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Looper's Delight
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** hey . . . You guys talk about these industry folks like they don't know this stuff, when they are the ones doing it every single day for years. By now they have it pretty well dialed in as to when endorsers are effective, when they are not, and how much to invest in it. When it isn't happening it is more because it just wasn't making sense budget or organizationally or timing-wise. ** just for the record. i don't have any real axe to grind here - - i'm just talking about the philosophy and trying to have a reasonable conversation/head session about this all - - bring up more questions than answers. But the big problem is, who are you going to use for looping endorsements that are really big enough to matter? ** . . . and would it matter? the thing about looping is that it may not have the visceral impact that is needed to get to the kids - - either musically or lyrically (the things that "get" people when they listen to popular music). But what really needs to happen is for some artists to become really huge with looping being a big part of what they do. They will be well known for looping and many people will want it because of them. Those people make the best endorsers, because they are selling the stuff even without an endorsement deal just by being who they are. I don't think there is anybody really like that out there and I'm hoping to see it change. ** right. guy with huge band has rig diagram in guit player and the copy tells how he uses looper2012xpd(tm) for "i'm crazy for your decals." the kids can go wild over the gear porn and decide they need to have one. Yes, that's something, although to me dt playing with Tori Amos is a much bigger deal since she's actually likely to get a bunch of hit singles off an album and much bigger sales. Her fans are a lot younger and more fanatical too. * sure, but this was more in the "analogy" area than in the "letter" area of the example. only severe musos are gonna listen to bowie - - or to david sylvian, who seems to have loads o' loops on some of his stuff. Still, and unfortunately, I think in both cases the focus will be on David Bowie and Tori Amos and everything else related to it will be overshadowed by them. If Tori were looping her voice and piano on her album and in concerts that would be something. ** oh yeah. this reminds me that my wife was all worried about me going out on tour with a minor pop star - - you know having girls hot for me. i asked her to remember the bass player for joan armatrading when we saw her. couldn't think of him - - i told her it would be the same with me, all eyes and ears would be on the "artist" . . . and are most people gonna watch someone twiddling knobs or stomping a footswitch in a deliberate and considered manner? maybe some types of audiences and some types of music, but i doubt that this is the sort of thing that arena acts are made of. Right now I would say real-time looping is still stuck in an early adopter stage. It's well past the beginning experimenter stage. But the early adopter stage has been going a long time and things haven't yet bloomed past that to any mass acceptance stage. In my opinion it is still in a phase where most people doing it are still figuring it out and learning how to use the ideas well enough to really incorporate it into their music. Hopefully more of them will and we can look forward to some great and compelling music in the future, music that captures the imagination and interest of a wider audience who then want to play like that too. ** yeah,. i'd have to agree with that. and then it also comes down to how much of the music is the looping. with someone like andre it seems like quite alot; with other it will much, much less. That's why I think people like Andre going out and trying to be teachers of looping is a good thing, and probably what the whole process really needs right now. ** still and all, my feeling is that stuff like that isn't going to really matter until someone does it live with a hip hop band - - maybe andre will. (no offense, not trying to say that what andre is doing now doesn't matter - - just that it doesn't matter in the scale that we're talking about; it does matter, but it's all grassroots kinda stuff still.) Is Gibson missing what window right now? Do you think there is something significantly different right now from before? I honestly don't see that window of opportunity right now, although I hope one opens sometime soon. ** just asking the question. i don't have a clue, you're better plugged in than me. To me that is the right approach at this stage. Keep things simmering along until it's really ready to take off. ** yeah. i've been involved with some very high-end bass makers and they've given up on the advert thing, all of their sales come from people seeing their instruments used by some higher profile (at least in the fusion market) players. they've found the niche that helps them to make a living, not get spectacularly rich, etc. Could they even afford to? Will spending $15,000+ (or whatever it costs) on advertising with Trey Anastasio result in more than $15,000 profit on Boomerang sales, above and beyond what they sell anyway just because he's already using it? That's a lot of Boomerangs, but that's what it would take to make such a thing worthwhile. A risky thing to contemplate with a small niche product. It might be easier to just make sure Trey is happy and keeps using it. ** you could probably do as a once or twice deal and then lick your wounds and hope you see incremental sales increase over 5 years or so. and you'd have to hope that trey (or whomever) wouldn't want huge bucks to do it. as an aside, i don't think that modulus made a killing on their "flea" model bass . . . I remember Boomerang went to the NAMM show one year. Their booth was filled with people fascinated with their pedal every time I went by. They never went to the show again, and later I recall them complaining that the cost of going ended up being far higher than the sales they ended up getting as a result. Electrix said the same this year, and I've heard it before. ** sure, and i've heard it from people who go every year as well. it's a huge pain and you don't always see much out of it, the hordes hanging around are sorta like people hanging around a carny freak show . . . That's a real danger for a small musical instrument maker. The cost of advertising is high compared to your income, and it might not do you nearly as much good as the free advertising of good musicians playing good music in front of a lot of people with your products. ** right. which could mean that this will always be a labor of love and a (small) niche market . . . stig <font size="1">Confidentiality Warning: This e-mail contains information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. 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