they all have a similar whiney video. Just a circle of copying each other for views. The truth is, it’s on them to figure out how to make it work and provide content and a business model that makes them money. I suspect this type of video isn’t going to do that for them.
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That’s fair, I guess my point was more about who his customers are as much as whether he’s fairly compensated.
It’s a quid-pro-quo relationship, they give him the synth because it benefits them both - he’s not doing them a favour for free.
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Gotcha, that makes sense.
That last bit about quid-pro-quo feels like the crux of the issue — we (the audience) get value from unbiased reviews and demos, but that value diminishes if the review is getting compensated by the synth brand and effectively just becomes marketing for them. So how do we focus on the value exchange between the viewers and creators, rather than between the creators and the synth brands?
As a probably dumb but potentially interesting example: Imagine if YouTube had a program for “Verified Unbiased Review” videos to feature independent creators providing that real/unbiased value to the audience. Maybe they could get verified, promoted on the platform, and get an extra kickback of ad revenue once they’re in the program. So there’d be a real incentive to be totally unbiased and provide meaningful content to the audience, and YouTube would foot the bill if that content was a valuable part of their platform as well.
I don’t know, it kind of all ends up with capitalism chasing its tail.
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I think that people are confusing critical discussion with “hating” no hate for any synth youtuber from me, some of them I watch, others I don’t. I can’t say I have noticed any particularly hateful comments in the posts I have read in this topic?
I think people seem divided on simply the monetary aspect:
Some think that synth YouTubers should be paid by synth companies.
Others think not, and that there are other revenue streams from being a synth youtuber.
Maybe it is perceived as kindness to agree that they should be paid for reviews - but I think that paid reviews are not very useful anyway.
I would like to see a youtuber do critical reviews, stress testing products, testing sync and MIDI performance, bug hunting and highlighting any flaws, but synth companies are unlikely to want to pay for that, but an audience might.
If it is just demos they want to be paid for, I don’t see the point, because demos are so subjective anyway, and do more in most cases to demonstrate the youtuber than the synth.
I think Sonic State seem to get a fair balance, they have ads on their videos and monetise them, they never do off piste whinge videos etc.
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Sounds like an interesting idea! Conceptually that kind of thing makes more sense to me, beyond a simple way to do affiliate sales (which honestly I don’t like because it makes it even more of a sales relationship than it already is).
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With regard to being paid by equipment manufacturers, especially when it comes to the larger companies (e.g. Roland, Yamaha, Korg), I suspect that the “synth-fluencers” may not be appreciating the overall market position.
For example, Yamaha’s biggest selling keyboards are in the P and PSR range. There are plenty of YouTube videos reviewing/demonstrating these devices and they can get well in excess of 100k views.
If a company were to pay one YouTuber then you would think they would have to pay others, and presumably those reviewing the most sold items would receive the higher payments.
Those reviewing the more niche products, with comparatively lower sales figures, could be of less value to the company particularly if the high sales figures of some items allows the company to competitively price their more niche products.
Smaller companies who only sell niche products probably don’t have the budget to fund the freelance reviews.
Concerning unbiased critical reviews of equipment there really is no such thing unless the equipment has a defect (e.g as highlighted in an old SOS review of a Yamaha synth which had a MIDI flaw). Everybody has different expectations/ requirements/needs from equipment.
For example when Gaz and Nick jointly reviewed the MC707 they both repeatedly complained about the limited sample and looper memory. As an owner of an MC707 I don’t give a toss about that limitation.
OK that is just my needs but if you consider there are plenty of A4 owners who think it is a really good analogue synth and equally there are plenty of A4 owners who were not impressed and sold it on. That is two totally different reviews of the A4 and the same can be applied to any and every other item of equipment.
I just checked a couple of synth YouTubers, in particular a few who are complaining that synth companies are not paying them - they all have videos telling people NOT to buy synths within the last few months. Seems like a poor business strategy expecting synth companies to pay them, back to the drawing board…
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Loopop seems to be a pretty reliable and honest reviewer pointing out the pros and cons for his reviews. I think he gets pretty indepth and doesn’t seem like he’s trying to “sell” gear, more just letting people know what they’re capable of
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He really seems v transparent and straight up.
He also puts in the effort in order to give a good overall picture of the devices he reviews.
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I also REALLY love how professional he is vs other syntubers that want their personal life to be a significant part of their brand(for instance…)
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Yeah very true. Thye’re synth reviews, not synthtuber reviews haha.
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Yeah Loopop keeps it professional too. He isn’t pretending to be your friend, he is doing a job, and that job is reviewing synths. A bit more authentic IMHO.
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I also like Loopops reviews, he is basically a talking manual and generally covers everything and is fairly objective.
However, mostly his cons are not really cons just some feature the equipment does not have. For example he has often stated not having presets, a sequencer, an arp, FX etc. as a con when plenty of equivalent equipment have similar limitations.
I think what people would really like to see are comparative videos between two similar devices where the reviewer can show the areas where one is better than the other and vice versa.
Yes.
Her videos are fantastic, she’s got some serious chops too.
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I don’t believe it. If everyone just shat out their mean thoughts on this forum it would just be another worthless internet shitshow and you’d leave along with most of the other decent people here. For some reason this topic brings out the worst here as already mentioned. Several early comments amounted to nothing more than “quit whining you baby”. Which I could say is just more whining. Then you could say I’m whining about their whining about the original whining and so on. Not a productive discussion worth my time to parse.
I agree with @Fin25 that it’s all relative and our brains sometimes want to have bad feelings even when we have zero external reasons to feel that way. Sometimes it can help to be reminded that things could be worse or can’t always be fair. But to communicate that effectively you have to be careful and kind about it. Calling them a baby is not going to work. It just brings bad vibes to this forum and shows everyone where you lack in compassion.
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I wrote a really long post and decided not to post it but I guess my wish would be there would be more just no talking vids of doing cool shit with whatever gear, old or new. RMRs first vids sold the op1 to me back in 2015 and there was nothing else than showing the workflow and then music that was actually thought out and not just a demo beat or something. The talking manual thing what loopop does is prob cool to people who like that kind of stuff and I would not be surprised that if he could just be hired on a rate per vid to do that for companies he wants to. The cool shit vids I think are kinda like the sound demos on manufacturer website, those light my imagination way way more than somebody describing buttons or whatever.
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