Dang y’all are harsh.
I don’t him personally but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I wanna say that he probably made the video because other ways didn’t “reach” the companies. I like a few of his videos. He’s not my favorite Youtuber, but he must be doing something for those companies if they are sending him free shit.
True, I should probably have chosen my words a little more carefully.
What I described as real value could possibly be better described as value relative to what the rest of his ilk are offering; whether they be “professional” equals or up and coming rivals.
Yes those companies might be on the receiving end of some monetary value due to his efforts but if he were to give it all up there would be no shortage of people willing to fill that gap. Will the tech companies care? Not in the slightest.
As such, RMR along with the rest of his kind offer no more value to the tech companies than the average warehouse worker offers Amazon. Both are easily replaceable; which is why I suggested they don’t offer any real value to the companies.
oh boy, yet another RMR rant video? ok I tried watching it, made it to 10 minutes.
if your business is not working the way you want - change the business model.
if you want to get paid for the content you make - charge the client as much as you want. of course the client wants to pay as little as possible, duh…
in my eyes this is a childish rant, “you should pay me more just because you know my videos are more valuable then free gear”, dude, the client got a sweet deal, nearly free advertising, it’s your fault that you don’t charge for your work, you can’t blame the customer for not wanting to pay you just because you think they should…
imo if you like gear and want to stay around gear but the whole synfluencering does not work for you, how about instead of ranting to youtube focus on your abilities as a musician and invest the same time you invest for these videos in actual music?
start focusing on making couple of albums a year, maybe some play gigs?
here’s an example of a youtuber who is an actual musician that releases music and making nice videos and probably a nice living without the need to rant about he’s personal choices to the rest of the world.
how about trying that for a while?
I just saw this was possible. Is it really that noticeable?
Do these youtube musicians actually have that much influence over sales? Since when did they change their titles to gear demonstrators, or promoters? I’ve never been influenced by a product demonstration. What’s he wanting, like a percentage somehow tied through his viewer rating?
I don’t care to watch people dilly daddle and review gear, but actually use it. The videos I’ve come across that were tutorials of his, are covered by a lot of people.
I feel for the man, he’s obviously very distraught. Work is work, and the term “the starving artist” is more true now than it ever has been. But gear was sold before his channel existed, and it will be sold after he quits. That’s the way of the world.
Would we consider him one of the luckier ones that started with a lot more in life than others?What about one of us here, who would love to do the same as him given the chance? Is that a mark on us as the consumer that he is appealing to, and would we be considered scabs?
I haven’t watched the BoBeats or RMR videos above but I’m happy to go on record that I think the whole “influencer” thing is clearly troubling and only works for a small few in terms of making a living, irrespective of the subject matter. It’s almost like we could be talking about music, right?!
On a serious note - it remind me of some books I read about film criticism. The author (a famous film critic in the UK) was making the point that they had sometimes been criticised for contributing towards the “tanking” of a film based on bad reviews. Truth be told, this is crap. If people want to go and watch a movie, the critics don’t stop them. Tons of bad films do very well because most people don’t care about the film critics, they go based on their own preferences and word of mouth.
Same applies here. People here don’t make the decision to get a piece of gear (or not) based on RMR or BoBeats or anyone else. More likely to be based on word-of-mouth on this forum. If the brands know this (which I’m sure they do) they they won’t be inclined to pay much for a review etc because it doesn’t add much value to them. If they want to do the (comparably cheap) thing of giving away a piece of gear to the reviewer then that’s fine but at that point the audience is never going to 100% believe that the review is unbiased, even if it is, and there’s the rub.
I understand why some people want to try to make a living from being on YT but it can’t be a huge shock to these people if/when it doesn’t work out so well. I have some sympathy because I can easily believe that the brands can be difficult or demanding, but we all have employers that can be difficult or demanding at times and that goes with the territory if somebody is paying you.
Only difference is he clearly puts efforts in his clips. Still just wonder if youtube isnt paying him a bit of cash since he has kinda good numbers in views.
Unfortunately my experience of RMR is that I’ve seen a lot more rants about the industry and things he doesn’t like than useful content.
It seems like being an influencer doesn’t suit him and he doesn’t produce enough useful tutorial content to support his channel any other way.
Unfortunately he maybe needs to have a think about if this is what he wants to do for a living.
I can’t figure out in what world the reviewer being paid by the reviewee for the review is a good model.
This instantaneously changes the review into an ad.
Even the “they sent it to me for free but they have no say in the review” feels super suspicious. No say except the fact that they will stop sending the products your livelihood depends on, right?
The only clean model for me would be ads for unrelated products and patreon like funding.
It’s been that way for ever.
Even at the peak of magazines they were reliant on brands buying ad space so reviewers were often leaned on.
You have to think of reviews being largely a form of advertising.
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.