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Comment by nsriv | Hacker News Reader

For anyone looking for a more thorough breakdown of features and capabilities, Andrew Huang just did a great (sponsored) video on the device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqGnKfhVhZ8

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I'm not one to drum up drama, but I kinda got sick of Andrew after he faked his own kidnapping and then tried playing it off with the "it's just a prank bro" shtick. He represents a lot of aspects about influencer culture that I find grating.

Cuckoo, Loopop and Patchwerks also did some more in-depth videos today. Not here to take the wind out of anyone's sails, but there's probably more intellectually stimulating/gratifying content out there on this device.

i heard andrew wants like 10k to make a video

Sounds cheap. This one has 40k views less than 12 hours after being posted.

i don’t see the economics working, but ok

It’s a $1000 product. By sponsoring such a channel, you’re actually marketing to the exact people that you’d want to advertise to, all 2 million of them. You don’t need to sell many for it to make sense.

viewing that video one time is not going to make you buy the product.

so in reality you have to be seeing multiple videos like that about 10 times. which means you need multiple creators like that and spend $$$$ on ads.

Which is exactly what they're doing. The set of people they have making videos for this is like the Who's Who of synth youtube, and arguably the most important avenue for advertising this kind of product nowadays.

Indeed. Specialist YouTube channels are a goldmine, that’s why they work.

It’s the new version of specialist magazines as far as advertising goes.

If 0.025% (a tenth of a quarter of a percent) of the people who watched the video _so far_ buy a unit, they're already break even. And that's only considering the 44k people who watched the video in the first 12 hours.

A significant percentage of the audience for Andrew Huang, Loopop and similar channels regularly buy synths and studio gear, and are largely guided to those purchases by these YouTube reviews. That gear typically isn't inexpensive; the Syntakt is £850, yet a lot of people will be buying this device in the next few days after watching Andrew Huang et al review it. I would be amazed if synth influencers were unable to make a very decent living from reviewing gear, given the relative affluence of their subscribers.

I’m a synth dilettante and I absolutely look at these channels for inspiration and validation on what to buy, and sometimes for tips on how to use it.

Andrew Huang and True Cuckoo for the enthusiasm, sometimes also Ricky Tinez; Loopop and Sonicstate for thorough reviews; and Bad Gear to keep me grounded.

So yeah, if you want my next thousand bucks your chances are pretty good if all these guys like your gear. Or appear to like it.

Personally, I try to stay away from "lifestyle synthesists" like Andrew Huang, Bo Beats and (to a certain extent) Ricky Tinez. I don't like the feeling that I'm being marketed to by an influencer who is in it for the money rather than for the music itself. Loopop is great for reviews of new gear because he's clinical with his descriptions, but otherwise I try to focus more on channels like Alex Ball, Bad Gear and Matt Johnson, where the music-making process is at the forefront.

I feel like Andrew Huang is in another league of YouTuberdom with the high production values, it’s almost as if “YouTube” is his genre and he happens to be into synthesizers. Whereas Bad Gear is like what I would make if I knew anything and wasn’t lazy.

Funny, I count 12 Syntakt videos just among my subscriptions and I’m not even a musician. Elektron must have sent out a lot of these.

yep, not just sent out, but paid $$$$ in marketing

Seems like a good investment, probably way more effective than buying Google or Facebook ads.

However I do wonder sometimes -- how much love do the little indie shops get from these YouTubers?

If you're a tiny shop and can't afford payola, can you still get on these channels? If not, that's a super opportunity for someone to make a new channel. Call it "Synth I Get" or something and review every single thing anyone sends you.

These people certainly don't always get paid for reviews. Loopop is very transparent about whether he was given something for free or bought it himself (though I don't know if he does the latter as much anymore, his reviews are basically tutorials that are as interesting after you get the thing as when deciding what to get). Loopop has reviewed both Monome and Organelle products, which are open source and about as indie as it gets.

Elektron is a major player and this is a very "big" product launch as far as synths go. (Though I think that says more about the market than it does about Elektron.)

loopop is a guy who has a tech company. i never understood why if you already are succesful with some web 2.0 company you also have to be an influencer.

I'd believe it if he said it was just passion for the instruments. The guy really puts a lot of work into each of his videos, it kinda blows my mind.

at that level and frequency it’s a business

I would really not call the loopop guy (whoever he is) an "influencer."

I'd call him an educator, taking advantage of the medium to give super useful, very thorough reviews of products that are both expensive and notoriously hard to figure out.

Plus I guess he loves synths enough to do all these deep-dives? I mean, if it were a job it would be a pretty grueling one, that stuff is complicated to learn and there are so many and the expectation is that his videos will cover pretty much everything. I assume he makes some money on it but I'm actually relieved to hear it's not his main gig.

"YouTube is underrated."

$10,000 is on the very low-end for a brand deal with a creator who has 2.2 million subscribers.

i guess i am in the wrong business

> kinda got sick of Andrew after he faked his own kidnapping

How long ago was this? His content for the last several years seems more mature than that, but I'm not familiar with his early work.

I googled around for anything about this and couldn’t find anything - I can’t say this for retain, but maybe OP is confused or mistaken.

I personally find him super entertaining, not to mention immensely talented. His breakdowns of gear are excellent.

I too did a search. So far we have only "I don't want drama"-smoldesu's assertion that this happened.

I had to go digging for it as well, he deleted pretty much everything related to it. At least we know he's getting what he paid for with his PR team.

I did find an embed of the tweet from before it was deleted[0], though. I'm sure you could find relevant comments calling him out on his videos around the time he pulled this (July 2021).

[0]https://i.postimg.cc/Prr9s7wb/Screenshot-20220422-092011.png

Or that time he faked going to space and met chrystal aliens. Typical fucking lying influencers.

That space stuff really put me off. I subscribed to his channel for the music (gear) videos and suddenly the channel turned into cheap sci fi and I had no idea what was going on... I unsubscribed afterwards and refrain from clicking his videos when youtube recommends them.

Lol serious? Must have missed that one

For thorough review, look for loopop as usual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DqqKYAGsGo

Loopop is the most thorough when it comes to reviews (I find at least), much better than Huang. Otherwise I look at ezbot as his musical style fits me a bit better.

Here is his starter video for the Syntakt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nenpiWEYjRg

Ricky Tinez and sonicstate tends to have good videos as well, but couldn't find any videos by them about the Syntakt yet.

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