Because you won’t agree with my opinions about what’s negative about a product half the time.
Heck, I don’t even agree with myself from two years ago half the time.
Why would I post a video with a strong negative opinion that I’m going to find naive in the future?
To find a reviewer who gives positives and negatives everyone agrees with seems nearly impossible, to me.
I specifically avoid creating “reviews” in the sense you’re requesting.
If I write review in the title or keywords it’s so someone finds a video I hope they will find useful, not because I believe in the concept of “an honest review”.
Here is why and how I started making YouTube videos with virtual instruments:
Nigel Andreola said:
the reason why you see a lot of people doing playthroughs, but not saying if like or prefer one virtual instrument over another, is because they want the listener to hear the instruments as played out of-the-box to allow them to make up their own mind if they like the sounds and features
That’s it. And to this day me badly noodling through a couple libraries remains a consistently top viewed video on my channel.
Because it showed what a non-amazing player might expect to get out of the product. I wanted to try to share what it felt like “under the fingers” as a mediocre player who liked using computers and samples to (later) fine tune a performance.
I’ve never been a fantastic musical performer, and never expect to become one.
That’s part of the reason I use VIs to compose.
Part of this journey is learning all the ways to make something sound better.
Negative vibes about something you think in the moment, on the day, sound subjectively “bad” don’t contribute to that.
I’ve heard great things from tools I would consider unusable.
dog1978 said:
I generally only test products that I find interesting.
And I specifically look for ways to make them useful, and I try to share insights into how to best take advantage of the tools we have at our disposal.
Showing how not to use something or demonstrating why it’s not good at a particular task is of limited interest to me, and I avoid spending time in that headspace.
If it’s challenging to use, the best thing I can do with my time is figure out how to overcome that challenge, and share my successes. If I’m not successful, I tend not to post those moments (or I’m embarrassed that they live on my channel).
ananmusatili said:
Many products sound absolutely gorgeous when played out of the box alone or in a playthrough setting while noodling away but become suddenly hard to use when trying to use in a composition.
An example of this are Spitfire's EVO products - while truly beautiful in sound - can be pretty hard to use if you're stuck with the idea of the EVO.
Interesting. I find them helpful, but I have developed “techniques” for when to use them and how. I’ve never made a vid about them specifically because it became intuitive to me how to take advantage of them and I didn’t think it worth sharing.
ananmusatili said:
Interestingly, nobody has touched on the "legal" question and the quite wild TOS text I had relating to reviews, and whether that can play a role in how skewed the reviews tend to be.
That TOS seemed ridiculous and I have no words.
José Herring said:
If you review a sample library for example you're reviewing a product by somebody who is probably your friend who spent years and a good deal of his/her own money putting themselves at risk to put out the best product that they can.
Yes. I also find that some developers are quick to release updates and fixes. So, if I point out a flaw, it might be gone in an update, and now my vid isn’t about the newest version and yadda yadda. Not helpful.
Alex Niedt said:
half the people making "reviews" can't play a basic legato melody line properly and somehow manage to make amazing libraries sound awful.
I have definitely made amazing libs sound awful. I used to test music software professionally (full time QA pro at a music software company) so I know all the ways to make something sound bad, report to devs exactly how to make it sound bad, show them how to make it sound bad. It’s bad. I don’t want to live my life like that anymore. I want to show how to make things sound better, or not at all.
Btw I make enough from YouTube for about two meals a month. Meaning it’s a fun hobby, not a job, for me. It doesn’t even pay for my Sony vlogging camera. It’s not worth my time to share live composition, or many many other time consuming activities. (I’ve tried.)
Editing out all the useless stuff I record (both playing and talking) is the most energy draining activity. And paying someone on fiver to edit it makes no economic sense for me.
Economics in concrete terms:
Of my top earning videos, one is about Opus (HOOpus) Orchestrator tips and made $53.51 since Dec, 2021. It cost much more than $53 to produce. I paid for the product — as with most of the videos on my channel — and the video will not cover my time and expenses for many years, if ever.
By the way, if you’re interested in composing videos, ignore product based videos entirely.
The function of a product video is not usually how to compose with it.
Here’s the kind of video I’m seeking out these days:
Tagging @bfreepro for his thoughts.
