With no musicians playing concerts, how much have sales of music instruments dropped? It seems to me that the number of new released synths has significantly dropped in the last year. What are your experiences. Has the golden age of synth come to an end?
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Wasnāt that the 70s?
Sorry Iām drunk.
Never post when druā¦
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Mmmā¦ I think we are in the dusk of an era. You have a future as always, but the polybrute, Moog One, infinite modules, vst analog emulation that is above par for analog tone, Ob-6, prophet ridiculousness, re-released classics galore. There is more than I could be fair enough to mention. But Iām sure there will continue to be more, but weāll see whatās next.
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Could be due to chip shortage, problems with shipping and covid restriction in general, tho.
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That too. Itās shortaged vehicle manufacturing on that alone as well.
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Also, to me it seems weĀ“re still going pretty strong actually. Tons of modules, Sequential released a new poly and most recently even Walddorf announced something.
Boutique manufacturers brought an 808 clone diy kit and several 909 clones hit the marketā¦
Strymon released a new pedalā¦
So there might have been delays and various problems affecting shedules, but people seem to be working on new stuff everywhere.
Also to me it seems the pandemic had one major effect - people sitting at home buying shit while youtube drives the whole circle.
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I donāt think touring musicians are the target audience of synth manufacturers anymore and thatās got nothing to do with the pandemic.
I donāt have data but Iām quite sure most synths are sold to home studios and bedroom musicians than touring musician. If anything, we are living a golden era of synths, just look around and see how many synths are available at all price ranges and how much innovation there is, as opposed to āanother analog subtractive but with a different chipā
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Makes sense. So many hobbyists have the money and freedom to just buy and see what it will bring including a busy used market to keep everything going.
Also I see pretty much the same cycle happening elsewhere. For example, my wife does paintings and drawings and the pandemic brought them pretty much the same cycle of new companies forming everywhere, several product announcements per week, youtube videos and mostly hobbyists buying tons of stuff. ItĀ“s so similar, including people feeling bad for having bought so much stuff they donĀ“t need and planning to stay away from it for a year.
The only difference is the price range^^
Hobbyists are driving sales probaply elsewhere on a similar scale as well.
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I hear that the Japanese companies have been doing well because of stay-at-home demand. There was fire at a factory in Southeast Asia (Indonesia?) a while back that squeezed the supply chain and then the semiconductor shortage hit, so that seems to have slowed things down. Shipping and logistics are all messed up now as well and, of course, COVID. I bet that bedroom musicians outweigh touring musicians by a lot these days, so I would guess demand is still pretty strong.
You mean the fire in the AKM factory?
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Iām pretty sure Iāve heard reference to a big plant disaster of some sort in Southeast Asia as well. I think Indonesia. Sorry, its been a long day so Iām not up for searching it at the moment. Anyway, supply chains seems to be more of an issue than demand at the moment. Too many disasters. Iām ready for the world to go back to normal.
Edit:
Sorry, I could be mixing things up. They donāt name the supplier here.
The opposite actually. Having spoke to many retailers they say theres never been a better period for sales as everyone was stuck at home bored.
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Honestly my being home so much more is definitely why I picked up a M:C aside from how awesome it is lol. In this weird āhybridā work situation now so putting any other purchases on hold till I see how it shakes out, but yeah. Thereās definitely folks at home with more time who are saying āHey Iāll take the plunge nowā
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Yeah, the top secret globalist cabal at the heart of the plandemic conspiracy absolutely hate anything that uses semiconductors.
They desperately donāt want us buying new phones that can spy on our every move and conversation, or new cars that can record every journey we make. Theyād much rather we unplugged from all those silly screens they use to sell us everything and go for a nice walk in the park with our friends.
Yeah, they hate all that, and they were happy to sacrifice the synth industry to achieve it.
The bastards.
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Theyāre selling us raspberry piās and 10 year old tablet processors in fancy boxes for a grand a pop every few months. Itās going nowhere
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Is Elektron doing this? If so, what gear do you think?
Genuinely curious as a noob to this aspect of synths and gear. Thanks.
If youāre buying a digital synth, youāre buying an interface, workflow, and algorithm polish. No one is lying to you about there being some other magic there. If you think thatās easy, feel free to ship your own ā no one is stopping you. If you donāt understand why folks ship the microcontrollers and CPUs they do, please try building something so you get a first-hand feel for what itās like being a small hardware manufacturer ā and by small, I mean under 10M units a year.
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Iām not aware of Elektron doing this but the Korg Wavestate is a Raspberry Pi Zero in a fancy case. 
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Thank you for your advice 
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