SBAF free advertising for Massdrop?

I think those persons who can discern for themselves whether members of this forum have reliable expert knowledge or integrity will continue to do so, and those persons who either can’t or have a predisposition to fling mud will continue to do so. I doubt a sponsorship changes those tendencies much.

 

it hurts me that you have to ask

 

Maybe we need to give Marv a break this weekend. Shutdown like we did a while back. I don’t want him to burn out on something that is supposed to be fun. At least most of the time. Besides, I need to get off my ass and interact with friends and family.

 

It is tough when the product is released to the public 6-8 months in the future as it doesn’t leave a lot of room for discussion. Maybe a secret loaner tour would be more useful than picking a couple of senior members. Just make sure you include Brencho or he will start more threads.

Another option is limiting reviews to products that are readily available. That might mean Massdrop products that have already been released to the public instead of prior to the first run. Stereophile has a similar policy for their reviews (not that it saves them criticism for bias).

 

Apologies in advance for this un-original idea, but why not something like a Patreon subscriber/donor option for SBAF in addition to current contributions? Help feed the loaner warchest and also buy the hard working staff here beers on the regular? I doubt anyone is counting on this site for their livelihood, but when a site can literally make or break millions of dollars in audio merch, I think it's entitled to not come out of pocket for operation expenses, etc.

Also as suggested, regular shutdowns of the site for everyone's benefit. One of the biggest lies of the internet, and all hobbies rolled into it, is that you need it. This site is easy dopamine, and I know many of you like me wish you spent more time on more meaningful pursuits. That said, I also want to see this site live long and prosper, and I'm happy to chip in a Big Mac on the regular to see it do so.

 

The issue where friends only say nice things because they are friends? For sure. I doubt that has colored the MD or any of the other reviews those guys have posted. I would question that a lot more with people I'm unfamiliar with though.

I think you will see it going the other way more often than hyping up a products good qualities. For example, I loaned out the Dragon Inspire IHA-1, and I haven't seen many people review it. It seems lots of members were curious about this amp, so we were careful in selecting people - ones who had a history of posting reviews. I think there's a whole bunch of them who haven't posted a review out of courtesy to me, because they probably think the amp isn't very good. Here's the thing, I own it. I know what the damn thing sounds like. I think @Hands nailed it. (So be honest folks, I can take it.)

Also, I suspect these guys became friends in real life organically. Sure, @CEE TEE runs Massdrop stuff, but when you're involved in a hobby you meet people. You make friends. I do stuff for friends I don't do for others. That's just how it is. So, if a few of them get early review things, I don't hold it against anyone.

 

Also, here's another thing to consider. How would you feel if a friend walked up to you and said "you need to start paying me money because you lent me gear."

Ok, no more gear. That solves that.

I guess I'm greatly conflicted about the whole thing. We want honest reviews. We don't want to seem like shills. We have a lot of friends in the industry. We really need to start making income for the site so it's not a burden for the administrators. Every single one of those is a conflict of interest to the other.

Glad I don't have to figure this out.

 

Maybe folks should just make a donation. If you feel you get content you can’t elsewhere, donate. I’ll start with $50.

 

$1/mo, basic access to general chat areas. $3/mo, access to reviews and for sale sections?

 

A couple of observations:

1. There's nothing wrong with Jude making money from his website. Work should be rewarded. This doesn't mean I condone everything he does.
2. The ultimate currency of life is time. We sell our time and keep the leftovers for important things like family, sleep and enjoyable stuff.
3. If Marv gets neither enjoyment nor money from working on the site, I bet that he'll eventually stop doing it so that he can spend more time with Julie and his kids, go hiking, listen to music etc.
4. If we want SBAF to continue it's in our best interests to work out the most efficient means of generating an income stream for Marv whilst maintaining integrity.
5. Paid reviews, the review of sponsor's gear, reviews of gear given to the reviewer as opposed to borrowed: All of these call into question the honesty of the reviewer, regardless of their character.
6. This is what I want in a review: Honest and clear descriptions of audio equipment written by someone of integrity who is gifted in perceiving nuances of sound and has a depth of experience.
7. Marv consistently meets all these criteria
8. I'd be willing to pay for this and bet that others would too so that quality content can continue to be delivered.

My suggestion is that there's a need for a shift from the ubiquitous manufacturer/marketer driven model of reviewing to a user-driven model. This is an opportunity. Content contributors (Marv and possibly others) should be paid for this solely by users, subscription or Patreon, so that time is compensated for.

The best way of doing this? Dunno. Possibly separate site administered with the voluntary help of others. Have users send in gear for review. Offer some content for free and the other stuff available to subscribers only. Advertising from companies that sell gear not related to audio, but targeting the same demographic. There are active threads here related to watches, knives, photography etc.

 

I totally agree.

The convenience of something like patreon cannot be overlooked. 1, 5 or 10 dollars per month, set and forget. I would gladly support the site that way and I'm sure many others would too. I already support a few YouTube channels this way. Otherwise I'll just make donations through PayPal like normal, but it's hard to remember to do so.

As for exclusive content, one example would be to make loaner tours open to Friends and $10+ patreons only.

 

So... basically, I read everything thus far as:

1. SBAF is already helping Massdrop out (willingly or unknowingly), and is already labeled as "shills", nothing we can do about that.
2. SBAF is also already being called Schiit "shills" disregarding the fact that Schiit wasn't an official sponsor to begin with, but they are now.
3. Being that SBAF are "shills" anyway, Massdrop may as well be like Schiit and be an official sponsor, paying for the livelihood of the community that's "shilling" for them.

Did I get that right?

Honestly, I've been considered a Massdrop shill myself... LOL (though funny enough not a Schiit shill) so that's that. I do see some sense in what @brencho is saying, or maybe I'm becoming a @brencho shill myself because y' all know I come over to his place and get paid in coffee and good music. It's all perspective. Take that how you will, guys.

At the end of the day, I think it's just a matter of good will, good gestures, and making people happy. And I'm totally for making people happy.

Edit: also, please don't bother CEE TEE for now. I know he's quite busy in real life. If he wanted to clarify something, he'd usually do so pretty fast without being tagged.

 

While I hugely agree with @brencho 's well-defined problem of Massdrop - mainly one-sided relationship, I am also very skeptical whether this issue can be resolved effectively. Because Massdrop is playing a game in an unclear gray zone between community and friendship (literally). Fortunately trusted senior members never post false positives or false negatives. But like brencho argued, that's not the whole story.

Pretty ironically, in the rdac thread, my credit went neither Airist nor Hibiki (nor Massdrop).. rather I got very good impression regarding @soekris and his passion as a dac developer.

 

We engage the people we do in our launches because we respect their opinions, and we want to promote those individuals. Individual enthusiast communities aren't a big source of traffic, but there are folks in this community who have dedicated their lives, to challenging the enthusiast industry to put out better products. We respect those people, so we engage them in our development processes and product launches. The structure of our press-embargo'd launches, where nobody knows who else is reviewing the product, is designed to create the truest, most un-biased review process we can. We send the thing, answer questions, and give you a date/time to post, that's the show.

We feature these reviews on our product pages for the audiophiles sure, but know that on a Massdrop Made product page, over half the viewers have never engaged with the audiophile community. Of the near 50k 6XXs we've sold, over 25k are people who never engaged with a headphone page on Massdrop before the 6XX. All the communities we support have grown over the course of the last five years, while the majority of forums and enthusiast communities have shrunk (check google trends). Why have these communities grown where other's have shrunk? Could be a variety of reasons, but when we launch a new Audiophile collaboration at a low pricepoint, we share that with millions of non-audiophiles, putting the inspiration to join this community within their reach.

So the question I ask @CEE TEE is not "who can we involve that will get us the most sales/signups?", because nobody in this community can drive meaningful traffic, the question is "If you could take every new audiophile online, and give them a voice to trust on X product type, who would it be?". We want people joining this community to start by reading reviews from honest people who have spent years honing their craft, not somebody gesturing in-front of a chest-mounted GoPro.

If Marv wants to go a more sponsor-heavy path with the site to support high-quality content, it's easy to reach us.

EDIT: This post was poorly worded on my part last night, edit to address some of that poor wording and hopefully clarify my message.