I used to read “Computer Music” magazine years ago and they never gave any product less than 8/10. It doesn’t feel much different now, I often read online gear reviews that rarely seem to go below 4 stars.
Isn’t it great that all the gear is so brilliant and never has any major issues or annoyances!
Yeah, great, isn’t it?
Also doesn’t matter if you’re looking for bicycle parts, cameras or watercolours - all the stuff is usually always great (with one or two minor drawbacks maybe) and if you’re trying to check forums or other communities you’re left baffled, because users say total different things about a product and then contradict each other.
Btw, the rare, once every five years occasion when a Youtuber or online zine reviewer rates a product not at least good value for beginners - that company must have really pissed them off with something!
It is what it is…the show must go on.
I’m sure there’s a few synth YouTubers who watched this video and were like, “right on, man”. But I’d bet there were a fair few who did not see the same set of issues for themselves, and might even see such videos as a threat to their business relationships.
There’s plenty of synth YouTubers who may well sympathise with RMR, but don’t necessarily share his outlook, either because they’ve been more successful, have carved a more effective niche for themselves or just don’t see a problem with being paid in gear or whatever their particular agreement is with the businesses they work with.
I think maybe RMR’s problem is that he started off with a pretty decent niche (the op1 videos) then kind of had that niche ruined for him by all the copycats/oversaturation, so moved into the gear hawking shit. He’s obviously sick of that now, but he’s not found himself another niche, hence the growing dissatisfaction.
I dunno, I feel for the guy, but I just don’t see any mileage in him trying to squeeze more money out of something that seems to be making him unwell.
Sometimes you just have to walk away from shit and do something else, before it fucks you up permanently.
As for all the talk of unionising, good luck with that. How many of the YouTube guys are really gonna get on board? I mean, how effectively do you think you can bargain as a collective of, let’s say, a couple of dozen folks? One of the main weapons of a union is the withdrawal of labour (or at least the threat of it), but what damage would these guys withdrawing their labour actually do to anyone but themselves? I support anyone’s right to unuonise and try to protect themselves, but I don’t see it as any sort of solution to my guy’s problems, if anything it’ll likely make everything worse.
I think the old cliché holds true here again. Don’t turn your passion into a career, it’ll ruin it.
I would like to say this about the situation - no comment.
RMR et al needs to read this shit, and get over themselves
The comparison between being a youtuber and artistry puzzles me. I mean c’mon…
That’s some high octane BS right there.
I was waiting for him to say “You got any good sarsaparilla?” or " A wiser fella once said, sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, the bar eats you." which would be perfect for the context of this thread.
The Dude abides, man 
Exactly.
It isn’t like he has a boss stifling his creativity or choices, if it isn’t working out change it or do something else. Union talk is laughable, there are 1000 other wannabe synth youtubers ready to jump in his place.
I imagine most companies don’t want their new gear reviewed, they want it demonstrated by someone who knows what they are doing and can make something look ‘cool’. And for that I’m in total agreement with Jeremy (MLS, Liam Killen have also flagged up their issues recently), they should be paid for that. But won’t companies just avoid that synth tuber and use one of the myriad of other ones who may be equally as capable and open to free gear as payment?
Personally, I really appreciate critical reviews that don’t gloss over the obvious flaws/shortcomings, yet these type of videos are few and far between. (Just how many videos did have you seen of the latest portable flashing info-packed-screen wonder-box being used outdoors etc?)
I really hope we are seeing the beginning of the end of the influencer thing. The arc was the same with most social media. We all started watching people’s YouTube channels because they seemed interesting, then they secretly started shilling gear for companies, then they kind of got called out for secretly shilling gear and have to disclose it, and now we are all just watching infomercials.
Really good article on the broader “enshittification” process of social media here.
I started unsubscribing to loads of YouTube channels and mailing lists this year, getting off of a lot of social media, deleting apps from my phone. It’s felt really cathartic.
Funny thing is, I think there is a niche for demos that are openly paid for by the company. It would be good to have transparency. And it could be genuinely useful if it’s done by someone who is good at music, and who has had a lot of time (because they’re getting paid!) to learn the device properly. At the moment there’s this wave of ‘reviews’ that aren’t willing to be properly critical, and in a sense shouldn’t be because they don’t even know the instrument properly, they’ll be on to something else next week.
There are things like that. The guitar player Andy who works for Reverb comes to mind. The problem is that the guy is so damn talented that it’s never a really good indication of what the gear is going to sound like when you get it. What you are hearing is not the gear it’s a talented guy that could make anything sound good.
Did anyone here watch the video? I’m not a music technology brand so I skipped it
He’s really capitilising on this soapbox content aint he.
I like it when he plays with synths.
Poles apart in terms of style but this is why I really appreciate people like Jexus and Tim Shoebridge. Neither do ‘timely’ videos for the most part but they’re both more than happy to have a proper moan about annoyances where the best you’ll generally get elsewhere is a very brief aside with excuses made or vague suggestions that issues might be fixed later so nobody gets upset. The latter part is another problem with these embargoed reviews, very few products with software elements release in anything like a finished state these days so initial ‘reviews’ are often pretty pointless as far as functionality/user experience goes.
You can read the SynthAnatomy article i linked, and it will give you a good overview ( a little hacked up ) of what Jeremy says in the 18 minute video.
haha thanks but that sounds even worse 
I’m just really not into the whole youtube drama thing. I guess Jeremy is getting a lot of positive feedback from this content but it’s not for me.
May i remind you, you comment on something you didn’t watch.
Well if it were addressed to me and not so condescendingly maybe I would have 
But… good point