Discussion surrounding reviewer incentives, sales, and other issues

It’s important to note that whether we sell a product or not has nothing to do with how we cover it. If you look at our body of work, you’ll notice many positive reviews of products we don’t carry and negative reviews of products we do carry.

@Resolve, @Precogvision, and the rest of the reviewers on our team have far too much integrity to work with a company that forces them to comprise their ethics.

We have a simple business that we love and we want to be doing this for the rest of our lives. We can only see that happening if we focus 100% on building long-term trust. That is our north star and we know if we focus on that everything else will fall into place.

If we ever let ourselves think “hey, we’ve got a bunch of those in the warehouse, let’s try to sell them by getting our reviewers to make a positive review.” We would kill the trust, not only with our community but also with our own team. We go to great lengths to make sure we’re not even subtly influencing the content with sales incentives.

Heck, ask @Resolve how many hype trains he’s killed for us :wink:

The thing is, that’s the job we’ve asked him to do… To tell the absolute truth about his subjective and objective experience with a product regardless of the short-term impact on our business.

Here’s the thing, it’s WAY harder to build trust when you also have a store. That’s because there IS a misaligned incentive and if you want to understand behavior you can generally follow the incentives.

The key difference is short-term vs. long-term incentives. The short-term incentive is to try to sell the stuff we have today, and that’s a powerful incentive that many stores follow.

The long-term incentive is to build trust that will make people feel good about doing business with you for decades. That’s the incentive we follow.

We do it because it feels way better, it allows us to work with incredible people and it gives us the stable feeling of knowing we just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not kill the goose (the “goose” of course, is long-term trust).

I know this is an unusual way to do business, but we think it’s the right way.

In a lot of ways, we think our model is better than the accepted reviewer model. There are many bad incentives floating around the industry. If someone loves reviewing headphones enough to want to make it a full-time job they’ll need to make money and they’ll need continued access to products.

They generally make money through a combination of affiliate links, advertising, donations and sometimes selling the review units they’ve been given by manufacturers.

Affiliate links have the same bad incentives as having a store, however I think they’re worse because the reviewers revenue is directly tied to the video with the affiliate links in it. There’s no separation between content and revenue.

Let’s look at access to gear. Manufacturers are MUCH more likely to send review units to reviewers they know will give them a positive review and reviewers are MUCH more likely to give a positive review if they know a negative review would strain the relationship and make it harder to get products in the future…

We’ve removed those stresses from a reviewers life and we completely separate their ability to make a living doing what they love from having to think about their own access to gear, brand relationships and revenue per video.

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I am not affiliated with any sales platforms, nor do I use affiliate links, nor do I profit in any way from reviewing anything (other than getting to try it).

And I heard my first ZMF in Munich.

Just saying…

:smile:

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“Trust is gathered in drops, but lost in buckets”

  • Confucius
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You and @taronlissimore have always allowed uncensored opinions in the forum. Many other places have…blanked out price discussions…closed uncomfortable but on-point threads…used algorithms to hide posts errr…Amazon and otherwise kept every conversation and review in the PR and marketing realm.

If you guys did that I’d have left long ago. But you don’t. :slight_smile:

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And that’s why I love this place and headphones dot com in general; it’s why I’ll continuing purchasing from y’all first before looking anywhere else.

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These are general comments, not directed at any specific individual or organization, but just help explain why some folks might feel the way they do about certain subjects/practices.

Seems to me that what we’re ‘used to’ seems normal, and what’s new to us, seems ‘odd/different/maybe even wrong’ That said, As a chronologically-gifted human, I find that content written by/filmed by people who work for retailers in the same field, and/or who are funded by said retailers, is NOT a review, but a selling tool. It has nothing to do with the specific content, but the context. There may be some grey area, but there’s plenty of black and white. When the pizza menu says ‘world’s best pizza’ we take it with a grain of salt. Should we intepret reviews done my trade members in a similar vein? I believe that in the past there were issues with some (computer) magazines in the tech sector, that published “reviews” written by employees or agents of the company that manufactured the items being reviewed. Commericals often mention that products are ‘certified’ but neglect to mention who owns/pays the bills of the certifying organization being referenced.

None of this is to suggest this is what is happening here, but I do find it odd that reviews, rather than chats or discussions are on affiliated sites, or flat-out on the ecommerce site itself of some places I have seen.

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Hang on a second. Two separate organizations can have integrity and communicate a nuanced position respectfully with each other on the internet in 2022? :face_with_monocle:

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Yeah this is the norm, which is very different from what we’re trying to do with our review platform, and it’s why we’re unable to comply with requests from manufacturers that would entail changing or removing things from our content. It’s also why we can’t compromise on our editorial in the slightest, even for manufacturers who we cherish. It’s a hard line in the sand for me when it comes to manufacturer influence, and one that we haven’t crossed when asked to do so in the past, and are unwilling to do so now.

Edit: Just to be clear - I do not mean to say that ZMF asked us to change the sentiment of any content on our site, as that was not their request.

Thankfully we can point to our body of work as examples of our commitment to this. I think maybe because this is so unconventional, a lot of folks have trouble with it and don’t fully grasp the concept, and then are confused when they see some of our more critical reviews. But I’m hopeful that over time more and more people will come to understand what we’re doing and see how it’s different.

There are also times when this approach causes problems for us, and we sometimes get seen as “hype train killers” (the recent IE600 video for example), which means there’s always a risk to manufacturers who do send us gear. But I’d rather err on the side of hardline truth and honest information at the cost of being less popular with brands. It sucks, because we really like the people behind a lot of these products, but our unique situation requires that we don’t make any concessions on this stuff.

As a side note, it was super encouraging to meet with a number of manufacturers over in Europe recently at the High End show who were super tapped into what we’re doing - even brands whose products received a fair bit of scrutiny from us. So for all of the difficulty navigating this stuff brings, I think there’s also been quite a bit of progress as well.

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This is the last time I will come back on this, but I honestly feel that this post is a mischaracterization of the statements I have made both publicly and privately and skew into another narrative altogether. I have expressed reservations I have about the nature of hybrid platforms, regardless of who is running it. I have been pretty blanket in my approach to this regardless of reviewer or platform. I simply asked to remain absent. My reservations never had to do with how ZMF would be covered positively or negatively.

I know this is a thread for headphone discussion, there’s a lot more to this discussion that’s probably best kept in private between two businesses. I just want it to be 100% clear that my reservation has anything to do with how our headphones are evaluated and everything to do with my energy being better focused away from a ecosystem that encompasses a lot of moving parts and objectives.

That’s the long and short of it.

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That’s certainly not the intention - merely to indicate that there are common misunderstandings when it comes to what we’re trying to do as a content and media platform, and I don’t want the discussion here to end up implying that we’re doing certain things that we’re not (which seems to have been the result).

I really do empathize with your request to stay absent, but now that this is a public matter, it’s important to me that our reasons for not being able to honor your request are also expressed and understood by the community.

And yes, I agree we’ll move all of this to a separate thread, and we can discuss this matter further privately so we can get back on track with the discussion surrounding the Atrium!

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I’d rather you flesh it out here so I can read it :wink:

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haha I think both parties would rather this discussion not linger on, at least for the moment. We’ve each stated our positions, understand them, and and respect them. I imagine we can now get back to doing things we’d rather be doing than having to continue with this issue.

With that said, it raises an important topic here that’s good to discuss openly. So in keeping with the thread title, folks are welcome to discuss that stuff here. - as long as things stay civil.

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I tried a few time to put into words my thoughts on this. But failed.

Essentially I think the stance taken by ZMF isn’t warranted and can only reflect negatively on them. And the reason for that is because you have a track record of positive ZMF content, and in generaly, fairly obviously honest sounding reviews, beit a headphones.com product or not.

I’d understand if someone didn’t bother sending a tube amp to Amir, for example. But this seems like an odd choice and a odd stance.

And I generally like ZMF. I’ve owned them all at some point. And have heard the Atrium.

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Well, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to have a negative opinion of ZMF as a result of this difference in perspective on things. We each have our jobs to do, and sometimes there’s just an incompatibility, without any particular valence one way or the other.

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My perspective goes beyond what I can share publicly, I’ve made my statement and have to leave it at that. It’s fair for you to judge based on what’s been laid out here and I respect that.

Edit: I also cannot say enough, this does not regard content that has been written or taped about ZMF whatsoever or resolve’s intent in any way.

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Which is probably why you might’ve been better to not try half explain it at all. Which is hard I know.

End of the day if they want to, they will get their hands on an Atrium for review.

Facilitating that from the get go makes more sense to me, you have control over the unit sent. Its condition mechanically and sonically. Also avoids weird situations like this one.

Anyway.

As far as hifi reviews go in general, it all needs to be taken with a massive pile of salt.

I was going to, but then statements were made publicly regarding why the Atrium wasn’t being reviewed which weren’t true. I’ve learned the hard way that when you’re silent sometimes others will write a narrative for you. At least in this case I have a voice, albeit limited.

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My key shopping criterion is obviously how the Atrium sounds in atriums. I won’t consider buying one until I see 3-4 reviews conducted in proper atriums.

See to it ASAP!

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Somber, Intense, Very Polite & Respectful thread.

Then @generic tops it off with a perfect Goofy Smile post. Whew!

Mark Gosdin

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I appreciate your willingess to engage with the community. Respect sir !

In order to confirm the premise of your company’s stance, please send a review unit to a different kind of “independant” reviewers too (who present the information somewhat differently) :
@crinacle and Amir are good exemples.

Some of us who pay more attention to confirmation bias, ownership bias, short memory regarding sound… Would love to get more data presented.
I comment from a good heart, as I am a big fan of zmf.

Otherwise nothing but respect man. Your company, your rules.

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