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Moog sells its business to InMusic

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Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#21

Post by progre »

notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

While I'm no fan of Uli's business practises, he does expose the fact that the uniqueness of a lot of gear is way overstated. And we havent seen actual innovation from the likes of Moog, Roland, Korg since the 90:ies maybe. So if they insist on repackeging the same ROMpler and Curtis chips at ever higher prices... Clone away.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#22

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

Let's be clear: cloning stuff where the patent has expired is not remotely unethical in an intrinsic sense. Even if you launch the product the very day the patent expires.

It's a clear part of the social contract of innovation patents.

Society says:

- Ideas aren't things you can really own

- Copying stuff means more choice for consumers and lower prices.

- But copying stuff before the innovator has a chance to earn from their work is bad for innovation.

- If we agree an idea is novel and non-trivial (patentable), we grant the innovator the exclusive right to manufacture, to licence, or not to licence, the implementation they describe for a limited period of time, if and only if they describe it in enough detail to reproduce it.

- In so doing, we provoke further innovation as people try to achieve the same without infringing the patent.

That last one is the secondary outcome, not the primary intent of patent law.

The primary intent is to grant limited protection for patent holders to have a chance to earn from their work. "You explain how you did this so other people can do it in the future, and we will grant you the right to licence that idea exclusively for about half your professional lifetime."

Beyond that point, implementing the design is what absolutely should happen -- that is why the patent is basically education about the design itself. Implementing clones of expired patents is a social good. It actually proves the value of the patent system over the longer term.

If we call this behaviour -- if it infringes no other designs -- unethical, we're really arguing for corporate welfare based on goodwill. That isn't how it's meant to work.

Now, whether Behringer is unethical is another matter. There would seem to be enough other evidence of that!

But implementing expired patents is not bad, even if you literally start selling them the day the patent expires. Go for it.

There are similar issues with TTArtisan and 7 Artisan lenses. Yeah, expired patents of good lenses deserve to be implemented, updated, tweaked, and sold more cheaply. Everyone benefits. But do they have to hew so close to other people's design language too?

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#23

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

scns wrote: post #2

> inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton > Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people o…

Whether or not it's necessary, it's common in the music production business. There are several egregious examples, Gibson Guitar being perhaps the best known.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#24

Post by comboy »

Sosh101 wrote: post #16
notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

Behringer did release their own "Neutron" (and soon "Proton"), but I generally agree with your points. Also they've cloned Moog gear that's <10 years old.

I can blindly distinguish Moog from Behringer with compressed youtube audio and I don't even have good ears (at least for one instrument I did that experiment on). It's just a signal, I'm sure it can be copied perfectly but Moog still seems to be doing wrooms like no other.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#26

Post by Dalewyn »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #3
scns wrote: post #2

> inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton > Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people o…

"Business is war"... there are very little ethical businessmen out there so you're swimming among sharks and think that it becomes a game of ripping off each others. I've seen some pretty nasty stuff done in order to maximize profit... I don't want to be negative but there is a reason why these jobs attract a certain... profile... or if you can't "adapt" quickly, you're done. Of course some small shops still exist wh…

>"Business is war"...

The one I heard (and love because it's true) is that business is the art of ripping someone off without pissing them off.

And for the ones still naive to not really understand what I mean: "Costs of labor", "handling fees", and similar line items in an invoice are merely an inverse reflection of how generous the guy billing you feels at that moment.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#27

Post by fsckboy »

JodieBenitez wrote: post #8
throw_m239339 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Business is war"... there are very little ethical businessmen out there so you're swimming among sharks and think that it becomes a game of ripping off each others. I've seen some pretty nasty stuff done in order to maximize profit... I don't want to be negative but there is a reason why these jobs attract a certain... profile... or if you can't "adapt" quickly, you're done. Of course some small shops still exist wh…

> Does the market tend to find "inefficient" areas and someone comes in and "maximize efficiency"? I think Behringer is trying to vacuum all revenue in that space... Yes. Behringer, from the start, was always about copying other brands and offer products to a larger audience through low prices. They used to do so with results of questionable quality... but not anymore. Their output in the synthesizers department has…

> a Moog rip-off

moog is selling very generic circuits, there's no intellectual property at stake, so rip off is I think is quite an exaggeration. The original moog pioneered the space, in less than two decades lost popularity in the face of newer ideas from competitors, and sold out to a big company that milked the brand name for awhile and also wanted to shut it down. The original founder got the rights back and basically pulled a Harley Davidson, made a nostalgic brand with premium pricing, "made in USA", employee ownership, etc.

There's a huge industry of competing synths, and moog's strategy of sitting on big fat brand margins gave them a cushion to old school, but also kept their nice sounding products out of the hands of young musicians. Young musicians getting started are the quintessential "starving artists". Behringer said "hey, these are generic circuits (not much more complicated than logic gates) and tons of people who can't afford them would like to use them. Modern scaled factory manufacture can bring them to the masses" and as a result they are very popular.

laying out the knobs in similar order? I mean, it's File-Edit-View and Cut-Copy-Paste, and laid out like the 6 strings of a guitar...

moog invented the ladder filter, it was amazing and unique, they patented it and enforced the patent. That was 50 years ago, the patent has expired.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#28

Post by SSLy »

elihu wrote: post #9
busterarm wrote: post #6

Hardware synths, in particular the varieties that Moog makes, are at peak relevance again and who knows if that will remain the case. The brand was certainly sucking wind for a good 30 years of its history previously. Cashing out that equity now is a shrewd move...especially as consumer spending has gone to who knows where.

I don't think hardware analogy synthesizers are going anywhere anytime soon. Moog is probably facing a lot of competition though, and they aren't very active in the Eurorack modular space where a lot of the interesting new stuff is happening. (In particular, a lot of their popular synths, including recently released ones, are being cloned by Behringer.) It would be interesting to know if they were doing great but sol…

Behringer clones modular synth modules too. https://www.gearnews.com/behringer-abacus-lets-do-the-maths/

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#29

Post by elihu »

JodieBenitez wrote: post #13
elihu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with Edge and Crave they changed the UI so someone wouldn't necessarily know it's a clone unless they were familiar with both synths. I kind of wonder if this was an intentional decision for Behringer or if Moog trademarked their interface and thus forced Behringer to do something different?

I don't know... but they didn't change much the UI for many older synths. Maybe some kind of patent expiration at play here ? I'm not into legal matters.

I suppose the interface might be covered by design patents, which are sort of like trademarks. I doubt it would be covered by a utility patent unless there was something really unusual about the interface. At any rate, patents expire after 20 years, and trademarks do not. Copyright could theoretically come into play, but I think the "look and feel" lawsuit pretty much established that it's pretty darned hard to enforce any kind of copyright on a user interface.

Some of the very old synths that Behringer has been cloning were probably protected by utility patents that covered the electrical circuits, but those have long expired, and I think trademarks become unenforceable if your aren't actively selling a product that uses it anymore. I don't have any moral objection to cloning the old synths either -- our laws have mechanisms to grant inventors exclusive use of their ideas for a limited time, but when that expires it's part of the commons. That's a good thing. I do think it's gross though to clone a popular recent synth just because you can and because the original designer didn't file the right paperwork to stop other people from doing that.

There's a continuous flamewar on /r/synthesizers between the people who think Behringer is a detestable parasite and the people who think they're making high-quality analog synthesizers available to the masses in a way that they never have before. I think both camps are right to a degree. I will defend Behringer's right to use the stuff that's clearly in the public domain, but I also think they have no class. They do things that damage their reputation even when it wouldn't have required much effort not to.

(I'm not an IP lawyer, so don't take this as expert commentary.)

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#30

Post by [deleted] »

Sosh101 wrote: post #15
elihu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think hardware analogy synthesizers are going anywhere anytime soon. Moog is probably facing a lot of competition though, and they aren't very active in the Eurorack modular space where a lot of the interesting new stuff is happening. (In particular, a lot of their popular synths, including recently released ones, are being cloned by Behringer.) It would be interesting to know if they were doing great but sol…

I think the recent clones of the moog studio3 devices must have been part of it. The clones are less than half the price of the originals, and are arguably better.

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