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Moog sells its business to InMusic

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Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#41

Post by elihu »

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.

It would be funny if there was a community effort to make a schematic of the Neutron or Proton, design a board, and have it manufactured at JLCPCB or wherever. Sell it as a kit with all the SMD components already populated, all you have to do is solder in the through-hole jacks and pots and whatever. Use a Eurorack module form factor so it doesn't need an enclosure. Sell it at cost, which would probably be way less than the Behringer product sells for.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#42

Post by api »

iamben wrote: post #11
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…

Couple of relevant PG essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/mean.html http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html

Overtly mean doesn’t work very well, but that’s the stupid form of mean. Covertly Machiavellian seems to work, as does the kind of initially ingratiating gradually controlling personality of a cult leader.

The best kind of mean for todays environment seems to be Machiavellian coated in a superficial gloss of magnanimity via stuff like effective altruism, longtermism, or wokewashing.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#43

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

elihu wrote: post #29
JodieBenitez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enfor…

> 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.

Right -- same as 7Artisans / TTArtisan lenses. Genuinely impressive, affordable products, combined with a notable and surprising lack of self-respect where external design is concerned. At some level a lens barrel is a lens barrel, and the "big" brands are converging in their design language anyway as is normal, but the sooner these cheaper brands develop a consistent design language, the better.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#44

Post by irjustin »

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…

> has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews.

This seems extremely straight forward to sue against? Basically the claim is either never paid for specific sales (very easy to win) or stated number of sales is lower than expected (requires lots of disclosure).

OR, maybe he did win in court and they simply ignored the court order?

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#45

Post by glimshe »

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…

Copying old designs is perfectly fine - designing things is hard, but it's not the only hard thing out there.

For a trivial example, is it a problem if a silverware company is selling spoons, forks and knives that look like all other spoons, forks and knives? With the intellectual property rights gone, many companies create a business around being efficient at production, distribution and marketing, which are not easy things to be good at!

Another example... We don't need a social media crypto cloud document editor, we need great, inexpensive, fast, polished, standard document editors.

Let's end this idea that everybody needs to be always imagining new things. Innovation is obviously good, but excelling at building things that leverage humanity's collective, public-domain intellectual property is also great.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#46

Post by rjmunro »

walrus01 wrote: post #4

fun fact: the "other" Moog is a defense contractor, started by the cousin of the Moog synthesizer guy. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=moog+defe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_Inc .

They manufactured "The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man" ride at Universal Islands of Adventure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Adventures_of_Spid...

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#47

Post by notmypenguin »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #22
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 f…

It’s absolutely unethical when your obvious goal is to loss-lead everyone else into either bankruptcy or selling out. I am a consumer of music gear. Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative. They poison the well!

Uli Behringer is also the quintessential slimy shady businessman, look it up.

Behringer is bad for the music gear industry, and I say that as a producer and musician of over 40 years. I wish them a swift exit from this world, but the reality is their cheap products tempt many people but it’s extremely shortsighted to ever buy Behringer.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#48

Post by notmypenguin »

elihu wrote: post #38
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…

You're using as an example of bad behavior one of the best examples of something good that Behringer has done. Those chips should be cloned, and now there are, I believe, at least three manufacturers of 3340 oscillator chips: CEM, Coolaudio, and Alfa. It's a very popular VCO chip in a number of eurorack modules, and has better tracking of volt-per-octave than any other analog VCO type I've used by far. Also, not very…

Tell that to Curtis widow. The goal of this is not magnanimity but to drive other synth makers to bankruptcy with cheap zero R&D synths. I am not speaking out of my behind here. If Behringer succeeds, the world of music gear LOSES. If you want a 3340 clone buy Alfa for half the price and don’t feed CoolAudio

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#49

Post by sireat »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #23
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.

Gibson took over an audio startup a relative of mine had co-founded. Gibson offered extremely promising terms - funding, keep creative freedom, just deliver cool products.

The startup delivered the products and met the goals -just in time for Gibson to go bankrupt.

Inside Gibson there was endless corporate infighting. - an executive that was championing the acquisition of the startup was fired - the support was basically nonexistant afterwards (no marketing, nothing)

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#50

Post by glimshe »

notmypenguin wrote: post #47
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

It’s absolutely unethical when your obvious goal is to loss-lead everyone else into either bankruptcy or selling out. I am a consumer of music gear. Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative. They poison the well! Uli Behringer is also the quintessential slimy shady businessman, look it up. Behringer is bad…

Is Behringer loss-leading? They have invested almost nothing in research and development for their little synths as they use long expired designs that require technology developed decades ago (dirt cheap).

As a part time musician, my take is the opposite of yours. Behringer made instruments that were once owned by a small, non-inclusive wealthy elite (relatively speaking) available to everyone in rich and poor countries. The sheer number of decent quality clones - and I say "clone" as a good thing - they produced will be available in the secondary market for decades to come.

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