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At least he's being transparent about it, and I kinda see his points. But it does raise my eyebrows.
Follow Ups:
I hope each review lists how much the manufacturer paid for it.
If Srajan is serious, it's probably the beginning of the end for 6 Moons and perhaps anybody else who follows suit as this non-sensical strategy open new cans of worms.
For example, many mags especially internet rags, employ enthusiast's services as "reviewers" simply because they have some writing skills and not necessarily because they know what they're talking about nor because they have well-trained ears.
For example, 6 moons employs one reviewer who was such a joke, it took everything in me not to throw him and his "dad" out into the street.
In ohter words, if one should pay for a review or pay to read a review, then there should be some sort of professional expectations and standards by which one is qualified or disqualified as a "reviewer".
I won't be be holding my breath on that one.
Imagine a new manufacturer paying 6 moons or another rag for a review but because the reviewer in reality couldn't punch his way out of a musical bag if his life depended on it, gave a poor review, or even just missed half of the audible benefits of the product under review because his qualifications were questionable at best. Well, that could someday land a mag like 6moons into a court of law because when one pays for professional services, a certain level of professional services should be expected and required.
For example, if I'm paying $500 for a brake job on my car and Srajan, the garage owner, hands the job off to his 10 year old grandson who one day hopes to be a mechanic and screws up the break job, well, Srajan would be the one ultimately responsible for such malpractice. Even if he claims he didn't know better because he should have known better when he accepted the job, took the money, and assigned responsibility to another.
By no means am I picking on 6moons as I've had a few not too dissimilar experiences with several other "reviewers" from other internet rags.
The point being, when it's free, an editor-in-chief can allow a 10-year old the opportunity to review a product. You get what you pay for, right? But when one pays for a review, the amateurism must stop and a professional attitude and quality of service must take precedence.
Maybe, the "high-end" audio industry needs an Angie's List type of referral service for reviewers.
I think the main issue when assessing a review is whether the reviewer taste and aesthetic coincide with with your own, or at the very least is clear. As long as the reviewer honestly says where a piece of equipment falls in their hierarchy of taste, it's irrelevant how much they get paid.
Claiming that payment corrupts the review is beside the point. Once we make a determination that any reviewer is BS'ing us, that reviewer looses their credibility.
I'm pretty sure that Srajan isn't going to compromise his credibility for a manufacturer payment. Credibility, conveyed through a review, is ultimately what he is selling.
--Ze'ev
Unreadable site. Who cares if he charges or not.
That site is a textbook example of how NOT to design a website. Any college student turning that in to the Prof. would be summarily flunked for the semester....
-RW-
I'm sure she must wince at some of the ways it's been, um, executed. And I wish I could support Srajan's pay-for-play decision. That that's a great looking site, IMO.
I would also give high marks to presentation and delivery.
If you maintain a link directly to reviews (previews and upcoming, though better presented in the opposite of the current order) it is really quite simple.
As for dated, well I find most of the competition looks like complete dogs in comparison.
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
As for dated, well I find most of the competition looks like complete dogs in comparison.
Dave will disagree with me (actually he already has), but I think TONE Audio has the best production values of any audio magazine out there.
Actually they've been making moves recently to breakout of the PDF only presentation for obvious reason.
I only recently unsubscribed from their emailer.
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
Yeah, they're going to be available on the Apple Newsstand.
Nob-San's graphics work was quite nice. But as a website it's looking a bit dated, and yes, the execution leaves much to be desired.
When I first visited that site, and yes, it's been quite a few years now, I thought it was one of the most attractive, inventive, and creative websites I'd ever laid eyes on. Before I retired I headed a 150-person marketing communications, advertising, and PR firm that, among many other things, created web sites for clients, so I'm not exactly unaware of the field.
I'll agree with you that after all this time it DOES look "a bit dated," and that certainly isn't Kuma's doing. I never found it hard to follow or navigate, though (just looked at it this morning) and the photography -- considered a distraction by some -- continues to be stunning, IMO.
but photography of WHAT?
A stunning photograph of the equipment under review? A stunning photograph of a piece being not under review but being used during the review? A stunning photograph that is merely part of an advertisement, stuck in the middle of the review? What am I seeing here? Looks really great but, to be honest, I've never liked the layout of his site and I'm friends with a couple of his regular reviewer, who I do TRY to follow.
I try, honest. ;-)
with pics sprinkled throughout the writing. I'm sure this is to prevent full-blown copies of articles but I'm also certain there are ways around that as well.
IMPOSSIBLE to read and make any sense of.
A really nice looking MESS!
"Unreadable site. Who cares if he charges or not."
Yup. A real PITA.
Rick
I lost interest in reading 6Moons a long time ago. It hardly ever reviews equipment I am interested in reading about.
a) increase ad costs
b) increase space for more ads
c) downscale your living accommodations
d) upgrade marriage prospects
the last two are facetious.
roger wang.
lol
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
Maybe the reviewer/publisher is fine with pointing folks at a lengthy explanation/justification, but on the surface the notion: "that Web site sells reviews for money" sounds so bad that it needs to claim instead "no, we sell advertising and if you want a review you must advertise."
Suppose the manufacturer does not want to buy, or at least have, advertising because he knows readers find it unseemly when a review of X and an ad for X appear together.
Would the reviewer/publisher write a review of an unadvertised product for money from a manufacturer?
If the reviewer/publisher wrote a review without publishing an ad, would he say, "well, the manufacturer really bought an ad, he did not buy a review - but the ad is unpublished."
I'm sure someone could wordsmith their way around this slipperiness, but I can't get over the notion that what is being sold is a review. As Mr. Ebaen writes: "Manufacturers decide what a review from us is worth to them." The manufacturer mulls it over: "do I want to buy a $1000 review or a $5000 review?"
Presumably the publisher must require payment up front, before any review is written - the manufacturer must buy sight unseen. Otherwise he likely will turn down paying for a bad review, thus leaving the site selling good reviews for money. How many manufacturers will pay up front and take the gamble? How many manufacturers will presume a favorable review is forthcoming?
What will be the impact on other review publications? There is already enough squirreliness in the audio community about reviews and ads. Perhaps the upside goes something like: "well at least these guys are open about taking money for reviews."
While I enjoyed reading Wojciech Pacula, I've never otherwise being an avid reader of 6-Moons, but they've been around for a while and I'm sorry to see their situation come to this. But maybe it will work. Good luck going forward.
We don't have the statistics as to what drives eyeballs to 6Moons' site. I'm guessing it's a combination of Google (see link below), where just about any query on a branded audio product returns 6Moons review on the first page, and traffic driven from Equipment Manufacturer and Dealer web sites based on the largely positive reviews to be found on the 6Moons site.
If I'm right, the changes will matter little to the folks whose eyeballs arrive on the site.
The long-term economic impact for Srajan is quite another thing altogether. I had to chuckle a bit in reading Srajan's post below as he admonished a poster who suggested he made the change after carefully polling his advertisers as well as his non-advertizing manufacturers who send product to him for review.
Srajan suggests he made no such polling, but made an 'executive decision', as one would expect an executive to do. In truth, that's more as executives DON'T do. It may be how owner/operators do, but if one works as an executive for a corporation or for shareholders and a BofD, that ain't how it's done. ;-)
Man that is way too long a read! What did the guy say? That, unlike the others, he is an honest crook?
The world is in great need of honest crooks.
Growing up, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I really wanted someone to pay me to play baseball. But then, I was not good enough to have someone pay me to play baseball. So I found something else to do to make a living.
I think at some point you are either good enough in a profession or you are not. There are very few journalists who can earn a living writing about audio. That's life.
From what I can see, Srajan really wants to write about audio for his living, and earn enough income doing so to be comfortable. And, for whatever reason, the current business model apparently does not provide enough income for him.
The advertising business model works, to varying degrees, for Stereophile and TAS. Stereophile reviews products from non-advertisers because there are enough advertisers who believe that the readership is worth the investment. Apparently, there are not enough advertisers for 6 Moons to float the boat, and now the non-advertisers who send product for review are considered free loaders.
I will be curious to learn the price of admission. Is it per hour? Per day? Is there a rebate for a long term loan? Does the fee apply to all the reviewers? Do all the reviewers garner a similar charge?
If a reviewer will not pay for advertising, which presumably runs for a set period of time, will they pay for a one time review? If a manufacturer does not pay for advertising, perhaps because they do not believe 6 Moons is worth the advertising investment, why would they then pay for a review? Would the review have any credibility? Would a reader discount the credibility of the review because it was paid for? (not hard to figure out - look who advertises, and if the manufacturer of the product under test does not advertise, well, I guess we know how they got reviewed.)
These points do not even begin to address the potential ethical issues. My uneducated guess is that it will not work for a variety of reasons. If the content is not good enough for people to pay, and not good enough for advertisers to pay for ad space, then perhaps it is time to fine another line of work, and limit the writing to a hobby.
"If the content is not good enough for people to pay"
I'm with Srajan here. Internet experience shows that no matter how good it is, people won't pay (unless, as he mentions, it's $9/month to access 20 million songs). They will just go somewhere else even if it's lesser quality.
I'm happy to pay for my Stereophile subscription, I love receiving the magazine. I would pay double if I had to. But if Stereophile went all digital, I wouldn't pay a dime. Not interested in paying to access a website.
JB
They don't 'pay' because they're the 'product'.The purpose of most if not all internet web sites is to deliver eyeballs.
Eyeballs are the product that internet web sites sell to advertisers.
If it's free, YOU are the product being sold.
Edits: 07/24/14
...if enough manufacturers don't want to pay 6 Moons for advertising, then why would any more want to pay for a review?
Makes no sense.
Publications make money from selling ads and/or from subscription costs.
On the internet people won't pay for the subscriptions since they expect the content for free.
Why would a manufacturer pay 6 Moons for a review when they can get one for free in Stereophile, TAS or any number of webzines?
If Srajen wants to make money with reviews, he can try to sell more ads, take a job with Stereophile or TAS (although he'll need a day job) or do like Martin Colloms did with Hifi Critic and charge enough in subscription fees to make a living.
Srajan can't be serious.
But if he is serious, it's probably the beginning of the end for 6 Moons and perhaps anybody else who follows suit as this non-sensical strategy open new cans of worms.
For example, many mags especially internet rags, employ enthusiast's services as "reviewers" simply because they have writing skills and not necessarily because they know what they're talking about nor because they have well-trained ears.
For example, 6 moons employs one reviewer who was such a joke, it took everything in me not to throw him and his "dad" out into the street.
In ohter words, if one should pay for a review or pay to read a review, then there should be some set of standards by which one is qualified or disqualified as a "reviewer".
I won't be be holding my breath on that one.
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
Which is that Srajan is trying to gin up more advertisers. You can either pay $10.00 for an advertisement that runs six months, and you get a review, or you can pay $6.00 for a review that will run once, and be replaced when we publish all these other reviews.
Of course, I think that would fail too.
Try kick starter. They gave a guy $35,000 last month to make a potato salad.
...only a few $100 for the guy making coleslaw.
Irrespective of the controversy I can't link to current reviews. is that part of the new 6moons policy or is it me?
I can't even get the main page. Just says "Index of /"
nt
nt
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews2/audioreviews.html
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
I see the problem now. It sixmoons.com that's not working. 6moons.com is ok?
There's no two ways around it -- insisting that an manufacture pay up front in order to have a piece of gear reviewed turns the review into a piece of advertorial content. At best it undermines the appearance of editorial objectivity, at worst it actually wipes away any chance of actual editorial objectivity (what happens when the reviewer hate the piece of gear that's been submitted, but for which the manufacture has committed to pay -- do you spike the review? spike the ad? for example). Having spent more than 20 years in journalism -- in many different media, including Internet publishing, and many different roles from reporter to editor to publisher -- I'm sympathetic to the financial challenges of the Internet age and the inherit challenges in specialty interest publishing. But you might as well go full retail -- start a store or partner with an online store and have the content just support sales and make your money from selling equipment. Nothing wrong with that either -- it's retail, not journalism, but the content can still be valuable to readers, we'll all know what it is, and it'll probably be more lucrative than trying to drum up advertising per review, or winding up only reviewing equipment from the handful of manufacturers willing to pay instead of making decisions about what to review based on the worthiness of reviewing that piece of gear.
Jason Chervokas
'Eliminate the freeloaders'.
Ok with me.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
.....we're all freeloaders. Every once in a while, we contribute something worthwhile to the web. For free. The vast majority of the time, we pay for bandwidth and expect everything for free in return.
Six Moons' "product" is equipment reviews. The "raw material" for this product is the equipment provided by manufacturers. No equipment, no reviews. No reviews, no product. No product, no business.
Six Moons is banking on enough people going to their website to read their reviews (i.e. "consume their product") so they can charge enough for advertising to be profitable.
Manufacturers provide this raw material for free. In addition, they pay for shipping both ways which can be rather expensive depending on the product in question. And of course once a reviewer has had their grubby little hands on a piece of gear for weeks or months, the manufacturer can no longer sell this piece of gear (rightly) as new, so it has to be discounted.
This in exchange for a review that may or may not garner enough sales to even recoup the costs of providing this raw material.
And you call these guys "freeloaders"?
Six Moons should be thanking their fucking lucky stars that manufacturers are willing to send them equipment for free to review (and say what you will about Consumer Reports, they PAY for everything they review).
Instead, they feel that manufacturers should pay them for the privilege of supplying them their raw materials.
What chutzpah!
I hope every manufacturer boycotts this pay-to-play scheme. And those who don't, whenever they make reference to any Six Moons review of theirs, they should disclose in the same space that they paid for that review. If not, I hope others make an effort to make it publicly known.
May pay-to-play crash and burn.
Eyeballs are sold to advertisers. That's the way the 'free' internet works.If you're getting something 'free' on the internet, YOU are the product.
Edits: 07/24/14
The eyeballs come for the content. No content, no eyeballs. No eyeballs, no advertisers.
And the raw material for content is the free equipment loans.
The fact that you don't understand that fact just makes you an easier product for a web site to acquire and sell.Content, in this model, is nothing more than an acquisition cost.
Edits: 07/24/14
While not exactly my view as a manufacturer its pretty close.
Content is what all magazines in the industry need. Review samples are a source of content.
FWIW it costs something to take a perfectly good example of our work and take it out of the revenue stream. Hopefully the nice review will do us some good down the road and we have got a lot of nice ones over the years. But guess what? Surprise! Just because you got a good review does not mean that you will get any sales boost off of it. Sometimes you do though, IME the latter is less common than the former.
I object to being labeled a 'freeloader'; we did offer an amplifier to Srajan for review some years ago but he refused, on account of the amplifier (S-30, see link) was too hot or something (I've seen him review hotter amps in his pages many times). We've not attempted it since.
But guess what? Surprise! Just because you got a good review does not mean that you will get any sales boost off of it.
Right. It's a risk. And now you have to pay additionally for it.
I object to being labeled a 'freeloader'
And if you compare to the Consumer Reports model, it's the reviewers who are the freeloaders. ;-)
and Srajan completely bass-ackwards.
Just imagine if Srajan didn't have all these small companies clammoring to be reviewed by his magazine? 1) He wouldn't have nearly as many advertisers as he already has and 2) He would have to go out and actively solicit companies to provide him with something to review.
Without products to review he has no business! Unless a webpage of ads and no reviews would ever entice someone to "hang out" on his site. Unlikely at best. Or only those advertisers get "reviewed"...basically his proposal.
The truth is that without his accepting many largely unknown, often Eastern European companies for review, his site would be no better than any of the other half-dozen semi-successful ones out there. Rather than get angry with them for "freeloading" he should be happy that they give his magazine a distinctly "boutique" flavor and less "mass market" as far as high end audio goes. They give him a somewhat unique "product".
> > Six Moons' "product" is equipment reviews. < <
I thought the product was time on reader's eyeballs which they sell to their advertisers. The reviews are eyeball bait. The eye time on ads is assured by nightmarish navigation coupled with embedding ads within content that contains lots of bonus words.
I thought the product was time on reader's eyeballs which they sell to their advertisers. The reviews are eyeball bait.
Yes, the reviews are eyeball bait. But everything stems from the reviews so they are the primary product. The eyeballs they deliver to advertisers are a secondary product.
You are joking right?
So let's say it costs the manufacturer 50 bucks to ship the gear to a 6 moons reviewer each way. 100 bucks.
Nice review...gets linked on the manufacturers website, handed out at audio shows, and generally creates good will and lots of potential sales.
Please tell me where you can get this kind of activity for a 100 bucks.
Get real.
You are the one with the chuztpah.
The Audio Guild? Who the fuck is that. Never heard of you. You best get your ass to UPS and send Srajan a sample.
as far as Srajan, he should call 6 moons what it is now, a Marketing firm....
..and neither should you. No take my advice as well and high tail it over to fed ex and send one of your cables to Srajan.
100 bucks?? Maybe for some headphones.
Ship an amp or speakers and it is closer to 1000 bucks each way.
Switzerland is not in the EU so there is added expenses in the form of import duties to be paid and I am sure not by Srajan.
You are joking right?
Not at all.
So let's say it costs the manufacturer 50 bucks to ship the gear to a 6 moons reviewer each way. 100 bucks.
Nice review...gets linked on the manufacturers website, handed out at audio shows, and generally creates good will and lots of potential sales.
Or not.
And what if it's a $5,000 amplifier that you now have to discount in order to sell it because you can't sell it as new? That's going to cost upwards of $1,000.
Please tell me where you can get this kind of activity for a 100 bucks.
Please tell me how much experience you have as an audio manufacturer.
The Audio Guild? Who the fuck is that. Never heard of you. You best get your ass to UPS and send Srajan a sample.
Been there, done that (this was nine years ago). The review (by Srajan himself) didn't garner so much as a single sales inquiry. Same with a write up in another online review mag. And a company I used to work for got both a very nice review and the cover of Stereophile. No real impact on sales from that either.
But when we decided to produce an aftermarket headphone cable, after a few kind words from a happy customer on one of the forums at HeadFi, the next thing we knew it was all we could do to keep up with the orders.
Didn't cost a dime. We've never done any advertising or had the headphone cables reviewed by a "professional" reviewer. And a little over three years later, my clipboards are still regularly full with orders.
So you'll forgive me if I don't believe that "professional" reviews are some sort of cheap meal ticket to success and that us "freeloaders" should pay for them beyond what's already being paid so that reviewers can get their raw materials for free.
To be fair though you made the decision not to have "professional" reviews done because your experience found them to be rather worthless. Indeed, there are plenty of raved about manufacturers in Stereophile and TAS (the two biggest) who went belly up so it's not like the rave reviews and class A and Product of the years and 5 star editor's choices exactly saved them from bankruptcy.
Although to be fair you never know if someone on a forum read a pro review and then bought one then went on a forum and raved thus appearing like the forum was responsible for sales while it may have germinated from a pro- review.
I am not sure what to make of 6-moons. My concern being a reviewer is that I choose what I want to review at dagogo. I don't care about who advertises or not. But if I liked amp XYZ and want to review them under the 6 moons scheme I would not be able to review XYZ because maybe XYZ doesn't advertise.
Some companies don't advertise as a form of advertising - Rolls Royce in the old days never advertised because they had the view "If you want the best, you know where to find us." And that non advertising model was snooty enough, and they had the product to back it up, to work. Indeed, advertising to them was a source of desperation - if your product was any bloody good it wouldn't need to be advertised.
Then again Rolls failed and got bought out. So there is that.
I don't really think there is a problem with what 6moons is doing - they're up front about it. Manufacturers are in business and they can choose to pay for the review (a form of advertising for them) or not.
Obviously many manufacturers have valued the "Professional" review and have calculated the effectiveness of them.
And one note:
Some companies also ship out gear like headphones to forum regulars for free to try and then rave about on forums. On a forum you also don;t know if you are dealing with a company shill or the owner of the company pretending to be a consumer to rave about their own gear. Sony was caught some years back for putting out Sony Pictures rave movie reviews when the reviewer didn't exist and was dreamed up by their advertising department. With the so called professional review - that is far less likely to happen.
"My concern being a reviewer is that I choose what I want to review at dagogo. I don't care about who advertises or not. "
I had a similar setup with Positive Feedback. I was chasing after manufacturers and importers to give me gear to review that I might find interesting.
Haven't seen one in person, but those resin barrels are gorgeous. You got a Porsche? For racing? Sales must be damn good. Congrats!
Haven't seen one in person, but those resin barrels are gorgeous.
Thanks. The one upshot of our regular machinist pulling up roots and moving to Australia is that we ended up partnering with a high end fountain pen maker to do our barrels. When I saw that particular resin in their materials library, it was love at first sight.
You got a Porsche? For racing? Sales must be damn good. Congrats!
That was my business partner's doing (he runs a cabinet making business of his own). He'd raced snowmobiles—he's Canadian—and motorcycles and has always wanted a race car. He'd been going to the track recently with some friends of his who race and the bug bit him hard. Called me up one day and said "Hey! We've got a race car!" He'd found a deal on a 944 and 28 foot trailer he couldn't refuse.
While it's his car, it will be racing under The Audio Guild's livery.
I wonder: When was the last time a race car ran with an audio company logo. I could easily imagine it happening in, say, the '70s. Anyone know?
I'm sure it hasn't happened in a long time. I'll be looking for you guys on the NASCAR circuit.
Jim
That had a sticker on it from the loudspeaker company Apogee.
JM
Actually Pioneer does quite a lot of race car sponsoring. In fact there was a Porsche out at the track when my partner was there that was sponsored by Pioneer.
But ours might be a first for an audio company outside the mass market.
They're not an audio company. They're a conglomerate that sells audio--especially car audio--among other things. Very different.
They're at least primarily audio.
FWIW, I've got a portable Bose Bluetooth speaker that I'm very fond of, their $300 Soundlink 3 (?) It ain't hi fi, but it doesn't sound tizzy and annoying, or like the sound is coming from inside a can, like most small, inexpensive, modern speakers. And it does do a very cool magic trick, in that the sound that comes out of it seems literally larger than the device itself.
Bose doesn't sell audio they sell lifestyle. Just as expensive watch makers are not in the business of selling watches - they are in the business of selling prestige.
I think the point was about serious hi-fi companies not the likes of Bose or Bang and Oluffson who have dedicated shops in major shopping malls. And for most people such brands are "good enough"
This guy?
Edits: 07/23/14
Oddly, I first heard it in one of those open mall stores, out in the middle of the mall. Chicago I think. Very noisy. Still, I thought it sounded special for such a tiny device, and I was tired of using headphones in hotel rooms. Eventually bought one at the local Apple store. "Special"? That might be saying too much, but it's pleasant enough to listen to.
I should say that I haven't heard it in weeks. My 16-year-old son absconded with it, carried it off to chamber music camp (OK, it was with my permission). Because of it, he tells me, his cabin is the "party cabin", where young pianists and string players hang out until early hours listening to "Shosty" Preludes and Fugues and Beethoven string quartets.
Jim
Ha!
Actually I rather like its design. Might pick one up for the shop.
Fair enough.
But hey, we haven't even hit the track yet. Car still needs to be painted, and for the class we'll be racing in, the roll cage needs to get beefed up a bit, need to get a HANS device, my partner needs to get his racing license, etc. So probably won't be until this fall that we'll be officially racing.
"And what if it's a $5,000 amplifier that you now have to discount in order to sell it because you can't sell it as new? That's going to cost upwards of $1,000."
This is PURE BS. I happen to know that review samples, when reviewers are done, are sent to dealers as demos.
This is PURE BS. I happen to know that review samples, when reviewers are done, are sent to dealers as demos.
Sure, they could do that. If they have any dealers who need demos. Or if they have any dealers at all. Like you said, this is the 21st century. The traditional dealer model isn't what it was and "Internet dealers" don't really bring much to the table unless they're Amazon.
But that's all beside the point. That unit is still going to be sold for less than if it were a new unit.
NINE YEARS AGO? NINE?
Jesus Christ. You did not get single sale from a web review NINE years ago and that somehow has relevance today?
So now that there is broadband internet even in the Himalayas, maybe you will join us in the 21st century?
If you want to continue the conversation, you can send me a telegram.
NINE YEARS AGO? NINE?
Jesus Christ. You did not get single sale from a web review NINE years ago and that somehow has relevance today?
Oh, so you're saying that nine years ago, reviews really weren't worth a shit, but somehow nine years hence they're worth so much they have to be paid for? What, they're waiting reviews differently now?
So now that there is broadband internet even in the Himalayas, maybe you will join us in the 21st century?
How many more eyeballs is Six Moons delivering today compared to nine years ago? The graphs in the article don't show any significant change between 2008 and 2012. Just because there is broadband internet in the Himilayas doesn't mean those eyes are going to Six Moons.
...update the website already!
Its been around since the 50's--
At least someone has the balls to be up front about it
Good luck to him-- the masses will stand and Judge.
Des
And there is nothing wrong with being honest that that is what you're doing and getting compensated for. Despite all of it's grey flannel wackiness, it's really a good thing for both manufacturers and customers IMHO.
I've been reading "reviews" for audio gear since the early 70's and taken altogether they are asymptotically close to useless other than for entertainment and being aware that the product exists. But that's enough for me...
Rick
I've been reading "reviews" for audio gear since the early 70's and taken altogether they are asymptotically close to useless other than for entertainment and being aware that the product exists.
I've always felt the exact same way. That's why I love sites like uncrate.com. No reviews. Just "Hey, check tis out! Here's what it is, here's what it costs, and here's where you can get it!"
I disagree. A really good observational reviewer can provide you with quite a lot of insight as to what adding the particular piece of gear to your system will do...without you having to buy it first to find out.
However, that reviewer has to be honest (missing sometimes) and truly critical (missing in 99% of all hifi reviews) in order to really give the benefit to the reader.
.
... that the manufacturer that "contributes" the most ad dollars will get the most favorable review.
Next time, Srajan would be wise to at least run such nutball ideas past his staff, which he admits he didn't do.
But you could assume exactly the same from any magazine that accepts advertising, i.e pretty much all of them.
No you can't. When well-run, savvy companies decide where to put their ad dollars to boost their sales, they don't look first for shill media that sell their "space." Media integrity is a most precious commodity (ask John Atkinson) that can disappear with the first proof of payola. If you simply give it away, as Srajan appears to be determined to do, well, let's watch it and see how it works, or doesn't.
1) Asking mfg. to pay to get reviewed definitely reduces the separation between "church and state" so to speak and opens the whole affair more easily to claims of biased reporting. Not a direction I would take it.
I would be more inclined to ask readers to pay for content...like Hifi Critic, for example.
This ties into the second point that Srajan rather smugly states that 12 years of reviewing has graduated him and his staff to "professional" status, whatever he means by that. I say let the readers decide about your professionalism rather than just making the claim and then expecting the mfg. to foot the bills for the reviews.
If your readers think you are professional and truly giving valuable advice with well written, concise and insightful reviews then they will pay.
IMO, a good examples of truly professional reviewers are the likes of Martin Colloms (Hifi Critic and many of others), Art Dudley (stereophile), Michael Fremer (Stereophile) etc.
Srajan feels to elevate himself to that status but when one reads his dense, turgid prose that is at times completely impenterable, one has to wonder. Read a Martin Colloms review and the difference in professionalism is obvious.
I suspect there will be a significant drop in startups clammoring for his attention once they have to pony up dough for a review. The one really great thing about 6 moons has always been Srajan's being the champion of the new and little boutique hifi companies...not his review writing.
Also, I would not consider the majority of his writing staff to be any better than hobbyists and certainly not professional journalists.
I used to review for Positive Feedback as an amateur reviewer and I did it for the love of auditioning and critically evaluating gear and to write up my observations. That was reward enough for the most part and I suspect that for most of Srajan's writers it is enough for them as well because they probably, like me, all have day jobs. Would I have wanted to get paid something substantial? Sure, but not directly from the mfg. I was going to review...this seems to me like I was being bought to write ad copy.
"If your readers think you are professional and truly giving valuable advice with well written, concise and insightful reviews then they will pay."Not enough will pay enough. For example, The New York Times lost more than 99% of its readership the moment it put up its paywall in Feb 2011. Today, it currently posts 760,000 subscribers, which is better, but still nothing like the 61.9m unique browsers it got before the paywall. The London Times went from 20.4m unique browsers in 2010 to 131,000 fee-paying subscribers two years later (I don't have more recent statistics to hand). Most people in the subscriptions field expect an attrition rate of around 95-99% of the pre-paywall audience, almost irrespective of content.
A lot of site owners feel their content is distinctive, valued, and valuable enough to be a financially bankable asset. They typically put up a paywall for their services, and disappear without trace soon after.
A pay model is survivable (just) if you are the New York Times, because a tiny fraction of 61.9m is still hundreds of thousands willing to pay a subscription. It's survivable if you are the London Times too, because you have a very profitable multinational TV organisation holding out an umbrella for you. But when you don't have tens of millions of unique visitors every month, ridding yourself of almost all of them is suicide.
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Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
Edits: 07/22/14 07/22/14 07/22/14 07/22/14 07/22/14
Finally some common sense! Thank you, Alan.
That's exactly my contention. Talk is cheap. So is consuming other people's work for free. High-end audio magazines run with any full-time staff couldn't survive off a reader subscription model as long as there are competitors they can read for free (or for a peanuts cover charge). Sorry but when it comes down to it, most people are too cheap.
And just to add to the general amusement and merriment of this thread here, posters might like to know that when it benefited him, Morricab approached me for a review of a KR Audio amp as a brand he at the time represented for Switzerland. Despite all my turgid prose and other documented failings, this didn't stop him since self interest was at work. He didn't offer to compensate me for my time in any way nor did I ask. Because as long as you subscribe to the ad-based model, it's wrong to ask. You gotta hope that people are gracious enough to reciprocate.
Back on what really interests me. If someone reading this agrees that the current ad model is working poorly - what alternatives other than the reader subscription model can they propose that might work better?
My new policy is my attempt at bettering it. Is it perfect? Hello? Is anything? It's simply the best I could come up with for now to, hopefully, lead to my proposed fee-based model and get rid of ads entirely. But I'd be all ears if someone had a far better idea that wasn't just empty unrealistic talk but practical and doable and could be implemented.
So let's hear it for some constructive feedback. Incidentally, I've been told by numerous sources already that in Japan a de facto fee-based reviewing model exists and has for many many years. I'm far from the first to have that idea. It's simply not been implemented in the Western press. Perhaps someone familiar with the Japanese hifi press could chime in on how well their system seems to be working?
I think there are pro's and cons to your model Srajan.
The one concern is that reviewers on your staff would be somewhat stifled in their selection - They may want to review XYZ that has a non advertising policy - can the reviewer still review the item or must they choose from a selection of those who paid?
Other than that charging a nominal fee isn't that terrible because as a consumer - while there is the view "the review is paid for" I would point out that it may not be wise to buy from fly by night near broke and outright cheapskates unwilling to pay peanuts. That implies that the company is near bankruptcy and if they're this cheap they probably cheap out on their internal parts quality and will be too cheap to service the product down the line.
Companies worried over shipping costs and having a second hand review item after the review are borderline sustainable companies and if they're this close to going belly up are not worth reviewing anyway.
You can't charge the reader for reviewers - the model won't work. Too much competition for free. Even the print magazines in Chapters are heavily read without being purchased.
Your definition of professional is quite simplistic. There is far more to professionalism than "earning a sole paycheck" from it to be truly considered a professional.
Wikipedia defines professional as the following:
A professional is a member of a profession. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skills necessary to perform the role of that profession. In addition, most professionals are subject to strict codes of conduct enshrining rigorous ethical and moral obligations. Professional standards of practice and ethics for a particular field are typically agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional associations.
Note: There is nothing there about getting paid full-time as a professional. Part of your being a "professional", therefore is an in-depth knowledge of audio and audio engineering as well as an ability to write "professionally", something I would challenge in your case. It may be that your observational skills are up to snuff as long as you don't have your bias blinders on.
Your definition of professional is one of a few available from Oxford dictionary and the most narrow. Oxford uses a boxer as an example of what you are defining yourself as...not very flattering.
I am a professional chemist, by virtue of my education (PhD in Analytical Chemistry, PostDoc at ETH Zürich), my professional associations (various scientific organizations of which I am a member), my scientific contributions (14 peer reviewed papers and 2 more in the pipeline) and my job (analytical drug development). Only one of those three meets your definition of professional.
As to your other "professional" writers, I am assuming that none of them earn their sole bread from reviewing...making them amateurs like I was. Therefore, if you write only 1 of 10 reviews on your site then you are asking 90% of the manufacturers to pay for amateur reviews!
As to alternatives, well are you really struggling for advertising dollars? Your website is pretty full of ads from what I can see. You could try the STereophile ad segregation strategy. Finally, you could charge per article read...something like 50 cents a read...like the apple Itunes store model. You could have a mixed subscription + ad model. Lastly, you could get a real job and do it as a hobby and then I am sure the current level of ads coming in will sustain the magazine and even a bit for your writers.
Morricab, I've read a number of your posts now and I perceive tho art a well-learned man.
One thing you may not have directly touched base on is that every profession is potentially saturated with also-rans, hacks, and bush-leaguers.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if high-end audio had far more than its share of such. Case-in-point is a 6moons reviewer I had at my home some years ago and it took everything in my being to not throw that hack out into the street.
Anyway, I appreciate reading your posts.
...when I was in pharmacy school and took the Pharmacy Law course, I was taught that "professions" were defined by the law.
There were 6 or 7 that include pharmacists, nurses, doctors, lawyers, clergy and I forget who else.
As a former TAS reviewer, I was not part of a profession, but was a "professional reviewer" because I got paid, even though it was not much or my primary job.
The employers willing to pay for reviewing/writing are the ones who determine the qualifications required.
This is BS. Where are the strict codes for hi-fi reviewers and the "professional organizations" that certify them.? By the definition you quoted there is not a single "professional" audio reviewer.
But then professional lawyers cheat people and professional doctors kill people. They have their organizations to back up their misdeeds and thereby (usually) evade the consequences of their unethical behavior.
I'll stick with a broader definition of "professional" as one who earns their living through their activities. This is the traditional definition, going back to the world's oldest profession.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"But then professional lawyers cheat people and professional doctors kill people. They have their organizations to back up their misdeeds and thereby (usually) evade the consequences of their unethical behavior.
"
I said professional not perfect, Tony. People are still people. The important thing about those professions is that if you are found to be unethical you can be disbarred from being a lawyer and therefore no longer a professional or have your medical license taken away when malpractice is confirmed.
These people though, have had the widely agreed upon level of training and expertise to call themselves professionals (however, lawyers have to prove themselves again and again if they move to other states and/or countries where laws can be radically different). Srajan is self-appointing his professional status. Since there is no "hifi reviewers professional organization" then it is more by consensus of their readership as well as how they make their living as to whether or not someone would be designated "professional" and not up to the reviewer himself to self-annoint to such a title.
I called to question his self-annointment because based on the difficulty of reading and comprehending his reviews (as attested on these pages many times over the years) I feel he does not meet an accepted standard of journalistic writing. Maybe I am wrong about that but when one contrasts his writing with an Art Dudley or Martin Colloms (both widely regarded as professional reviewers I think) it becomes rather obvious. As a blog it would be fine but as a clear, consise and/or entertaining review? Not to me or many others. The one reason to keep reading him is the unusual gear he "finds" and that he seems not to be afraid to make critical comments in a review...if you can get through the whole thing.
I did several months back and it wound up being a spiral thread.
Basically in America - if you get paid for ditch digging you are a professional. Anything you get a dollar for makes you a professional. A child who gets a weekly allowance is a professional child.
The term in the U.S. is merely $$$$=Professional regardless of what it is.
The way you use the term is correct. I am professional teacher and if I do something out of character or dishonest the teaching profession can take my certification away from me. The professional body of my peers can remove me from the field of work. Same for Lawyers, Doctors etc. A so called professional reviewer could be doing all sorts of illegal and criminal things and get caught for it and go to jail - but can come out and still be a reviewer. They are not banned from the field for life - if your best friend is an editor then you can theoretically have a job for life regardless. The owner of the magazine can make the sole judgement (at will) where as professional bodies make the decision and even if the company owner wants to hire the teacher or lawyer - he/she can't. And that's a big big difference.
That said I don't think any reviewer is a professional reviewer because there is no "college of professional reviewers"
I don't think it has to do with writing style either. Srajan's style may not be your cup of tea but that is a very subjective standard - people think Steven King is a hack who can't write either - but he's easier to understand than reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, or even Dickens. What style one reader likes another may not so writing style doesn't have anything to do with being a professional.
Knowledge of the technical side of the gear. Well I assume JA is a member of an engineering school or professional body of engineering - Colloms is. So this gets us to part way there. Colloms being a certified electrical engineer can talk "professionally" about the engineering of audio components and the measurements section in Stereophile can be trusted at least in terms of what they measure (which doesn't cover stuff people can actually hear most of the time but that's another issue).
But it doesn't follow that because Colloms or JA can measure an amplifier's impedance curve or box resonance that they can evaluate the sound of music coming from the stereo any better than a 15 year old girl who plays the cello. Indeed, the latter will likely have vastly superior hearing to any 60 year old audio reviewer. They may not have the so called experience but they will very likely have much better hearing sensitivity and can detect more problems in the entire treble band than any 60+ year old or for that matter any 40+ year old "professional."
I think the term should simply be reviewer. Or "Paid Reviewer"
I taught in South Korea - they hired any white person (a bit racist there) with a degree in anything to teach children. There is a difference between a trained professional teacher and a guy with a degree in (enter any subject here) who is hired to teach kids. It's like having a doctor do heart surgery on you versus a guy with a journalism degree who watched the TV show House and operates on you. Both may get paid - but which one are you going to want and call a professional.
An education degree by no means guarantees more than rudimentary proficiency in ANY of the subjects one is hired to teach. Would you rather learn biology from someone who has a degree in the subject and has worked as a biologist for years, or from someone with an education degree who has taken the minimum requisite six credit hours in biology?
In my high school, biology was taught by the baseball coach, who refused to even mention evolution because he was a creationist and didn't believe in it. But hey, he was a certified professional teacher!
Well I don't live in the U.S. Becoming a teacher in British Columbia Canada is far more rigorous than the U.S. I am told. (and it may be a State to State issue than a U.S. issue I am not sure).But in Canada if you want to teach High School Biology then you need to hold a full 4 year 120 credit B.Sc degree in Biology in order to teach Biology. Ditto Chemistry or Physics or Math. To teach English or Social Studies you need a 4 year B.A in English or History/Geography. They soften that a bit if it's a complimentary field like if you have a History major English minor you may teach English. They will also take people with language intensive degrees like Philosophy or Liberal Studies.
This applies to grades 10-11-12. A P.E. teacher with an arts minor may very well get socials 8-9 or English 8-9. But unless there are no teachers they should be hiring trained sunject teachers. And yes to teach P.E. you need a physical education degree - it too will run 5.5 years. If they don't hire the right people that is management/governmental problems not the teacher's fault or the union's fault.
Knowing a lot about a subject and being an effective teacher however is not the same thing. It is entirely possible to learn FAR MORE from a teacher who is just steps ahead of the students in the material than someone with a PHD in the field but is a boring lifeless arrogant drip.
Teaching is not the same as lecturing at a university. Lecturing isn't teaching and indeed HS teachers in Canada generally get paid more than University professors. Man I wish I could just deliver the material in an entertaining way. The teachers in BC not only have to have a specialized degree in an actual subject (even if teaching Kindergarten) they also have to have a bunch of other courses.
Another 1.5 years on top of the BA teaching them how to actually teach as well as subjects like educational theory from math, to literacy, to philosophy, to discipline, special needs, psychology, professionalism, anger management, dealing with parents, educational report writing, stress management, linguistics, Physical Education, Second language learning, and of course computer programs from smart boards to legalities of copyright etc.
So in Canada you have to have a 5.5 year dual degree. K-12. And to get in to the education field you have to hold an A-(3.70 GPA) average or better through your BA or B.Sc
In my case I did a concurrent degree program where I did both my education degree and B.A. at the same time. This gave me more practicum experience and allows me to teach K-12 instead of choosing between High School and elementary school. I also had a bunch of Business Credits to lighten my load because I worked in Accounting for 8 years and had half a business degree. I'm 9 credits away from a triple minor. Cause that's kinda how crazy I am.
Anyway, this gave me 4 practicums.
Each year the student teacher is given a grade. And you work with the classroom teacher to deliver lessons. Maybe one 45 min lesson a day to start.
This grows to teaching half days to 3-4 weeks where I had to teach 80-100%. You write a fourish page lesson plan for each lesson each day. Elementary is harder in this regard because I had to write one for say Science, English, Socials, P.E. and Art each day. So about 20-24 pages a day. Describing what you will say, what the students should be doing, and have two portions dedicated to weaker and better students (Adaptations and Extensions) and how you will compensate and deliver the lesson to them.
For instance i had prepare "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" for the class as a novel study but because 2 kids were Jehovah Witness I had to do a totally different book for them.
So if you have a set of ten questions did you make another set of ten for the weaker kids and another set of 10 for the gifted kids.Then the class teacher sits in the back and writes an evaluation, the school principal does one, and evaluator from the university (who is usually an ex principal or superintendent.
And I did this for grade 7, grade 2, grade 10-12, grade 4. And each of those practicums has three different evaluators. So 12 people over 3 years evaluate us and determine if we're good beginning teachers.
It's kind of intense. I would not say the work is insanely difficult - but it is a LOT of work and it's not that easy to continuously come up with fascinating wholly entertaining vibrant lessons over and over across all subjects.
Now you are correct that some school districts (in Canada too) will run into situations where they hire the wrong people for the job based on availability and union protectionism (hiring based on seniority over qualifications).
Your example though is different because a lot of school districts in the U.S. appear to be spending copious amounts of time in court battling over the FACT of evolution and the superstition of creationism. I would not be surprised if bricks weren't being thrown through windows of Biology teachers in certain states.
IMO creationists should not be allowed to teach. If they're this ignorant they should be nowhere near a school except in them and retaking classes.
It should lastly be pointed out that this is high school not university. So Biology or English Literature at best would be entry level university level courses. The content being taught is not nearly as rigorous.Unfortunately, in the US there is a lot of money tied to content as special interest groups (religion or companies) only provide money if certain things are taught or not taught. Education needs to be free of that sort of influence and it's actually okay for Education to NOT be run in the black. It's not meant to. But I understand a company like say a Coke that will only give their tens of thousands so long as the teachers have a gag order that never lets them say Coke is bad for you.
This is beginning in my home province in Canada as well. And the Prime Minister of our country and your former president I get the sense thinks the earth is 6000 years old. So what can you do? When people don't believe 2+2=4 and you dumb it down as much as you can - and they still insist that evolution is fake and merely a trick by the devil to test people's faith what can you do?
What you don't do is give them keys to schools or the government or sharp objects.
Edits: 08/17/14 08/17/14
RGA:
With all due respect,you may be knowledgeable about teacher training and instruction in Canada; that makes good sense. However, you should own up to not knowing know your you know what from a hole in the wall about public schools in the United States.Just do experience American educators a favor and keep your hands off the key board about that subject, which includes, but is not limited to: teacher training and certification, pedagogy, curriculum, class room instruction, the impact of fundamentalist religion on curriculum and instruction, hiring and retaining teachers, or school funding. Finally, you are ignorant of the critical issues that now face public schools in the United States. So please, avoid like the plague subjects that are beyond your reach and your grasp. Stick to reviewing equipment and retelling your teaching and audio experiences abroad.
What did I say about the US Education system. I described the Canadian system and then only in British Columbia.
The person I replied to said he found a teacher with 6 credits teaching science where he believed in Creationism.
Now anyone who is NOT an utter moron would take his commentary and say gee wherever he is from seems to be handing out education degrees in Pez dispensers.
I not once said I knew the ins and outs of the US education system - anyone who isn't a total and utter moron would know this.
My comments are about where I am from - and anyone who isn't an utter moron read where I specifically noted such.
lord addleford,
There's no way that the smug opinionated RGA is going to change. As the weary old cliché goes, "a Leopard doesn't change its spots". The fool can't learn to hold his opinions (about things he obviously knows nothing about) to himself. I suggested that tactic to him about a week ago, but his latest rant only goes toward proving my point.
Perhaps the reason that he's "teaching" in Asia is that the Canadians can't stand him either.
Cheers,
Al
abs1:
I try mightily not to respond to the general flow of RGA's dribble. But, when it comes to education, a field in which I worked for thirty plus years, he has gone over the edge. The problem is that he can't control his impulses to spew forth his supposed wisdom in any domain. From time to time he makes an attempt at self deprecation, but we all know that it has no meaning and his spewing continues ad nauseam. All we can do is not respond to his drivel; regardless, ignoring him will have no effect on his output. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "So it goes"
la
I have several friends who have taught and have been principal for 30+ years in the Canadian education system - so which FACT did I get wrong and I will run it by them.
For someone who is a so called teacher why don't you teach instead of slagging people constantly. Have an actual case. Tell me what I said that irritates you.
If you read the first paragraph I said "(and it may be a State to State issue than a U.S. issue I am not sure).
See if you were not a total moron you would have read that I clearly state that I do not know exactly how things are run in the U.S. I have met several teachers from the United States who have told me various things about hiring standards. So what the truth about those things are I do not know - AND I SAID THAT!
Now I could tell you all the things I've been told but it is beyond the scope of this thread.
The OP noted what he saw with the educational standard of a science teacher. Now it is not being arrogant to state the Science should not be taught by guys with 6 credits of science or a guy who believes in creationism - these people are stupid and it is not arrogant to call them stupid because stupid is stupid. Willful ignorance is stupid.
So I told the OP where I am coming from with my comments and how unlike it is from the science teacher he was talking about.
I am stunned that you seem to read these conversations and never ever see the big picture point. Instead you seem to deliberately look at minutiae. Same with the PTSD fellow who out of the whole post freaks out because I got the rank wrong. I mean you have to be deliberately stupid - I am looking for the haha camera where I am being pranked.
RGA,
Perhaps you and I could meet face to face so I could personally explain all of this to you. It appears that some individuals, even teachers, can only understand what they choose to understand until they are personally shown the error of their ways.
Until then,
Al
they don't have the knowledge to know the traditional and/or official name of their country.
You are anti-American: i've met Canadians (sorry to capitalize the name as they hardly deserve it) who pretend to teach English when they just travel throughout the Asian region.
roger wang.
I never really get comments like this. Bill Maher loves America too - you can criticize something and still love it.
The word professional seems to me to be used in an incorrect way in the U.S. Professional belong to unions and/or have a professional body that grants and removes credentials.
Professional Athletes like in the NHL or MLB belong to a union and the union could in theory take action against one of their players.
I don't really care - I just think this is a rare instance where there are not "enough" words to separate the terms.
In Canadian and British English we use the word Cheque and Check.
I will check that we mailed your cheque to you. In the US this would be I will check that we mailed your check to you. In the US they take out and simplify words but it requires a reading for context.
The word professional is pretty solid and in the US they seem to now just take it to mean that anyone who gets paid for something no matter how pedestrian it is a "professional" which implies that the job they do is a "profession" - it's not.
One should say - I make a living reviewing audio gear or I am a paid reviewer or I am an audio equipment reviewer. Since no reviewer belongs to a reviewing profession or can be kicked out of the field of reviewing by a professional body of their peers then they do not belong to a profession and as such are not professionals.
Some might view this as nitpicky as the split infinitive but if it's good enough for Gene Roddenberry it's good enough for me "To Boldy Go Where No Man Has Gone Before" is incorrect but it sounds right.
If professional reviewer sounds right fine but my problem with it is that implies that reviewers are "better" in some way at discerning differences in audio gear or have better hearing or more experience than those who do not review.
It's the same with professional dieticians - snake oil science that people get paid a living to do to imply that they are in some way related to the medical field - they're absolutely not. It's the dumbing down of professions and turning science into schlock. No doubt there may be an agenda behind doing just that.
You don't need a teaching degree to teach in Asia. I have met some very good non credentialed teachers who should go into the field get the degree and get paid double. Others I have met should absolutely in no way be put within 50 feet of kids.
I am Canadian and while I was teaching in South Korea - I liked the Americans far better than most of the Canadians (stick up their bottoms). And because I wasn't a jerk - I was invited to the military base in Seoul to have dinners with the soldiers.
And there was this woman - a Navy Seal Sniper doing her masters in psychology - she could kill me with two fingers - I was in love. Ahem but that's a whole other topic.
because i called out your baseless claims.
so, do Canadians know their own country's (full) name? that would seem pretty fundamental before you start analyzing other country's knowledge.
oh, and "professional" has two meanings in any use of english that i have seen or observed: standing or ability and non-voluntary work. canadians use it in both senses.
roger wang.
What are you blabbing about? Your strawman is nonsensical. If person is an expert on German History and comes from Argentina but doesn't know the origins of his own country's flag doesn't mean he is no longer an expert on German History.
Kanata is a First Nations name that was later changed to Canada. Not exactly sure why you're focused on the term "Dominion of Canada" - maybe have an actual point to your discussion that is a straight line from A to B.
From OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
Non Professional: Relating to or engaged in a paid occupation that does not require advanced education or training.
You are NOT a professional if you meet the above criteria - so to the burger flippers and audio reviewers - you are NOT a professional if you did not require advanced education or training in the field.
PERIOD!
The difference is in the use of the term as a verb versus the use of the word as a noun. One can act "professionally" or in a "Professional" manner and not be a Professional belonging to a profession.
Profession:
"1 [countable] a type of job that needs special training or skill, especially one that needs a high level of education the medical/legal/teaching, etc. profession to enter/go into/join a profession (British English) the caring professions(= that involve looking after people)He was an electrician by profession.She was at the very top of her profession.2 the profession [singular + singular or plural verb] all the people who work in a particular type of profession The legal profession has/have always resisted change.3 the professions [plural] the traditional jobs that need a high level of education and training, such as being a doctor or a lawyer employment in industry and the professions4 [countable] profession of something a statement about what you believe, feel or think about something, that is sometimes made publicly
Synonym
declarationa profession of faith His professions of love did not seem sincere.
While the term has been softened by some outfits and some definitions from the 19th century to include other careers - the things that still seem to be required to be considered in a profession is that the career has professional development requirements (union standing which usually forces members to keep up with their standing) and belonging to a community that can revoke your professional standing.
An Audio Reviewer does not belong to any of that. The reviewer may be professional in his dealings with manufacturers and his responsibilities - verb - but he/she does not belong to a profession of audio equipment reviewers.
At best it could be said that the term has loosened to include any career with established training
"Nowadays, the number of professions is much wider and ever-increasing, as occupations become more specialised in nature and more ‘professionalised’ in terms of requiring certain standards of initial and ongoing education – so that anything from automotive technicians to web designers can be defined as professionals."
"What is a profession? We are all familiar with doctors, solicitors and accountants but the list of professions runs into the hundreds covering a huge range of sectors including building, engineering, business, education, technology, hospitality, sciences, the environment, finance, research, information, health, and culture.
A profession is a job or an occupation that requires a certain level of specialist training. Professions rely on expertise and specialised knowledge, as well as ethical behaviour.
Professions are almost always regulated, either by law or through membership of a professional body. Regulation ensures that professionals provide a quality service to the public.
Most professions are represented by a professional body, and professional bodies are responsible for providing a code of conduct for their members which guides their professional behaviour so that the public can be assured of being treated properly.
Why become a professional? At a basic level, you’ll earn more money! And you’ll have an interesting, worthwhile and challenging career in an area where you’ll become an expert. Total Professions offers professional career advice from the professional bodies as well as information on the top professions." http://totalprofessions.com/more-about-professions
And again no reviewer needs to meet any of these criteria.
Now I'm seriously beginning to doubt your veracity, RGA.
"And there was this woman-a Navy Seal Sniper doing her masters in psychology- she could kill me with two fingers- I was in love."
FYI - there are no female US Navy SEALs, and there won't be any until 2016 when females will be introduced to SEAL training in San Diego, CA.
So in deference to your self-described "professional" status, should I address you as a "professional bullshit artist" or will plain old bullshit artist suffice?
Al
That's what I was told. A marine sniper seal. So I take that to mean Navy seal. If I heard it wrong I apologize as I am not up on US Army or any Army lingo. And it was another teacher who told me about her not someone in uniform.
I'll gladly cop to ignorance of Army ranks, titles. And to be fair my blood wasn't exactly in my brain when I was around her.
This is in SK? You posted above the teachers weren't professionals but yet you use one as a source of information. That doesn't make much sense IMO.
And as an American, IMO you're off base on how folks in the U.S. use professional. Maybe that came from those unqualified SK teachers getting big heads and calling themselves professionals.
A field of endeavor (endeavour in case you don't understand) such as the law, medicine, the clergy, accounting (CPAs) are what usually people mean by professional. It is also used to show a distinction in fields that have many amateur practitioners, e.g., golf.
Let's back up.
I am a qualified Teacher with a degree in English/History and a degree in Education and I belong to the college of teachers. Thus I am a professional teacher. I can teach at public schools pretty much around the world. In South Korea, they hire people without teaching degree to teach English (usually private schools who care about money not education). They want a white body in the room. South Korea cracked down and demands a degree in something preferably English. This makes sense because there probably aren't enough fully qualified teachers willing to go to South Korea and often the job doesn't demand what most teachers have to actually do. Standing in front of a class delivering a lesson is merely the tip of the job's iceberg and SK often only demands the tip.
I never said you only needed to take a professional teacher's word for something. I was on a military base - I liked a girl - one of the other people around me who knew her told me about her position. She told me she was a sniper. If I got marine and seal confused or it was related to me incorrectly I call this a minutia irrelevant point. Her rank is about a billion miles away from the point I was making. It's like a guy who makes 100 logical points about a given argument and is wrong about one point that is rather irrelevant and the other side wants to chuck the other 99 arguments away because of one mistake. These people tend to be morons.
Not sure we disagree on the term professional. The point I made was this - just because you earn a living at something doesn't mean you are a professional.
There are lots of professional bodies - if you belong to one you're a professional. Amateur and professional in sports is slightly different but a professional athlete earns a living at it but also belongs to a union which can boot the individual out of the sport for wrongdoing.
The point of all of this is about reviewers. Anyone can slap some sentences together and write a review - whether a movie review or amplifier reviewer. He might even make money on it - but he's not a professional because he does this or happens to be buddies with a guy who decided to give him a reviewing job. I am a teacher and an audio equipment reviewer. I am a professional teacher because i belong to a professional body of teachers and I have professional development. As a reviewer I call myself a reviewer who acts in a professional way.
Doctors work hard for their doctorates - and they deserve their titles. So do people who belong to professions.
I am sorry if I lumped Americans into using the term this way but I get the sense that many in America seem to associate money with being a professional. If you make money no matter what you are a professional. Kind of like some who associate money with being a harder worker or being happy or successful. All of which may have correlations but are not defining characteristics.
RGA, you are truly full of crap! The more you post the worse it gets. You are a right-fighter who is continuously digging the hole that he's burying himself in deeper and deeper.
I don't give a flyin' f**k about your "professional" hangups, the bulls**t stories that you tell in your lame attempts to cover up your lies and mistakes, or your thinly disguised jabs at Americans. Your diatribes radiate an inferiority complex that's second to none.
I see you as a "professional" indoctrinator! A hired hand that really has no business calling himself a teacher. I don't believe that any REAL teacher or educator would admit to belonging in the same "profession" as you.
Stop acting like a cranky little sissy. Stop your lame attempts at justifying yourself. And above all quit using the military to reference your silly bulls**t stories. That would be the right thing to do for both your safety and dignity.
Al
For someone in love, you oddly didn't know her very well.
Love at first sight boys. Okay Lust but she was smokin' and if I can't remember details about name/rank/serial number I was too busy concentrating on not drooling all over myself. She was model good looking - add in the uniform, the brains (number one), and that she could kill a guy with two fingers - was at the time the important bits.
The military folks there were all stand up people and I enjoyed hanging out with all them.
He meant to writer "lust". 'Love ' is reserved for Audio Note.
In that case you should refrain from posting remarks and stories concerning things of which you know nothing about.
Cheers,
Al
I could live with Srajan calling himself a "paid reviewer"...that is the literal truth.
To claim professionalism is a big stretch. If he had a degree in Journalism and did a stint writing for newspapers or other magazines before moving into hifi then we could call him a professional writer/investigator that could migrate into professional reviewer.
Martin Colloms, at least, has shown not only a good technical knowledge he has also demonstrated a remarkable consistency in describing what he hears.
I think the experience of listening has much more to do than just how good the frequency response of your ears are...so I can easily imagine an experienced 60 year old hear more in a recording than a 15 year old whatever.
I dunno there are plenty of 15 year olds who can do a lot of things better than 40-60 year olds.
If you can't hear 14khz and the speaker has an issue at 14khz - I don't care how much experience the reviewer has - he is going to miss it. The 15 year old girl likely won't.
And since I rarely agree with about 90% of the reviewers out there as to what they think is good it's not exactly like there is any real science based preference here or Art Dudley and Michael Fremer would not have polar opposite stereo systems. Both are VERY "experienced" reviewers who hear it and/or value it very differently. Who is right?
This is the problem - everything gets a good review from all us 40+ year olds so from a reader's perspective the value of the reviews get watered down. Having a few classically trained musician teens listening in as a check might not be such a bad idea.
Well, as a 40+ year old I probably hear a lot more like one of the aforementioned reviewers than a 15 year old girl and my tastes and generational likes and dislikes are probably a lot more in line with the "old boys" than the young girls.
Also, you are underestimating what the brain is doing in the hearing process. That limited HF extension is irrelevant because the brain has a pretty amazing pattern recognition system that means it is adjusting all the time to the input data.
I have no doubt that there are 15 year olds out there who can outperform me in a whole host of tasks...but out-observing me is probably not one of them. It is a big part of why I became a scientist in the first place and I now have decades of honing my observational skills and testing them agains the later outcomes. Same for my audio listening. Hearing something is one thing...assigning importance to it something completely else.
and calling an entire culture less professional in abilities is beyond something else.
roger wang
Those two things as well as the MUCH better than average and MUCH more comprehensive (the guts) pics are what separates 6 Moons from, say, S'phile.While I'm sometimes annoyed by the number of ads on review pages, and Srajan's writing is definitely not what I'd call concise, I get to read about and SEE products more mainstream mags - especially U.S. mags - ignore or don't even know about. I also often get descriptions of sound quality that don't require reading between the lines or decoding.
While I too appreciate Dudley and Colloms, I get very tired of the predictability of S'phile, and Colloms' venture ain't free. Hey, 6 Moons is not my ideal review mag (neither are any of the others around nowadays), and I have some serious misgivings regarding Srajan's new ad/review policy. But I find the site valuable, entertaining and less boring than a number of hifi mags/e-zines. I don't take any of 'em seriously.
Gotta wonder if it'll be around long though. Dunno what the reaction of manufacturers will be.
Edits: 07/23/14
I don't think the semantics are particularly important. It doesn't matter if someone is a professional, an amateur, a journeyman, a wordsmith, or a word monkey. It doesn't matter what percentage (if any) of their total income is earned through audio reviewing.
What does matter and what is important is that they are sufficiently skilled, experienced, and disciplined to conduct their work to the best of their abilities, and to a standard that can be held up against their peers.
If a writer achieves this, their words are worth reading. If they don't, they aren't. That holds whether they write 1,000 words a year, or 10,000 words a month.
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
"What does matter and what is important is that they are sufficiently skilled, experienced, and disciplined to conduct their work to the best of their abilities, and to a standard that can be held up against their peers.
If a writer achieves this, their words are worth reading. If they don't, they aren't. That holds whether they write 1,000 words a year, or 10,000 words a month.
"
Which was exactly the point of my putting up another version of what it means to be a professional.
Yes, but if the word 'professional' is loaded somehow, it's ultimately more constructive to remove the term altogether.
A semantic argument over terms that has no relevance whatsoever to the topic should be treated like bacteria, and have bleach poured on it until nothing survives.
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
Well, I wasn't the one who used it, Srajan did...of himself. Read his lenghty treatise again on his new scheme and you will see. It is fair for me, I think, to point out that there is more to being a professional journalist than to getting a regular paycheck from it but of course you know this...
Fair to point out, yes. But a good writer knows about keeping things flowing, and getting caught up in semantics, or even gainsay arguments about the arguments about the semantics, impedes the flow of the thread.
So, as such, I withdraw from this aspect of the thread, to prevent yet more gainsaying.
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
There is no way in Hell I would have paid you to perform a review on an amp I represent. I find it unethical for a whole lot of reasons. Bad for me I guess that you didn't ask...I could have saved myself the trouble of bringing something over to you for "review". Neither would I have taken an ad on your site because I was not the manufacturer of said amplifier so it was not really my responsibility. I had the permission of the manufacturer to supply an amp for review. If you wanted some payoff you should have confronted them with it.
I have been on both sides, as a reviewer first, then later a dealer and now a "private" citizen again. I was a reviewer as a hobby and a dealer as a hobby. I never would have dreamed as a reviewer to have the manufacturer pay for my review...its just wrong, IMO. As a dealer I believed in a product and would let it stand or fall on its own merits because I don't have my life staked in its success or failure.
The funny thing is that IF you had set up a subscription based model I might actually have subscribed despite the fact that you did a pretty bizarre "hatchet" job on the VA350i review (especially in light of previous reviews of VERY similar products getting unqualified raves on your site and by you personally). At least with a subscription model or even staying how you are now I could have assumed that your websites reviews weren't total excrement. Now, well pay for review if it was a paper mag I would have plenty on hand in the toilet.
Not that it matters since posters to this board will believe as they will (and everyone is entitled to their own opinion in the first place), but I think here you're overlooking a few things, perhaps quite deliberately.
1/ It's not about whether *you* like my writing, Morricab. It's about manufacturers coming to us who aren't DIYers or hobbyists but professionals. They make money designing, making and selling hifi gear. They come to us wanting a review regardless of your feelings about it. Clearly they see a benefit in it or they wouldn't come. And how they use our reviews (on their websites, in hand-outs, in print-outs for shows etc) clearly demonstrates this benefit in further action.
2/ When I talk 'professional' about 6moons and myself, I'm referring to a number of things.
a/ I do this for a living, i.e. full-time, without a secondary income elsewhere. You may not like my writing, I may not like the amplifier you make. If we're both in it full-time to make a living, we're professionals by definition. This isn't an issue of 'like'. It's an issue of how one makes a livelihood. This is very basic.
b/ at 6moons we deliver our reviews in a timely manner and return products afterwards. We take our own photos. We tend to go beyond just basic coverage. We present things in a clean tidy manner. Considering the various standards at play when it comes to that, one could feel inclined to accord us professional behaviour on those counts as well. Or not. But again,that's not the main point. This is:
2/ Having professional manufacturers come to us (nobody forces them to) for a service (our time) and an actual product resulting from it (the review) which we deliver as promised; then clearly 'work' that product in various review quotes and other activities which further underlines that they perceive our product to have actual value and very real usefulness; but then totally fail to show any respect or concern for our economical well-being whilst perhaps being marginally aware (and if so, being totally okay with it) that their competitors foot the bill to sustain our operation... well, *that's* what's wrong with the current model.
You can disagree on that all you like. None of the commentators here would agree if they were asked tomorrow to write off remuneration on 70% of their paying clients or job assignments which henceforth were to be treated pro bono.
So please, don't confuse the issue as I have presented it. Feel free to disagree with it all you like (I don't care, that's your perogative and if you can afford to work 60-hour weeks for free, I salute you). But the actual issue I have very clearly stated in our policy and the linked-to editorial is that in the current system, a percentage of manufacturers fund a magazine's operations so that the remaining percentage can get their reviews for free. The actual percentage differs from publication to publication of course but the principle is the same. Some reciprocate for the work they receive, others do not.
No matter how tight magazines claim that editorial and advertising are separated by an iron wall... it's either advertising exclusively (web) or predominantly (print, with some revenues generated from sales) which generates the operational revenue. As they should, some manufacturers participate in that. The imbalance arises from those who do not despite being clearly in a position to do so. They become freeloaders.
Feel free to disagree and argue that this model is working just fine. I've made a public stand to the contrary arguing that it is deeply flawed, imbalanced and unfair on any number of counts. Funnily enough, except for the rare reader-funded publication, all the magazines and e-zines which rely on income rather than being pure hobbyist outfits live with the very same reality. It's just that they elect not to talk of it out in the open
As John Atkinson is fond of saying, you guys only have something to talk about in this thread because I told you about it first. -:)
Aside from grilling us (by all means, go ahead), I personally would appreciate to *also* see a discussion about the issue I have raised. There's a pervasive culture of 'I want it for free' at work. Readers want informative reviews with first-class photography but don't want to pay to read them. Manufacturers want the same and many don't want to pay for them either.
One solution is to just consign this sector of the industry to the pure hobbyist arena. Let publishers carry on regular day jobs so they can afford to do their publishing job on the weekend or after hours. Let all reviewers do it purely for fun and for the indirect pay of constant exposure to gear and the occasional purchase at dealer cost.
That's clearly an option. Since I've elected to pursue the other route, I'd be simply curious to hear rational credible proposals on how the current system can be improved. Of course Critic's Corner could be entirely the wrong place to ask for that -:)
...you have my sympathy and I don't disagree about the freeloading manufacturers who don't advertise or the freeloading customers today who demand free content, but that's the way it is.
At one point back in 1998 when TAS was about to go under for the final time, I considered buying the magazine and trying to make it successful (I also looked at opening an audio salon, but that's another story).
It didn't take long crunching a few numbers to realize that my audio hobby and equipment reviewing were not a good way to make a living.
I urge you to do some research, talk to manufacturers and write a business plan or at least put together a 3 year pro forma financial statement - this will be a reality test and an eye-opener for you.
As I posted in another part of the thread, there aren't many
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your decision - Hey, it's your business and you can run it as you wish.I can sympathize with your situation in that you work long hours with little or no compensation at times. Most small business owners do the same.
I have friends that own and operate small businesses and they have 60 hours logged by the 4th day of the 6 day work week.Maybe, just maybe reviewing audio gear would be best left to trust funder's, or those with spouses that make the "dough". Think about it; Those in a very comfortable financial position would be less likely to need, or be corrupted by a few bucks from a designer/manufacturer.
I personally don't believe it is your, or anyone elses "right" to make a good living at what you love to do. God knows that there are many, many days and nights that I really don't feel like going in to work to get on a train and take it from point A to B. I do what I do because;
1) I have 3 kids.
2) A mortgage.
3) College tuition (for the kids).
4) Great medical, dental, and eye coverage.
5) A good retirement.
6) A good pay check.
7) 6 weeks vacation per year.Do I love my job? No.
Do I like my job? Most days.
Do I need my Job? Hell yes!I think that most people are in the same boat as I, and would agree with me.
I sincerely wish you well and hope you succeed with your new business model, however, if it is a flop you may want to seriously consider the lyrics of George Thorogood - "Get a haircut and get a real job."
........I was a vegetarian for 15 minutes... until the main course.
Edits: 07/22/14
I don't have to do this for a living; I just do it for the luxuries like bread and shoes.
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
Thanks! for sharing.
but most of the writing, the main object of which seems to be not having a main object, is exasperating to read. It's more akin to a blog than a review site IMO. I've pretty much given up on getting much insight into the products, a lot of which aren't widely available, at least outside Europe, anyway.
Other than start-ups, I wonder who'll pay to be reviewed. That would seen to be a strong determiner in whether 6 moons can continue to attract readers.
...actually I'm surprised TAS or Valin haven't already done this.
If it works, I predict they'll be next.
I don't read 6 Moons so it won't impact me, or TAS any longer for that matter.
The advantage of having the ad department and the editorial department separated by a "wall" like Stereophile does is that one cannot interfere with the other.
At the end of the day, everyone works for the PUBLISHER.
...the only thing a publication like Stereophile has to offer readers is their integrity.
because it never really existed in the first place.
Does that mean I can buy a good review from a given magazine with my advertizing spend? Of course not. But at the end of the day, in publishing, the decisions of advertisers will eventually drive editorial decisions.
The would not be a large real estate section of your newspaper if there were not Realtors or property owners advertizing their properties.
Next you'll be trying to convince me that the Pharmaceutical Industry has no influence over what's in peer review journals nor influence at the FDA. ;-)
Well I have published in a number of peer reviewed scientific journals both from the university and from big Pharma and I have seen nothing but a relatively fair peer review system in place... it may not be perfect but it is far far better than hifi reviewing.
Most of the real scientific journals live off institutional subscribers because subscriptions run in the thousands per year and advertising is minimal.
I don't think you can even begin to compare in the manner you are attempting to.
That's FUNNY.
Of COURSE the Pharmaceutical Industry has NO influence on what appears in peer review journals!
None WHATSOEVER!
If you have some kind of magic insider information please share. I have not experienced preferrential treatment in publishing when I have a big pharma address on my correspondence or if I had university address.
Now, I am not publishing clinical trials results or other medical related aspects. I am publishing on technical measurements made of the molecules that form the active ingredients in drugs.
Obviously in our world today there are influences but the magnitude of this is definitely open to debate. Like I said, direct advertising is not much of an avenue...at least in the journals I publish in.
There are also "free" periodicals available and these run off the advertisement model. The articles in them are often from industry and either not peer reviewed or only lightly reviewed. Maybe these are what you are thinking of? I use those periodicals as a source of new information about what is the latest thing going on and not much else.
so that tells you all you need to know. =:-0And as far as those journals which publish medical research, as much of that research, at least here in the US, is now corporate funded, guess who decides what gets published?
In fact, here in the US, Big Pharma even decides what gets researched, what gets published and even what gets presented at the big meetings (or as you might say in Europe, the big 'Congresses'). OK, I've never seen a case where they tried to block a poster session, but out of the thousands of posters presented at a big meeting, what's the chances of anyone seeing one outlier?
Case in point: In the mid 1980's Big Pharma managed to keep data from being published, or even presented at meetings of gastroenterologists, which suggested that many if not all ulcers were caused by helicobacter pylori. Why? Guess what class of medications were the biggest money-makers for Big Pharma at that particular time?
Those medications continued to be the largest selling and biggest money makers for Big Pharma until the mid 90's when the NIH finally was forced to act and recommend antibiotic rather than big buck prescription anti-acid therapy for ulcers.
Edits: 07/27/14
...in audio review publications.
In other publications, who cares?
Sure the publisher will change the general editorial content if advertisers aren't attracted.
Or the publisher will ask manufacturers to pay for reviews...
Because they all make the same claims of a 'wall' between the editorial and the advertizing sides of the business.
But this wall has never really existed. It's a marketing tool to fool the reader into believing that the editorial content of a given publication is in no way influenced by the realities of the marketplace or said another way, influenced by where the publication gets its money.
As for 'audio review publications', exactly how may are currently in 'print'? If the answer is close to '1', then I guess I understand why you feel we must necessarily be talking about old what's-his-name at Stereophile. ;-)
...but the only place I have heard of the wall between advertising and editorial has been in TAS and Stereophile.
Part of the kerfuffle that led to her being fired involved, in part, her conflict with Times C.E.O., Mark Thompson over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into her newsroom.
Native Advertising! At the NY Times!
na·tive ad·ver·tis·ing
n. A form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.
If arguably the most respected newspaper in the land isn't immune to 'native advertizing' what hope can there possibly be for an audiophile rag?
Link below:
...but did anyone mention a wall?> If arguably the most respected newspaper in the land isn't immune to 'native advertizing' what hope can there possibly be for an audiophile rag?>
You mean my heroes have feet of clay?
It's a sad day in audio review town.
Edits: 07/24/14 07/24/14
Again from the NY Times, and much more recent.
Link below:
.
Link below:
...I believe Pink Floyd did an album about it.
And anyone who knows the advertising business knows that the advertising agencies have whole departments, "publicity departments", whose job is to break down or jump over that wall. Or at least that was the way it worked, pre Internet...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I've trusted (for the most part) the mags it's some of the reviewers I don't trust. Take Valin for example, there's been to much posted about his way of doing business that I'll never read a single word he writes...EVER! I've heard direct from some manufacturers of other examples of how things work in the industry although it has never surprised me, it's the same in many other industries as well.
Use your own ears and decide for yourself is what I do, if I read a review it's more of learning of what's new out there but I can't remember ever buying something based on a review.
has said he wont publish bad reviews unless the reviewer was either a designer or a manufacturer, thus able to adequately judge the output of a peer. He also stated that he was aware of the power he had to affect the business prospects of companies that have submitted products for review. The ensuing commentary is in the archives. My take was that the publisher had sent a veiled message to prospective advertisers, don't worry....your products are safe with us. Now the pretense has been dropped completely. You want coverage, pay up first.
The mag is free. You get what you pay for.
Best, Ross
nt
Hiya Ross:
I'd appreciate it if you directed all of us at the precise section in my archives where I supposedly said what you seem to remember so clearly. Whilst I wouldn't begin to claim that I can remember everything I said and wrote over the last 12 years, this does *not* sound like someone I would have said. We've never had a policy against 'bad' reviews - which really is a poor way of saying, 'critical'. And we've not had designers or manufacturers work as reviewers. Following your logic, we thus never could have had any critical or 'bad' reviews at all. Oh boy. Better explain that to Pathos Acoustics in our most recent incident of a quite critical review.
Cheers.
nt
....that Srajan mentioned. Seems fairly critical of the Pathos Amp:
"a few things became crystal clear out of the gate. Even on the very accurate French d'Appolito towers with ribbon tweeters, the Italian amp seriously downplayed timing and transient precision. Its reading of familiar tunes was far softer, thicker, fuzzier and frankly pudgy. It heavily prioritized weightiness, smoothness and general density. The price to pay was stark neglect of incision, energy transmission and quicksilvery reflexes. Everything sounded texturally bloated, blurry of focus and clumped together like a big mass of warm sound with very little articulation or distinctiveness"
Transparency to what they are doing is way better than what most of the others do ...
And honestly few people ever become "rich" from their endeavours in the audiophile world, actually.
I'll still be a reader. I'd even subscribe!
============================
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
"And we can't rely on reader subscriptions because as far bigger organizations have demonstrated conclusively—here I'm thinking of content providers like major newspapers—online readers don't want to pay. The Internet has trained them to expect things for free."Herein lies the biggest problem to me. I was involved with a startup Internet magazine and I always pushed the subscription model. And it was not generally thought of as the "norm"; true that it was. But I felt those who benefit from something should pay, and to me that was the reader.
I like that 6moons is rocking the boat. Will it work?....dunno. He clearly has taken a stance, and I admire that in some ways. But will manufacturers come along? Some will if they feel the quality of the magazine warrants the risk. Others will not feel the need to deal with someone who wants to reinvent the game a bit. So that just leaves a magazine with, are the percentages of the do's vs. the don't's favorable? Kinda like pushing a Flush draw.
But to the day the world ends, any way you slice it, there'll be detractors calling foul. Personally, I hope a different, new, whatever, revenue stream can come to the review magazine business. I have no desire for them to fail, unless they can't hold up their end of the deal and play the game fair, no matter what new paradigms come along.
See ya. Dave
Edits: 07/21/14 07/21/14
He will know soon enough if manufacturers feel their reviews will generate additional business and are worth the asking price. It is tough to be in any business today, especially the audio publishing business. He does have competitors who do a good job.
Jim Tavegia
He must have done his homework: polled a sample of mfrs; found out what they were willing to pay; scaled it up to the population of mfrs. he's interested in and calculated the impact on his revenues.
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
I'm not sure I'd want to do business with a manufacturer who pays for reviews. How much would it cost for an award?
...how big an award would you like?
If I were one of them (and I was in advertising/marketing for 40 years) I'd pull out at the first opportunity. The presumption being that any advertiser "paid" for his/her review, and that MUST be taken into account in any subsequent buying decision. The more you think it through, the worse this decision is, again IMO.
Personal note: the 6moons review played a significant role in my purchase of Gallo Reference 3 speakers in 2004. Had I suspected that Anthony Gallo paid for the review, I would likely not have bought the speakers on the same timetable. I did hear them in a store, after reading the review, but they sounded little like what the review said and I believed in the inherent honesty and integrity of the 6moons review, so I bought them anyway. That belief is now gone and I see no reason to follow 6moons anymore.
If so, why would you change your view of the 'ears' and the integrity of the reviewers?
If the Gallo's sucked once you got them home, then and only then, would I stop reading the site.
While the 6moons review was persuasive, (1) so was the exceptionally positive review in The Absolute Sound at around the same time and (2) I was already a satisfied Gallo user (Gallo Ultimates from the first series the company produced). Yes, the Reference 3 speakers sounded excellent and I now use Gallo Stradas + TR3 subs.
Point is, 6moons was in 2004 a wholly objective review source, in my mind at least. Becoming a pay-to-play medium makes it a different animal with major impact on the credibility of reviews. Again, in my mind. If I'm the only one, so be it.
Why not read the e-zine after the policy change, digest the actual *content* of reviews and see if you discern any difference the pay-for-review policy has wrought?
Up to now it's been easy, assuming that one believes no money has changed hands as a direct requirement of getting the review "in print." From now on, who knows?
When everyone pays to play, the assumption (rightly or wrongly) will be that the review has been bought and paid for, with all that this implies. The review becomes a paid ad.
I'll wait and see, assuming his new policy allows the continued existence of the site. What if you noticed no difference in the content of reviews? What if the same % of reviews was far from a rave, the same % downright negative, the same % a buy rec? So far Srajan seems honest and forthright.
Anyway, I mainly read hifi publications to be aware of new products, and 6 Moons reviews products ignored by S'phile -- and their pics beat hell outta most other mags.
I'll just let you have the last word.
nt
Exactly right. The review HAS been bought and paid for, no reason to make an assumption. The publisher is telling readers up front -- every review we publish will be contingent on the company whose product is under review committing to pay the publication up front.
Jason Chervokas
I was just thinking, it actually could induce a manufacturer into unethical behavior because they know now they must pay for that site's review but a bit more wouldn't hurt, right? I mean you have already started down the payola road so why not go all the way and get the result you want??
Really? How do you know this? I've in fact not polled a single manufacturer. Neither did I run it by my staff. I simply made an executive decision. That's called taking a risk. You could perhaps say a 'calculated risk' given that we could simply go on as we have all along. But otherwise you're way off base. Not that you'd probably care -:)
...as a CEO, I often make decisions based on my instinct or gut feeling - after I've done all the research.
n
He was giving you the benefit of the doubt. ;-)
I enjoy your reviews
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
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