Here’s a question, you get the chance to use one of two plugins for your EQ. One of them is used by everyone and their dog, the other isn’t. Which do you choose? Conventional wisdom would say that the popular one must be the good one and the other plugin not worth wasting time with.
But is popularity the real measure of quality?
No, you can have a bad product with good marketing and a good product with bad marketing. In some cases, the bigger audio brands create a self-fulfilling prophecy, they have so much money that they outgun the smaller brands who have neither the staff or the cash to beat them in marketing.
There’s some fantastic niche brands out there making amazing hardware and software, but simply because they are missing either the skill, the cash, or both, you may never get to hear about them and get the chance to try them out.
It’s a shame. Of course it’s not limited to the pro audio industry, we see it in everything from politics to grocery stores, and closer to home, when we try to get our music in front of the public. 99.9% of the music creator community are outgunned by the music labels. If anyone thinks that streaming levelled the playing field then check the data… people are making money out of it and it’s mainly the labels.
I’ve been increasingly troubled by big money coming into the music and post production equipment world. Let me be clear, I’m not some anti-wealth placard bearer thinking that making money is evil. However, when those with little understanding of this industry, or even worse, those who give little care about this industry, see it as the next place to make a lot of money, then I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good thing.
Is it possible for a big corporation to care? Possible, but here’s the problem, when you are having to report continuous growth to investors every quarter, then there’s little room for sentimentality. If it’s not a line that makes sense on the balance sheet, then it’s less likely to stay.
Between A Rock And A Hard Place
It’s so easy to think of large organisations as faceless money machines, but that can be a mistake. An organisation is made up of passionate individuals, often many of them customer facing. So when a decision is made in the boardroom without due consideration for how it may impact customers, guess who gets to hear the customer disatisfaction? Yes, the passionate people stood on trade show floors, or the support teams earning minimum wage, or the sales teams visiting dealers. The people who made the decision are insulated from much of the flack that comes firing back, what’s worse is they don’t issue bullet proof vests from those having to stand between them and the customer. When you’re feeling angry or let down by a brand, spare a thought for the people who earn the least and have little input into making the decisions.
Furthermore, it’s also worth remembering those working on R&D and product development as well, they work incredibly hard to deliver great ideas, sometimes to see management teams kill them with some half assed pricing model or rushing a half finished and untested product out just to pacify the investors.
There’s some big brands that have fantastic people working for them, but in a lot of cases the decisions made that affect the customer experience are out of their hands.
We see the impact of this already starting to take place in our industry, with many users feeling aggrieved about being forced into subscriptions, rather than being offered a choice. For the businesses this isn’t a customer led strategy, it’s investor led. It does remind one of the lines quoted by Jesus; “You can’t serve two masters, you will love one and hate the other.” Irrespective of your beliefs, there’s a lot of sense in that statement. You have investors pouring millions into a business, so of course they have a lot of say in how you run the business, if subscriptions are the thing, then it gets the vote. If perpetual licences are stopping some sign up for subscriptions then kill the perpetual licences.
Some proclaim that big is beautiful, but that’s a myth. Often for the consumer, big is anything but beautiful. Over time, the more people invest in the big brands, the less the smaller, and sometimes better brands, miss out. That means that eventually they go out of business. Then we are left with a few mega brands who can make what they like, charge what they want, because if you don’t like it, then what choice do you have… quite literally. That’s called a monopoly.
It’s More Cock-up Than Conspiracy
I don’t think this is some kind of ‘Mr Burns’ master plan, where there’s a management board plotting to take over the world. It’s simply the natural outworking of a business model, continuous growth at whatever cost. I wouldn’t want to run one of these companies, not because of some personal moral point of view, but because the relentless pressure to deliver is not my idea of a healthy life.
Let’s consider customer value. If you are one of one hundred customers to a brand, or one of one hundred thousand customers, then how much do you think you matter in terms of value? If you spend $500 with a small brand then it’s a huge win for the owner, it’s sometimes the difference between paying the rent that week or not. But for a mega brand $500 doesn’t really move the needle, they need thousands of $500 to be impressed.
In closing, I’m not saying BIG = Bad, Small = Good. After all at some point some of these mega-brands were start ups, remember Apple started in a garage. Over time as the company grows often the people that started it move on, or expansion means the values and culture at the centre of the organisation are lost, just because of the size of the organisation.
Give Small Brands A Chance
Sometimes it’s worth stepping away from what the crowd thinks is the right thing and exploring some less popular gear choices from the smaller brands. Their products may still be rubbish, there are some real howlers from some start-ups, but we won’t know until we’ve tried them. What I do know it that there’s a lot more diamonds from the small brands than often we give credit for, so don’t dismiss them and miss out.
Support small businesses, they are usually run by someone from their cellar, or bedroom. Just like most of us, and we all know how much we need the money! Why not take a moment in the comments to name some small brands that you think deserve a mention.
Discuss.