Trends or ...?

[H-evolve]

I don't quite understand how gear advertising and/or reviewing and/or demo'ing etc... work these days. I look around the internet and in the guitar industry, it's as if, every 6 months, there is only ONE PRODUCT that everybody talks about... On a 6 months cycle or something.

Is this some kind of marketing pitch that companies do? Like they just send/ship their stuff to every Youtuber that exists for 6 months straight and make sure nobody talks about nothing else?

Or maybe I'm the only one that feels there are those "spam phases" in the guitar industry?

For example, a few years back, it really felt as if everybody, but everybody, was demo'ing Positive Grid. EVERYBODY! (And it was always good reviews, surprisingly, even when there was no sponsorship).

Or, lately, it seems every single signature guitar has the Fishmen Fluence pickups. I'm sure they're great pickups, but I'm surprised everybody wants them so much. I mean, surely the other pickups on the market didn't turn to shit all of a sudden?

 

[tedtan]

It's just the marketing push for new products. The other good gear is still good, it's just older and not receiving as much attention from the companies' marketing departments.

 

[H-evolve]

It's just the marketing push for new products. The other good gear is still good, it's just older and not receiving as much attention from the companies' marketing departments.

Indeed yes, however, I feel the guitar industry is subject to much more agressive marketing techniques than most other market.

Maybe it's just me, but that product "push" you are refering to seems very agressive in the guitar gear market.

I find that, as a customer, it becomes quite difficult to find a fair and unbiaised review or opinion. As an example, yet again, some years ago, when Positive Grid Bias came out, if you were looking to buy an amp sim suite at the time, it was the only thing product were talking about, even though it isn't that great. I'm sure many people bought it, only to regret their purchase some time later.

You need to turn yourself to forum such as this one to be able to have some kind of a big picture of what is available on the market and what's good vs what's not that good.

 

[KillFrenzy]

You need to turn yourself to forum such as this one to be able to have some kind of a big picture of what is available on the market and what's good vs what's not that good.

That's one big reason I like forums. In general, people with honest opinions.

 

[Vihaleipä]

Indeed yes, however, I feel the guitar industry is subject to much more agressive marketing techniques than most other market.

Maybe it's just me, but that product "push" you are refering to seems very agressive in the guitar gear market.

I find that, as a customer, it becomes quite difficult to find a fair and unbiaised review or opinion. As an example, yet again, some years ago, when Positive Grid Bias came out, if you were looking to buy an amp sim suite at the time, it was the only thing product were talking about, even though it isn't that great. I'm sure many people bought it, only to regret their purchase some time later.

You need to turn yourself to forum such as this one to be able to have some kind of a big picture of what is available on the market and what's good vs what's not that good.

It's most likely that you're more exposed to the heavy marketing on the guitar gear market, and because of that you feel like the marketing is more agressive than in other industries, even though it's most likely not since it's the same shit in other industries as well. I definitely feel the same way about it, every "gear review" is usually just a glorified ad.

I'm not really into guitar channels anymore because of that, the only guy that I can recall has admitted that he gets paid when he demoes gear is Ola Englund, pretty much everyone else is trying to avoid it when people ask them about it and even are pretty denialistic about it (like Glenn Fricker for example, I actually miss the earlier days of that channel when it wasn't all about selling shit gear like BIAS and him shouting at viewer's comments like some washed up comedian).

The solution that I've found for myself is to stop buying new gear, turn that shit off.

 

[H-evolve]

It's most likely that you're more exposed to the heavy marketing on the guitar gear market, and because of that you feel like the marketing is more agressive than in other industries, even though it's most likely not since it's the same shit in other industries as well. I definitely feel the same way about it, every "gear review" is usually just a glorified ad.

I'm not really into guitar channels anymore because of that, the only guy that I can recall has admitted that he gets paid when he demoes gear is Ola Englund, pretty much everyone else is trying to avoid it when people ask them about it and even are pretty denialistic about it (like Glenn Fricker for example, I actually miss the earlier days of that channel when it wasn't all about selling shit gear like BIAS and him shouting at viewer's comments like some washed up comedian).

The solution that I've found for myself is to stop buying new gear, turn that shit off.

I don't know really, I am following other type of products, related to my other areas of interests and I definitely feels it's much more aggressive in the guitar industry. I mean, I'm not saying guitar gear is the only one, as I'm obviously not aware of everything that is being advertised on the planet, but compared to my other areas of interest (car and car parts, computer gear, sports equipment, to mention a few).

But I agree with you about the youtube channels you refered to. I still follow Ola because of his sense of humor and that he's probably the only one being somewhat honest about the times he's paid to review stuff.

Glenn I stopped following because of all the childish shit of his channel, like commenting the viewer's comments, etc... The only interesting videos he made were his tutorials. For some time he stopped doing it, but he seems to be coming back to it recently. We'll see.

To me, and I'm sorry if I hurt someone, the worst one is Fluff. Three things he did that made me realize he's a douche:
1- He was demo'ing how to do the match making with Positive Grid Bias. The result was far from convincing and it was obvious it sounded not great. Even his face was showing his disapointment. But he was still saying "how cool that was".
2- There was one time he reviewed a piece of gear, don't remember which (might have been Positive Grid), and he didn't mention he was being paid for it. A viewer commented that "It would be nice if you could mention, when you review something, if you are paid to do it or not." to which Fluff replied "Don't tell me how to manage my Youtube Channel"
3- He recorded something like a 20 minutes video where he just comments and laughs at the funding video Wintersun made a few years ago. I mean... what the fuck...? Yes I felt their video was a bit weird or anything, but dedicate a full video to "officially" laugh at them? What kind of douche does that?

Anyway... sorry for that overflow of frustration! XD

 

[Vihaleipä]

I don't know really, I am following other type of products, related to my other areas of interests and I definitely feels it's much more aggressive in the guitar industry. I mean, I'm not saying guitar gear is the only one, as I'm obviously not aware of everything that is being advertised on the planet, but compared to my other areas of interest (car and car parts, computer gear, sports equipment, to mention a few).

But I agree with you about the youtube channels you refered to. I still follow Ola because of his sense of humor and that he's probably the only one being somewhat honest about the times he's paid to review stuff.

Glenn I stopped following because of all the childish shit of his channel, like commenting the viewer's comments, etc... The only interesting videos he made were his tutorials. For some time he stopped doing it, but he seems to be coming back to it recently. We'll see.

To me, and I'm sorry if I hurt someone, the worst one is Fluff. Three things he did that made me realize he's a douche:
1- He was demo'ing how to do the match making with Positive Grid Bias. The result was far from convincing and it was obvious it sounded not great. Even his face was showing his disapointment. But he was still saying "how cool that was".
2- There was one time he reviewed a piece of gear, don't remember which (might have been Positive Grid), and he didn't mention he was being paid for it. A viewer commented that "It would be nice if you could mention, when you review something, if you are paid to do it or not." to which Fluff replied "Don't tell me how to manage my Youtube Channel"
3- He recorded something like a 20 minutes video where he just comments and laughs at the funding video Wintersun made a few years ago. I mean... what the fuck...? Yes I felt their video was a bit weird or anything, but dedicate a full video to "officially" laugh at them? What kind of douche does that?

Anyway... sorry for that overflow of frustration! XD

I definitely agree with you, every channel that gets bigger starts to shamelessly do those advertisement in a disguise-type videos without any transparency. I'm just as sick of all those videos as you are, that's why I watch very little of them nowdays and mostly skip through the stuff. Second thing that makes it worse is the oversaturation of those kinds of videos and all the "comedy" guitar channels, I'd really like if their videos weren't shoved into my eyes from every music related website.

 

[tedtan]

I don't know really, I am following other type of products, related to my other areas of interests and I definitely feels it's much more aggressive in the guitar industry. I mean, I'm not saying guitar gear is the only one, as I'm obviously not aware of everything that is being advertised on the planet, but compared to my other areas of interest (car and car parts, computer gear, sports equipment, to mention a few).

Graphics cards, CPUs, cell phones, golf clubs (especially drivers)...

 

[Vihaleipä]

Graphics cards, CPUs, cell phones, golf clubs (especially drivers)...

Saved a good hundred euros when I bought my GTX 1060 before the crypto-mining went apeshit, GPU's are stupidly expensive nowdays.

 

[H-evolve]

Graphics cards, CPUs, cell phones, golf clubs (especially drivers)...

When I mentioned computer stuff I meant monitors, keyboards, etc.... I guess that my wording was not quite right. Shouldn't have said "components".

Cause I don't think the CPU market is that comparable to guitar gear. After all, there are only 2 options, AMD or Intel... Which explains why their marketing is not that agressive.

 

[SendFire]

All the youtubers are easily found by companies, and youtubers need gear to review to keep their channels going...thus when a new product gets released it gets sent to the "names" and they all feature it usually around the same time.

I have no problem with this so long as it's disclosed by the youtubers and they actually do something useful to demo or explain the product. The problem is both those requirements are rarely met.