There was nothing better than to visit my local consumer news agency and finding my specially ordered copy of Computer Music Magazine had arrived, with its CD Rom full of crappy loops, questionable demo versions and even free soft synths and drum machines. Days of wonder...
Totally agree. Future Music was my gateway to synths & kit. They had great in depth interviews with artists, too. The CDs often had exclusive tracks from artists. Wish I still had all my old copies.
Early 2000's British magazines were miles ahead of US magazines, as far as value is concerned. The UK ones remained readable far longer than anything out of the USA. In addition, music mags out of the UK would have a lot more interesting music on a demo cd.
I guess in a way it's all relative, I've heard people complain about so many ads, but then I researched and was like back then it was all ads too! lol. It's all relative, somebody gonna get paid either way. You're definitely not wrong, it's just funny people think it was better back then (I did too) but it was still just overrun with advertising.
@@RumchugMusic RU-vid influencers have a similar conflict of interest, since they have to keep up a continuous flow of free review units from manufacturers. And RU-vid pays them from ads that are often from the manufacturers of gear they review. Same wine, different bottle.
@@noiretblancvie-afterhours I grew up Soviet Union, where you literally had to look or wait for the adds to see them. On TV there was one 15 minutes advertising block at 8:45-9:00 PM and that's it, as example.
Cool vid. Nick Bat from Sonic State has said something to the effect of "if we don't feature a review of a new, popular product that means something". Presumably that the product isn't good enough to be positive about it. As Sonic State's gear reviews are generally very positive as well. I could imagine a similar mechanism being in place back then in printed magazines. Besides not wanting to bite the hand that fed them.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head. These mags just don't review crap - especially when we considering the cost of producing and distributing a physical magazine! I think it's hard to relate to that nowadays
I seem to remember them not reviewing the Korg Prologue when it came out because of this, even though it sounds great, at the time it was criticised for lack of modulation/aftertouch and mentioning these glaring shortcomings in a review might come across too negative. You have to remember that these companies are paid to sell instruments and they have very close relationships with the brands that they sell. Magazines and online publications are funded almost entirely off advertisements paid for by these brands. So it's in their best interest to look at the positives with nearly every product they sell, so they can sell more products and keep the manufacturers happy. At the end of the day they will justify it by saying that they don't sell junk products and all instruments are capable in the right hands, which is not far from the truth.
Keyboard Mag! I liked Jim Aiken's reviews and articles the best. I always thought he was fair. I still see him occasionally in the Reason forum on Facebook...which is really cool. I salivated over those magazines. I wanted sooooo much and could afford so little. But I did learn a lot and they made buying a MIDIverb or a Roland JV-880 mean so much more because I FINALLY got to own a piece. It was an unhealthy obsession but it was a lot of fun and I mostly stayed out of debt. Paid for my Ensoniq EPS with cash and I felt the pain of every $20 bill leaving my hand. It took forever to save for that thing!
I see where you are coming from, but I think something else has changed that puts the role that the magazines played in a different light. During the 80’s through the early 00’s there were often pro level music stores that stocked and displayed MOST of the gear found in the magazines. These stores were often staffed with people who prided themselves on being knowledgeable about the gear and its capabilities. I think we saw the magazines as the first place to learn about what was available or coming soon, and then we had a place to go and put our hands on the actual equipment and listen with our own ears. I myself sold synths samplers and digital recording systems for several years and I took it very seriously. I always appreciated the store that sold me my first used synth (an Octave Cat) and later let me play around with the Juno 106 they kept on the floor (until I had saved enough to put down a deposit on it). So later, when I became a person selling synths and software, I tried to be genuinely helpful getting people what they needed to do the job. These days, I live in a very large city but even here the music stores seem to be stocking less and less pro gear and the people in the stores are rarely able to offer detailed information about it. Inevitable I guess as the business has just changed so much due to mail order and the internet. So maybe it was just me, but I never expected magazines to be unbiased, they listed out features and gave us a heads up about what was around the corner, but I think I saw them for the promotion driven publications they were and for me, the decision to buy was made from testing it out in the store or even renting one to play around with. Loved the video and I’m looking forward to exploring more of your content. 😀
I think this is a little bit of a sensationalist take on something which is reasonably logical. Yes, there is a capitalist undertone to many magazines - but these mags may simply be selectively reviewing the best gear. It's not that they give everything high scores carte blanche, it's that they focused on the best stuff because there is no way they could review everything. I've heard people say in the past, "if you can't find a review in X music magazine, then it means it's rubbish!" - I think that holds true.
All magazines were like that. My friend wrote for off road magazines and he was told never say anything bad about any of our advertisers during your reviews
You are correct in that the nose of most magazines was brown. The browner the better, because that's the only way they knew how to compete. In fact, I used the blatant "axx kissing" as a way to criticize the other magazines.
I loved getting the CDs from Computer Music and Future music. They did video interviews with Bonobo and Four Tet before they got big. They had to record the DAW by putting the camera up to the screen lol.
Awesome video! I was reading Keyboard, EM, and Sound on. Sound from the 80s to somewhere in the 2000s. Definitely transparently advertising-driven but I enjoyed them. Lots of good tutorial-type content even if there was an ad for the product next to it.
The amount of times I'd walk into a barnes and noble, picked up a few music software magazines, sat quietly in a chair and read them while quietly slipping the cover CDs into my jacket pocket... Terribly sorry B&N but I appreciate the samples
I made this comment on Weaver Beats' reaction to this video, but I thought it might be welcome here as well. I used to work in magazines. When it comes to ad:editorial ratio, a free magazine generally will have a 50 : 50 split. Paid-for magazines with universal appeal (People, Time, etc) will usually be like 40 : 60, more specialized ones like these will be closer to the 50 : 50. The difference between magazines and digital is that with every page you publish, your costs go way up. You not only need to pay someone to create that content, but you have to actually pay for the paper it is on. The harsh fact is positivity just sells better. People want to know what they should buy more than what they shouldn't. The more ethical mags will just not cover something, rather than give a dishonest positive review. Not publishing a review at all pisses off an advertiser a lot less than publishing a hit piece. All of this adds up to there being very little incentive to publish something critical. But no, reviews aren't just ads, it's just that the reviews that get published need to fit into a certain box.
My friend still writes for Future Music has done for around 20 odd years, does the artist interviews and retrospectives. I never trusted their gear reviews and only used Sound on Sound for recommedations. I still have almost the the same setup for 25 years the only new piece of gear I own is a Polyend Tracker Mini and a cheap 24 channel mixer the rest is from the 90s/00s. Small simple and a good understanding of each item.
The world of old school magazines was very simple - you want a review ? Buy an ad. That's it. This was also true for papers and magazines about music. If your band wanted a review in the music section of your local paper - buy an ad. Still works btw. This hasn't changed for a lot of media outlets.
This video is so wonderful! There’s the nostalgia alone, but also much more. I appreciate your perspective, research, presentation, and sense of humor.
hardcore throwback to being in highscool and reading these at my local Barnes and Noble and then jacking the DVDs so I could watch the masterclass videos haha, never really noticed the stuff about the ads because at the time I was more worried about seeing what other producers were doing and using
Great video, brought back a bunch of memories! I worked briefly at one of the magazines you mention back in the early 1990's. I was the ad salesman, and I'd gotten the job via my then-girlfriend-now-wife, who was the assistant editor at the time. There definitely was tension between selling ads and giving advertisers favorable editorial treatment, but I will say that the editor in chief at the time was probably the most ethical person I've ever worked with in all my years. He absolutely wouldn't tolerate "advertorial" content, and even if I sold the inner front cover page at the card (list price) rate, he wasn't going to say nice things about a piece of gear that he or his reviewers thought sucked. That's the main reason you'd rarely see reviews with less than 4 or 3.5 stars; if it was a bad review, we'd give the manufacturer a heads-up to see if we'd missed something, made a mistake, or if it was something they could address, but if not, we'd usually just not run the review. That was part of the tension: we didn't want to create ill will with a company that might advertise even if we chose not to cover their products.
I'd also say that while being able to watch and listen to a video is an obvious huge improvement over reading words about how awesome some audio gear is, RU-vid reviewers haven't necessarily escaped the tensions with the companies that give them the products to review (and keep indefinitely for free) and the pressure to produce advertorial content. Among others, Venus Theory and Benn Jordan have been pretty candid about this.
Dang dude you did the research calc on this, even if it was "only" one year. Indicative of the entire magazine industry honestly, subscriptions/purchases were a fraction of ad revenue so it's always a game of keeping them happy. Superb editing, including hitting us with the Dave Smith at the end. 😢🙏
The Dave Smith ad was really nostalgic, right... shows how he started all over again after the sequential days, couldn't even get real ads, he just posted DSI in the classified. R I P for sure Dave!
Keen observation. Revenue from subscriptions meant very little to the magazine's financial success. But having your name and address on our mailing list was the key. 99% of our revenue came from advertising. We were happy to give you the magazine free. Our subscription list was audited by various companies to verify the numbers, and that's what we presented to the advertisers.
This video was awesome, your presentation of the history in it was awesome, and I am now a new subscriber to your channel because of this video and its content!
We had Keyboards as well in Germany and I was a monthly subscriber up until 2006. They did add CD's with sound examples which was super handy. Ended up buying 2 of the editorialized synths: a CS1x and Microwave XTK - both which have not stayed in my setup but were totally living up to their expectations from reading their articles
Nice vid. It isn't just these old school gear mags that do this (although it is fun as you say to look at the old style of ads and writing especially). Over here in the UK there is a magazine called Electronic Sound - mainly reviews of new Electronic Music releases with some retro reviews and artist interviews etc. Not sure if it is generally available in the US. It is really nicely produced and photographed but Jesus the writing is so far up it's own a**e they can taste the toothpaste. And every single 'review' ends with something like "this is essential listening" "a definite addition to any collection" or other such b0ll0x. There is so much electronic music of all types that I have never heard and every month I want to get one or two physical releases. I just want to know what NOT to waste my money on, but what's the point in reading this magazine when "everything is brilliant".
The dirty little secret is that the reviews you mention were most commonly written by the manufacturer's public relations department of its advertising agency. The practice of a "supervised review" was entrenched in other fields, like video, audio, computer graphics, etc. The actual reviewers were paid by the manufacturers or their advertising agencies in a variety of ways, such as a free instrument, a writing contract from the advertising company itself, or a publishing contract from the PR department. The magazines kept their hands off the articles themselves. Only a few of the reviewers established their own credibility. I used Craig Anderton to write the audio section of our magazine and told him he was free to cover any topic and say whatever he wanted. According to the standards of the publishing industry, every article is supposed to contain a by-line with the name of the actual author. In many trade magazines, those by-lines were omitted, or they were assigned to the editorial staff of the magazine itself, who did nothing more than accept the article for publication. The term "advertorial" was invented to somehow justify and extend the deception. Even so, advertorial layouts were supposed to be identified as such and printed in ways to distinguish their appearance from the rest of the magazine. I personally knew an Editor of another magazine in the same field who confronted the advertising agency when they objected to identifying their layout as an "advertorial." He was fired by his own Publisher. So much for editorial integrity.
@@noiretblancvie-afterhours Na,I stay on Sweetwater and ams and it's way worse! I am an addict...bought a new amp today...why?I have the Marshall bug in me!
Nice video! Wow, I didn't realize how much Ableton 1 looked like Ableton of today. And I was recently getting nostalgic for old mags too, but I'd kinda forgotten how ad-heavy they were.
Good video. These were the days of 48th st... NY's music row...A classic block of music stores... Manny's, Sam Ash... If you saw it in those magazines, you could actually see it (...and buy it...) in those great shops. Truly the good ol' days.
Honestly not that different from my current experience on modern synth-tube! Most "content" is just a not-so-thinly veiled advertisement--you have to really sift through to find channels with interesting, honest opinions or original entertaining stuff (like yours!!)
Not sure how I only just now found your channel… glad I did! I’m an old-school mag guy myself and had the Tascam 8 track tape recorder before digital even lol… still playing and still recording. But like you, it always amazed me that we NEVER saw a review that was “negative” and always ended with a low key sales pitch. The mags definitely was gatekeeping central, but yeah… we all knew it… and we paid for it monthly regardless lol … how can you beat 180 pages worth of gear you would never own? 😂. Great vid! 👍🏻👍🏻
Very interesting. I bought my first music mag ,"One..two..Testing" in the UK in 1982! I was 14 and read it from start to finish 100 times. You're probably right about it and bias and backhanders were common I'm sure.
While you are basically correct, there is an interesting detail that influenced this ratio. In order to qualify for the significant discount magazines received from the US postal service, they were required to keep their ad-to-editorial ratio within specified parameters, which in actual practice turned out to be a poorly enforced stipulation. However, at 40%-ad to 60%-editorial, the magazine could still be profitable because different magazines charged different rates for their advertising space. At 50%-50% ratio, it was certainly profitable, or there was something wrong. At 60%-40%, it had better be profitable or the owners were likely bleeding the company, which was actually the goal all along. The income ratio between the owners and production staff was easily 9 to 1. The industry was flooded with journalism graduates coming from universities that were flooded with English majors, all a byproduct of the WaterGate scandal.
Still not any better today. Reviewers don't want to talk about deal breaking problems with a new synth. 99% of reviewers are not practiced musicians with any skill, playing just one or two notes on a poly synth with 256 voices. 95% of reviewers review a synth before they have lived with it for a year. Some reviewers are just completely without experience, skills and education in synths, sound design, effects design, orchestration, audio engineering, audiophile trained ears. I began buying synths and audio gear in the mid 1980s, magazines are all we had for information, music stores did not stock high dollar items. I had to buy one and then be disappointed with foundational problems, had to figure out work-a-rounds, had to have another synth to make for the shortcomings of the last synth. There is always a major flaw that won't allow you to perform on the synth the way you thought. So, today like most musicians I have a studio full of gear each being used only for their strong points.
I bought those magazines for the ads as well as the articles. Now you read articles on a music website and the ads, which are more intrusive, have nothing to do with music gear. I’ve read bad reviews in Guitar Player magazine. I had Electronic Musician magazine all the way back to when it was called Polyphony. I still have the first issue of that from PAiA Electronics.
Hello, this was a wonderful bideo, but is there a chance for your collection to be scanned and uploaded to somewhere like Internet Archive at some point? Or if it already has been? These look like wonderful time capsules. Edit: Like muzines!
3:26 - yooooo that Radikal Technologies controller!! I drooled over that for like 6 years and finally got one (2007 I think). Ended up selling it a couple months later lol...but honestly it really was as cool as it looked; I just had no idea what I was doing and it was way over my head
When ever i see someone using terms like "old school", "back in the day", "back then", while referring to something like early 2000's like it's "eons" ago, i just piss myself laughing.... The 2000's where literally "yesterday". "Old"...??? Give me a fu*ing brake. It you are talking about the 70's or the 80's i can kind of understand it (even as an 80's kid) but 2000's..?? FFS!!!
Media literacy, isn't it? Everyone *knew* this at the time. We knew it was advertising, but learned to filter that. It still happens online now. Every influencer has bias, companies give free stuff and benefits, or money. And that folks, is capitalism at work.
Dude, I used to work for a distributor for a few major audio/synth companies. All tests, video or written reviews are paid for and are undergoing authorization before publishinhg. You rarely get a completely honest unbiased review. Definitely not when the product is launched, because only the usual suspects will get the item for testing. If you're not in business you don't know how much BS is being sold to the beginners. The news section - these are for free, the portals/magazines simply use the press packs, but every other type of content is for the money. Those guys will advertise a crap in a bag if it has line out and midi ports - of course if you pay them enough and scratch their backs, invite them to events and give free stuff. See for yourself reach out to local distributors, make a showreel, you'll get bunch of offers if you play it right
How is this different? Now anyone who isn't lickspittling up the haa ha of every snake oiling dev eva is canceled. While there may be no single editor, now the masses harpoon anyone not daring to fanboi every insult that Chord Pack Pro foists on us. I was reading mags before you and saw a slide from genuine reviewing to advertorial (that we paid for!). Once we had the internet the pictures and info became useless esp seeing by the time the mag arrived, it was old news. Better to be dealing with the issue NOW as that is the future of what we care about. :-)
Them good ole days when synthfluencers were paid directly and were called "music\tech journalists slash experts". At least they weren't pretending to be an average Joe like they use today!
I love being old and having the meories of how impacting these old mags were. Also DJ mags and general music mags too! Free tape on the front.... oh yeah, livin' the dream. 😁
These magazines were nothing but glorified advertising platforms whose sole role was to persuade the world's bedroom musicians to keep buying more and more gear. The equipment companies kept the magazines in business with an endless stream of expensive full page adverts and kept the reviewers 'on side' by giving them an endless stream of free equipment to review. It was a plainly obvious scam to me at the time, but hundreds of thousands of would-be musicians around the world fell for it over and over again. Great video!
I know when that ethics-flip happened: mid-1990s. I did some reviews for one of the bigger ones, and before that period, you could be quite a bit more even-handed about both pros AND cons when reviewing. After, though...it seemed that the magazine got a taste for bigger money. Plus, you could clearly see that DAW tech was becoming a market driver. Too many dollar signs. Afterwards, I started getting some of the odder and clunkier devices. It makes sense, though...this "not tape but not DAW" interstice had a lot of mutated stuff come out. The last straw for me was this certain 1U rack synth that, I swear on a stack of Bibles, seemed to have been designed to make the DX7 look easy to program. I wanted to point this out, submitted a review that dug the tech but REAMED the interface...oh, and no Ed/lib software was the cherry on the cake. That was rejected, the magazine wheeled in someone with less integrity and more amiable to making huge corporations happy, and I didn't work for them anymore. Which was fine, actually. I don't like to gloss over problems just to make some boardroom suits happy. Musical equipment isn't a frivolous thing to me, period. So...yes, your suspicions are sadly correct. But you need to compare, say, EM from the early to mid 1990s with the stack from the early 2000s, and then the "break-point" becomes more apparent. On from there, music magazines just turned into ad-packed slop. Except for ONE... The only print mag on music tech that I subscribe to, and the only one I know of that offers some SERIOUS coverage via interviews and deep, objective gear reviews IS... TapeOp. If you're in N. America, a print sub to TapeOp is free. I think there's ways to get it outside of the continent, but it requires extra postage or something like that. The reviews, though...they read like you would expect them to, except that the interviews go VERY deep, tech articles are comprehensive...so they match up in quality as well. Some reviews even go into using a device for MONTHS before doing a write-up. It is what you EXPECT from a pro-grade publication, and nothing less. And it's about the only mag I know of now that lives up to that. It's a must for anyone at literally ANY point in their studio career.
And let's not forget mags like Future Music which often featured a female model posing with a synth on the cover for some bizarre reason! Super tacky and sexist... I still remember Miss Roland JP-8080... Lovely lass, and I'm sure she really does love synths, and synth nerds 😂 Oh the glorious 90s... How I miss that decade!
I used to own almost every issue of EM, Keyboard, Electronic Music Maker, Music Technology, and Sound on Sound. These were both a cause and short term fix for my synth acquisition dreams! Interviews with synthesizer artists were especially good, and even when I didn't listen to their music, I was interested in their methodology and what they had to say. I mostly read all the reviews to see how many parameters I could tweak on machines I wouldn't be able to afford for another few years at least. I could only imagine the sounds! The thing that made me keep the mags for so long were the more technical articles, which were like a periodical update to my electronic music book library.
Keyboard definitely had some solid lick articles and good harmony tips... back then ads on ads were the norm, I guess I was just used to it as a kid, now that I'm older it was peak consumerism on paper...so it's a little weird, especially the ads that say things like "what's missing?" like...uhhh
I agree those magazines were nothing but pure advertising. I spent a-lot of time reading them as well growing up. It was fun reading the specs on things I knew I could never afford. I don't miss them thou with all the influence now we get more than our share of the actual performance of a product without big brother making sure that it is always a good review.
I still have old keyboard magazines as far back as 1986! Those were the days -EM, future music, Mix ect.. Its SO easy now! Back then I felt so powerless sometimes looking at all the expensive gear ( And there was no internet, no youtube yet) But now any good DAW on a basic laptop is really all you need. Although GAS continues still! Haha
These mags were NOT "gate keepers" by any means whatsoever. You read every EM review since 2002? When were you "a kid"? Those of us that led the electronic industry revolution from the 60's forwards contributing with are ethical efforts are infuriated by your nonsensical, uninformed remarks. Definitely not following you.
Two caveats from an oldtimer… One, we knew (intuitively by culture) that every magazine had their chip in the game. Nobody bought anything without first having used said gear in production. The most expensive stuff was available as studio rentals. Two, the so-called ‘economy’ was functional for most people, be it for housing or work. A naïve narrative that ‘things will work out’ with few restrictions in an ever growing economic welfare. How wrong we were… Don’t buy into the social construct of corporate driven FOMO, you don’t want to wreck our ecology like us dinosaurs did. Make music, understand why everything changes, who the real ‘influencers’ are… 🙈👍
Even now day’s, Future Music, MusicTech Mag are among the worst offenders, SOS had always my respect but still very vanilla critiques. No is now like anderthons, sweetwater, andrew wang, loolop reviewers
Damned I remember that Bart Simpson cover of Keyboard. Bought the AW4416 on specs and reviews. Somebody forgot to mention the learning curve. Steep as the Eiger North Face and forboding as well. Spend 6 K on it. Used it to record a few CDs. But I never liked it. It never clicked. But having said that the biggest problem were not the reviews (most gear back then was okay, so that was reflected in the reviews) but the lack of information back then. RU-vid (hug) was in fact the gamechanger. It's not subject to gatekeeping, it's open to all, so now we indeed see and hear gear and even as gear is slashed (AudioPilz) it still gives it a vibe no magazine ever could. But the biggest benefit are the endless tutorials.
Uh, you didn't see how many ads were within before you bought at newsstand? Or you thought that the $1 you paid per subscription issue covered the printing of 150 full-color glossy pages, labor to create them, AND shipping?? 😂
By 2002, I had long ditched my subscription to EM, which I faithfully read throughout the 90s. I had a really cheap subscription and they kept sending me cheap renewal offers when I was letting it expire. I liked reading it, but once I was on the Internet, I found I wasn't reading EM and just finally cancelled. But yeah, never trusted the reviews. What WAS good was when they had side-by-side comparison articles like comparing all of the features of the latest drum machines or keyboards. Since all of them were advertisers, they just laid all the specs out side by side, briefly described features without pushing or bashing any of them too hard, but, yeah, they "focused on the positive", lol.
Jim Aikin at Keyboard magazine was always honest. I remember his review of a Roland synth. He slaughtered it. Hugh Robjohns at Sound on Sound never holds back on his reviews. Same with Gordon Reid at SOS.
My 2 cents… I wrote a single gear review for EM and received no guidance other than a word count and the piece was not revised... so I also feel the premise is overstated. I relied on Keyboard, EM and SOS all the time for insights into gear buying decisions and appreciated reading the different opinions of the writers for each mag.
In England, I used to read, cover to cover, a magazine called The Mix, not the DJ magazine, the British version of Sound on Sound! A superior publication compared to the North American version and Future Music mag, also superior to the preset magazine published today. All through the late eighties and nineties, my knowledge of the kit during this period became so in depth, and encyclopedic, if any of my friends were wondering about some particular piece of kit, they’ed ask me my opinion, I’d be able to tell them the specs, abilities, desirability and usefulness, it was possibly to some extent to read between the lines, it was, in my opinion a golden period, for EDM based equipment, starting with the MC-303, it had flaws, and ending with the Alesis Ion. The early eighties were also a great time, with the Roland Juno’s, the TB-303 and the TR’s, Roland were ahead of the rest, with Korg and Yamaha only getting an honourable mention. The DX-7 and the Korg M1. I now believe Roland has fallen way behind, now only making synths on a chip, soft synths as it were, in a nice hard case, midi controller. I think in pursuit of connivence and work flow, people now accept less, believing the are getting more . My interest in new gear is none existent, they leave me cold and all their bells, whistles and bright lights, do nothing for me.
One thing you might notice if you very carefully read Keyboard Magazine (USA) reviews is that the manufacturer/distributor almost never supplied the reviewed gear, lending more credibility to the review. (And there was certainly product criticism - sometimes severe.)
Funny, this made me remember I've been keeping a few EM mags, and a Polyphony issue, all from the '80s. I've kept them because of articles like "The Feel Factor in Music" or actual circuit diagrams of something I wanted to make. But, yea, the gear adds were fun to dream about.
After this video I went running to my mom's house chasing those computer music magazines... I remember the day that they disappeared from the shelves of the "kiosko's" here in Spain, so sad... We I went into UK living (2 years) my surprise was that they sill editing it!! What are the changes now?? I think that reading just positive things of a device was kinda good. Now it's all mostly hate or the holy grail... There are opinions in esoteric thinks like some plugins, but come on!! how cool was to put a big muf in front of a crappy synth (probably bought after read an article) and make it sound like a demon? Old times always where better? Some sample packs that the people are buying from Instagram adds, where nothing compared to those CDs full of samples... I bet that I had before than you that crappy snare, seen many times in different sample packs, riding through the time like a digital Stone.
5:04 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y2tLM69MhFw.html Jeff Beck’s song “Guitar Shop” is a reasonably funny poke at the guitar-magazine advertising of about this time.
I can tell you that KEYBOARD during the 90's was a lifeline for those of us who had little money but wanted to keep up with things. The *technical* columns and articles were gold; so much so that I have a cache of scans from the articles I saved from that era. Still good advice on technique, arranging, and composing in there. Some of the in-depth analysis of tracks and albums is still paying off for me.
I think most magazines now and in the past are full of Ads. Take fashion mags. Anecdotally I find the RU-vid videos that I find or get recommended by the algorithm often seem overly positive too and because they’re video and by ‘neutral’ people, I think I have more gear Lust now then when I was reading the old magazines. But part of this is that gear is quite possibly a lot cheaper now, perhaps?
I just wanted you to know that I _really_ appreciated the _Soylent Green_ allusion. As someone old enough to have worn a Member's Only jacket, seeing scenes of the good old days definitely gave me an Edgar G. Robinson kind of feeling.
I have like 80 to 100 Kg of synth magazine stored. Looking back, most of it was showcasing and advertisement, and to be honest, I wasn't even aware of it. I did have fun day dreaming. That went on like forever.
There is a great thread on fb that has many of these writers and editors commenting their view on this… would not be hard to reach out and get their perspective. Just saying ;)
Can you give me a link? I don't use FaceBook but I might be able to figure out how to access that thread. From a 80-90's Editor/Publisher. I can confirm and explain every issue mentioned in this discussion.
Complains about the number of advertisements in magazines, which had physical overhead, printing and paid staff, then asks people to subscribe and download to their youtube channel. 🙃
“A race to the bottom..” 😂 … these magazines were the good ol days to be honest. all the young wishful thinking of getting gear way out of our young pocket days.. good video sir!!
I vaguely recall an answer to a reader's letter in either Computer Music or Future Music where they said they didn't bother reviewing the crap stuff, as pages were limited, and a bad review wouldn't help you to find the great thing you didn't know you needed, just to avoid one thing that's a bit sup-par. They might also have said that the money being spent on R&D made it less likely that a big tech company is going to release a total turkey (but not impossible).
I actually read a quote by a former tech journalist at some point, although I think that was somebody who wrote about computer gear, who said it straight out, that bad reviews means potentially losing those companies as advertisers, and thus, all reviews became more positive than they perhaps should have been. I wish I remember who said it, but I don't think it's very surprising. Printing full colour magazines is expensive, and without advertisers, it wouldn't really have been possible, at least not without charging a fortune.
The title for your video is both accurate and appropriate. The payola game was bigger than you can imagine. Editorial integrity was an expense the owners took every chance to avoid. To even insinuate that trade magazines in the 80's and 90's were a form of journalism is delusional thinking.
What's the difference between then and now? Apart from not needing a team of marketers and publishers. Positivity still sells, it's just that now it's views and not issues. Plus the advantage of the cult of personality
As someone who didn't subscribe to these mags at the time and knew very little about audio equipment until much later, I've found myself reading reviews of vintage gear from the Sound on Sound online archive quite frequently. At least for that publication (during the 80's-mid 90's), there is fairly unfiltered criticism, regarding the deficiencies of a given piece of equipment- I wonder if this phenomenon of pandering to the advertisers was specific to certain publications and periods of time. By the 2000's, the internet was a thing, so maybe this was a phenomenon which occurred as a result of that. I definitely remember magazines including more ads, as the writing was beginning to show on the wall.
This takes me back, in old England i used to spend a small fortune on Sound on sound ,keyboard magazine. Electronics and music maker , Studio and recording world , and perhaps a few more, most British magazines had a cassette demo and later CD with the reviewed sound gear on ,for a listen, anyone remember Dave Bristow the Yamaha gear demonstrator ,happy days , when the Pro gear would cost your the price of nice car or a good deposit on a house :} the music revolution with computers was at a lightning speed ,in my life time gone from old Black and white TV to super wide screen monitors
I will never forget when my ex- had simultaneous subscriptions to two magazines in a similar genre, but one published by the Consumer Reports people and one by regular magazine people, and by like the third issue I suddenly realized there was absolutely nothing negative in the regular magazine and nearly everything in the Consumer Reports-style magazine had negatives discussed, even things they loved. I am pretty sure I realized I could no longer stand to read regular magazines after then.
i wrote for the animation/video industry years ago. I did a review of a product and well, there were several problems with the software, some of which were inexcusable. i got paid and they ended up not publishing it
