SBAF free advertising for Massdrop?

They only care about millions and millions on a drop that will only sell 250 units and is capped at 900?

 

I'd drink a few glasses of your best single malt and maybe give the guy (Will) the benefit of the doubt in what he was trying to convey.

Edit: I am blaming that last glass of Uigeadail on typing "Tom" instead of "Will".

 

As of now 224 people placed an order for the RDAC. I wonder how many of them were influenced by Marv’s, Hands’ and Torq’s review. I know I’ve pulled the trigger only because of those reviews. (and because I wanted to buy a DAC to the bedroom anyways). I was going to buy a Modi Multibit when those reviews showed up and they changed my mind. I think it doesn’t matter if you reach millions if they are unwilling to buy in the first place.

I would support a subscription/patron model by the way.

 

....the f**k is Tom???

 

Right, that's exactly it. There's quantity (how many millions of followers some rando Pornhub i mean YouTube channel has) versus actual impact. What proportion of people make decisions with their wallets based on what they read.

 

@zerodeefex just raised a point I've been very curious about but was too shy to ask. This about confirms that SBAFians (God that name looks ugly— SBA Friends? Those Assholes Over There?) really are comparatively tightly-knit, and that there's a sense of trust that you don't really see in most other fora. Yes that makes it all too easy to fall into groupthink, but there are more than enough levelheaded people to stir shit up whenever someone calls doubleplus ultragood on a new toy.

@Will thank you for your response. While I do see your point, communities like SBAF are the exact shit I wanted to tap into back when I was working at my old job: a reasonably large group of honest-to-Heaven geeks who love the crap out of their hobbies and are active, hell, proactive therein. The word of any one established and respected member here is guaranteed to elicit more of an actionable response within the group, moreso than some lofty "esteemed reviewer" would be able to within the general public (at least speaking in terms of an eyeballs-to-engagement ratio since the numbers on SBAF are relatively tiny), so while I can only be speaking from my own limited experience in that field and working on a somewhat smaller scale I do think the value of such a group to manufacturers cannot be so understated.

Note that I said "wanted". Communities such as this are tightly-knit and all too immune against marketing, which is to the group's benefit and advertisers' detriment. Of course, people who already have an in such as Soekris, Schiit, Massdrop, etc. have it relatively easy as a result of having thawed the ice from prior interaction, but as you no doubt know that doesn't exempt them from scrutiny.

I'm keeping quiet now since I feel I've said all I have that's meaningful. Frankly, I'm hyper excited about how those half sine waves over in the Burst Response thread could be used to evaluate gear!

 

I am all for everybody responsible for this site making money. No question. I do think op's suggestion gives more ammunition to those who cry "shill" everytime someone posts a good opinion on a product, but they are already doing it, so I am not sure that changes anything. Won't affect my enjoyment of the site though. If the powers that be want to start charging for membership, that's cool. I won't be here, but I don't think that works to the detriment of the site; in fact some will say it may improve marginally. If it becomes too shilly, then I quit coming. It's just audio for me. And please keep the Russian wife ads. I find the site aesthetically pleasing.

 

hello,

this may be a little too drunk but...f*ck it.

@Will, it appears to me that you have used the positive reviews here to promote your products. nothing wrong with that. SBAF has become, for lack of a better term, an authoritative site for reviews/impressions of personal audio hardware. you sell personal audio hardware, some of which is worth purchasing, some of it... not so much. i get that. you are working with a sh*tload of makers, and you (and they) are trying to make a living.

however, to belittle the influence of SBAF on your sales is, at best, disingenuous. this site does drive purchase decisions, just as Tyll drove purchase decisions (more than one in the case of the ForBin household.)

what we have here is a lack of support. this site depends on member contributions and (it seems) to a much lesser degree on the generosity of the vendors WE BUY STUFF FROM.

there is the perception (wrong or right) that MD cherry picks products for review on SBAF. i would suggest that this is not too far off the mark. that MD benefits from these reviews is also not in dispute. again, if a vendor is benefiting from a community site, said vendor should (with dollars) support said site. furthermore, said vendor has no right to be a dick if reviews/comments on the site are not so positive.

the disconnect that i am suffering is this. MD products submitted for review/impressions at SBAF have, for the most part, received positive recommendations. some of these products were also favorably cited on the (apparently now deceased) Inner Fidelity. however, MD have determined that: these positive notices are insignificant and that any questioning of the legitimacy of a MD product will be met with... silence. (my feeling is that the Massdrop x Airist Audio R=2R DAC is not totally original work.)

you really don't get to choose, either you are committed to bringing high bang for the buck products to this community (e.g. your Cavalli offerings) that are vetted by the owners of the IP, or you will mix that with products of a dubious providence such as those from Airist.

you cannot have it both ways, and if this community decides you are ripping people off, it will vote with its dollars.
(by the by, i love my HD6XXs and my K7XXs, neither of which i would have been able to afford it it wasn't for MD, but my impression is that both Sennheiser and AKG owned the IP for these products.)

 

I think we're talking about slightly different things. There's limited reach in the raw numbers, but from a development POV? Very important. The folks we engage in developing our collaborations are critical to making these products as good as they can be. Through all my responses in this thread, I wanted to get across that I don't look at enthusiast communities as advertising platforms, but in stumbling through that explanation I alienated some folks unintentionally. Thanks for your patience and feedback friends; hopefully I can improve next time.

I expect many of the people in that drop were influenced by the reviews from Hands, Marv, and Torq. For my $.02, company sponsors funneled through patreon (provides transparency while still allowing individuals to contribute if they want) is a pretty good option.

 

Cool, we'll call it "P Reviews"...

...and don't forget the questionable anime as your screen savers.

 

There's a simple way to show whether SBAF and Marv in particular influence whether people buy a product on massdrop. Create two products and have Marv write a shitty review about one and a glowing review about another, then see which one sells better.

If Will truly believes SBAF doesn't matter then he shouldn't mind this experiment.

 

I think it's pretty easy to underestimate this. All to often those folks with a GoPro & thousands of subscribers discover things to review from sites like this. I'm sure if you sent them a tin can they'd review it as well, but the enthusiast websites more often than not create the buzz.

Keep in mind, when you want to buy something, we all have 'that guy/gal' who knows about that stuff.
That's us.
Or you happen to know cousin George/Jane is looking for a new headphone...you recommend it, which is usually worth more than all the hours of internet searching anyone can do.

I'm not trying to blow smoke up our collective arses, but the impact of the enthusiast community extends far beyond our membership. I read articles here for a long while before I joined, and there are some who read constantly who have yet to join.

This sums it up as succinctly as possible I think.
My 1st post was coming from the perspective of a member, but @brencho was looking at it from the outside in, and there's a bigger picture I was unaware of (obviously, and as it should be).

This has been quite the eye opener for me.

 

Not being into the gear feeding frenzy is healthy.

Marketing men speak with forked tongues. Even when they try not to, they can't help it. Somebody else in the direct-marketing audio business has written about how important the internet and social media is to their business, and whilst I regard their writing as sincere, I actually don't mind that they know they are talking to their potential customers, and whether it is a hundred or ten thousand, it's important.


Now... Ohkaaaaaay....

My brain cells are undergoing a re-wire on this one. What I previously posted was that I don't like the idea of saying to Massdrop, "We've been good to you: give us currency."

Here's a different take on that. Given what SBAF has done, on an individual, community and internet basis, how come they are so f'ing mean as not to be sponsors? Good question?

 

When a story on a news feed is from one of the sources that gives a certain number of views prior to the press for money, I just don't click on it, even if I have free views left. Too many sources for news these days that are free.

 

It is in the talking passionately about "slightly different" things that the worst arguments are given a second wind.

I'm socially inept, and that's being polite— ask around and there are maybe dozens of people on here I've apologised to via PM for fear of one of my attempts at humour on the boards coming off as offensive. Your "just hit me up if you need money to keep the lights on" thing you posted earlier (which I see you edited out) strikes me as something I might post if I were in your position, because it's on-brand for SBAF humour but was just posted at a bad time. Given all that, I feel for you, unless you're not being entirely sincere about just not coming across the way you wanted to.

Benefit of the doubt.

But hey, I'm just some random stranger who occasionally buys stuff from Massdrop. I won't stop just because of this mess because, audio aside, you guys sometimes offer excellent deals on fountain pens and inks. It just sucks that recent events did read like SBAF, more specifically the more prominent members therein, were seen as an advertising platform, only to be followed by a message underselling the importance of the group (i.e. not high enough numbers to drive traffic).

Quick aside:

You all know how ads on TV soliciting donations for victims of natural disasters used to be all about numbers, like "XX,XXX people were killed or left without a home in the aftermath of the destruction wrought by Typhoon Yolanda. All proceeds will be used to feed, clothe, and provide new homes for the surviving afflicted"? That kind of marketing didn't really work. Nowadays when you look at the TV, listen on the radio, get YouTube/Google/Adsense ads online, it's all people trying to tell stories about Self-Insert Template That Could Just as Easily Be You and how the thing they're trying to sell works miracles for for them— it's about you, you, and the people around you.

Human empathy is the single most powerful tool in marketing, and I'm sure @brencho, who given his experience likely knows more about this than I do, can tell you that there's a hard limit to any one person's capacity to empathise with the large faceless masses. Flood someone with numbers or overwhelming masses of stories and you just get a "meh" response after a while, like how it becomes frighteningly easy to ignore the emaciated little girl begging for coins on the street when you see dozens of people, men, women, and children like her on your daily commute. You stop being able to cry after a while, but get to know one, or have someone you know suffer the same fate and there go the waterworks.

No, numbers don't do much of a good job soliciting empathy, but creating relatable characters and having them tell their stories does. If there's one thing I feel everyone can agree on, it's that this forum is certainly populated by... characters

 

Some fairly basic editing can get around many sites filters like that, and result in very hilarious readouts. Sometimes they're really good sources for references for academic purposes, so as a student I found you have to get creative.



I won't elaborate upon how to do this; you can search that information yourself if you're inclined. For those who are lazy, these trackers usually depend upon cookies and not your IP (otherwise they'd start need to screening out public use IPs like libraries and that'd be a headache and a half). Clearing your cookies, cookie free browsers, hell, even chrome's incognito mode can get around these read limitations.