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Comment by motogpjimbo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

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