#472

Speaking for myself, between some of the negative unforced public relations errors the company has made and their propensity for cloning (allegedly) the work of others, I can’t imagine owning something with their branding on it and not feeling weird about it, which may or may not be an arbitrary distinction on my part. THAT SAID, I would not judge anybody else for buying their products, whether due to financial concerns or an honest perception of the brand having some ineffable quality they’re drawn to.

This seems to be to point of contention, not so much whether capitalism is bad (it is) or whether the company in question is sometimes a bit MORE prickly than others in the same space (they are), but whether individual consumer choices should be moralized in this larger context (they shouldn’t) (it’s still a good discussion to have though).

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#473

Not Behringer related and I don’t know much about this builder, but I thought this was a really thoughtful consideration of the (mostly environmental) considerations of ethical instrument building: https://northcoastsynthesis.com/news/green-modular-part-1-energy-carbon-and-power-supply-regulators/

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#474

Cancel culture Is the exact opposite of voting with your wallet. The only irony there is that you think what you said includes a contradiction

@grey providing goods and services at competitive prices is not the only freedom enabling component here. It’s also creating jobs and choices

@slowsounds im not using foxconn as the standard. I am using it as an example of something you will not boycott. Most people here have smartphones. I understand the “we can’t change how our smartphones are made but we don’t want to also allow it in our little niche synth community as well” argument. So I don’t want to keep going with semantics. I already said my problem was that people are using this as an opportunity to take the moral high ground. I see that behavior as an amalgamation of these larger seemingly innocuous attitudes about tribalism and altruistic superiority

I didn’t intend to antagonize anyone and I don’t want to sound like I know what I’m talking about. I really don’t know what kind of situations lead to employment in China or what other options they have. I was just saying maybe it’s not as clear cut as we think it is. I am willing to accept that I was probably wrong about that. I feel like I understand both sides of this argument for the most part. Or the fundamentals of both arguments. And it really is pointless to continue it. But I see something generally in these conversations that is deeply regressive and dangerous. Just the fact that I can’t open social media without seeing this fight all over the place is proof to me that some element of tribalism, how we perceive the bad guys, and what we are willing to do to prove that we are not on the side of the bad guys, are out of control

@Mangrove I also didn’t say “ there are no good choices so do nothing” and I wasn’t trying to align your opinion with mine. I was just agreeing with what you said about your buying choices not being significant in your political agenda, especially if you’re going to pick and choose which aspects of capitalism to rebel against

@karst I was reacting to the larger idea of cancelling or using some aspects of cancel culture to justify this weird anti Behringer thing. Injecting mora arguments into something where you may have alternate motivations for advocating against. But I was also highlighting the fact that we’ve gotten to a place where it’s become commonplace to say “I think you should reconsider what you said here”. Which may have just been “I would like you to think more carefully about this”. But I initially took it to mean “this could get you in trouble” over a conversation about synth clones. I really don’t want to be a boomer here. I just would like to see less of this. Particularly in non-political contexts.

But I’m done. This whole debate is ridiculous to me. Just felt like maybe it would help to point out this pattern I was seeing

#476

I all of buy this stuff (Moog, Mannequins, Behringer), but instead of wasting my energy either A. feeling bad about buying Behringer, or B. feeling good about buying boutique, I recognize these purchases as a means to an end. If there was a mass boycott organized in conjunction with other forms of action, I’d be all about it. Hell, if B’s workers are somehow form a union and go on strike, I sure as hell would boycott them. I would even donate to their strike fund.

Liberal, individualistic gestures on the internet are meaningless.

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#477

Ethics aside, it should be stated for the record that Behringer aren’t just selling reproductions. Sometimes, yes, but other times they are different. The team that is working on the 2600 is a great team, I look forward to the results. And their TR 808, having owned both, I think it’s OK for me to say that the new one is MUCH better in all ways.
It’s complicated.

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#478

I see the Apple-Foxconn example being dropped in here without a lot of context or historical perspective in order to support spurious arguments. The Apple-Foxconn affairs (and the “blood in your smartphone” panic that preceded them) are precisely the examples of why consumers should care about supply chain issues and should hold manufacturers accountable: the long-term result of the affair is that Apple increased their accountability checks of all their direct subcontractors (espcially Foxconn), and required that the components they use which contain tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold went through an iTRI (or similar) supply chain certification and thus are way less likely to be implicated in the black markets that funded the 2nd Congo war and continue to fund political instability in Central Africa. That’s not to say that there are no ethical problems with Apple and its products—obviously anything dependent upon extractivism has inherent problems—but to note that consumer participation does matter, and can make parts of a business’ workings run in an unambiguously more ethical way.

Having analyzed Music Tribe’s business profile and public face, this is a business that despite its large size does not appear to engage in any supply chain monitoring, that does not publish corporate social responsibility reports, strategically operates in countries where they can circumvent international agreements like iTRI, and being privately owned has no shareholder accountability. This is quite unusual for a manufacturer of their size in 2020. If their IPO ever floats, they will have some serious reckoning to do, since their current approach to PR is a shareholder’s nightmare.

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#479

I always thought that the DSI/Peter Kirn debacles were about Behringer’s IPO. The synth stuff has got to be considered a big driver of brand equity, and criticism/bad coverage in GS and CDM threatened that. I assume that the responses were so misguided because Uli completely calls the shots and there’s no space in Music Tribe’s management culture to second guess it.

The same goes for the Swing. Supposedly, there was some sort of poll where ‘people’ wanted a Keystep-like controller. So that’s the beginning of a product development cycle so unyelding that nothing derailed it, despite the the fact that many people involved the process MUST have known this would be an embarrassment to the company.

This whole post by Uli is sorta weird (beyond saying they don’t believe in shareholder value in the first sentence!) and sorta hints at their kind of blank/valueless corporate culture.

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#480

Who said we were talking about apple. Hell, Samsung’s entire corporate methodology was basically what Behringer does; stealing IP, flooding the market, losing lawsuits regarding said IP, having the lawsuit not matter because of their market dominance.

Again, the point I keep making is that Behringer is a symptom and not the disease. Targeted boycotts make sense, 50 people on a synth forum buying more expensive synths to make a difference in the world, just reeks of detachment from reality.

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#481

My reality is I get to choose what I buy, at least when it comes to musical equipment. I buy more expensive synths so my studio has instruments that don’t make me feel bad when I use them. That’s my reality. It’s great.

I’m sure a couple of cool audio items made there way into my eurorack. I am less ignorant now than when I bought them and will be more careful in the future.

In my world, synths are all luxury purchases. Why would I ever want to support poor business practices with my disposable income?
I have to make all sorts of compromises to live in the modern world. I’m not willing to make many compromises for a cheap version of a “vintage” analog synth.

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#482

Oh, my, this Molten Music parody is hilarious

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#483

Food for thought:

How many of you actively investigated the ethics of synths companies before you saw Behringer obviously pushing around venerated synth designers? I have worked at a few of these companies during my early 20s, and I can tell you that in many cases the respected American companies aren’t doing much better. At one company that I’ve never seen mentioned in terms of ethics issues, none of the workers had health insurance, which in one case led med to staying home from the hospital and nearly dying, and in another having to have a tooth, which had become infected because I left it untreated so long, broken apart in my mouth and extracted in pieces when I finally found a job with dental insurance. There was major crunch around the NAMM and the people who were lucky enough to get full time hours were working late so often they started to have mental health issues resurface, issues that would have conceivably been dealt with if they had insurance. At the time I worked there, I was often thinking of the workers in china who did the actual manufacture of the equipment we made and was told things by people higher up in the company like “Well… it’s not a sweat shop.”

This was in the San Francisco Bay Area and I would often see all of the synth celebrities whose IP everyone is deeply offended that Behringer is appropriating, they would hang out and have lunch with my boss.

Years after I quit I think there was a collective push and they all got healthcare, at least.

I’m not mentioning the name of this company because 1. it’s small 2. friends still work there and depend on that income 3. it has gotten marginally better.

Another time I was interviewing for a job with one of the top eurorack manufacturers. There was some miscommunication about the time of the interview, but one of the employees came out to talk to me, and I decided against the rescheduling the interview. The conditions were worse than the place I currently worked. The guy I talked to, which was a programmer for them, seemed so stressed and worn out and I unhappy, I was really put off from buying their products.

Someone in here posted that they are now going to check that synths they buy don’t contain Cool Audio chips. Good luck with that. Most synths are not bought in person, and typically they don’t let you come at them with a screwdriver. And clearly Behringer isn’t the only one you should be looking out for in the supply chain, so make sure you clearly investigate the BOM for every piece of gear you buy, as well as your household products, and those in the products of the companies whose services you use… I’m sorry the whole attitude of consumers taking the place of government safegaurds in their purchase of equipment thing just strikes me as absurd. Again, I think a targeted boycott aimed at either investigating or addressing particular labor practices is a good thing. Being smug about buying gear that makes you feel warm and fuzzy accomplishes nothing.

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#484

uh, but I get to feel warm and fuzzy. That’s what it accomplishes.

I’m not telling anyone else how to spend their money & I am definitely arguing against regulations.

#485

my instinct is that I very much agree with your baseline conclusion:

people patting themselves on the back because they choose to buy (re: can afford) more expensive synths made by the good people doesn’t do anything productive (and shrouds the many ways all electronics are problematic).

however,

assuming smugness on the part of people trying to have a discussion here accomplishes very little.

telling people having a conversation that they’re clearly posturing for appearances and their own sense of superiority accomplishes very little.

insisting that the you support mass boycotts or union organizing, but that a community discussing how it feels about the issue, a necessary precursor to any type of organization on the part of the customer, is useless makes no sense.

as you said, you found out negative things about a company that you had interactions and then…

…which is all this discussion is.

many people are coming to this question for the first time and most people are not career industry insiders who have grappled with this years ago and now see a greater need for more concentrated and collective action.

just for the ability to have a conversation about this, it helps to recognize that not everyone shares your context. I appreciate you providing more of that context, but I don’t enjoy your assumption of poor intentions by others.

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#486

I’m in favour of people calling out bad companies and having the discussions that will result in useful action against them, but definitely not up for it drifting into people using it for a pretext for one-on-one social media shaming/bullying of people who openly buy/use ‘uncool’ brands

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#487

It’s not at all about smugness. That’s a mischaracterization of how people (myself included) react to companies with unethical practices. It’s actually a much simpler calculus: how can I, as an individual in this world, behave ethically? In a capitalist society, one of the most ethical things I can do is choose how to spend – or how not to spend – my money. I don’t have any dreams of overthrowing Behringer or anything like that; I’m fully aware that my not spending money on their products won’t make much of a difference. Despite that, this is the only thing I can do as a person just trying to make ethical decisions in a complicated world. I won’t judge anyone else for buying Behringer’s stuff; I’m just making my own way through this confusing landscape.

This is a slippery-slope argument that doesn’t make sense to me. The thrust of this argument is that we can only ever make ethical choices if we have 100% of the information about the world, and since we’ll never have 100% information then we can’t make ethical decisions. This doesn’t hold water, to put it mildly. Of course we’ll never know everything about everything! All we can do is make decisions based on what we do know. We are all trying to make the best ethical decisions based on our (necessarily limited) understanding. If we follow that slippery slope, though, then we’re stuck in a land of moral paralysis where we don’t do anything at all; and that’s no way to be an ethical actor in this world.

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#488

The fact that you define your most important ethical choices as those of consumption is the problem. With regard to the slippery slope argument, it’s only a slippery slope if each of those things is a gradually descending scale of ethical precocity, which it is not. Moreover, a slippery slope is only a fallacy if you don’t show how one points leads to another, which I clearly have. Acting like the components in your system being made ethically is somehow better than the manufacture and assembly being unethical, is ignorant.

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#489

Sorry. I should have looked over what I wrote. I mean to definitely not arguing against regulations. (Double negatives on a Monday morning are dangerous.)

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#490

While I disagree with the use of the term “smug”, I was trying to think of a non-inflammatory way to make a similar argument - and now that you’ve already started it, I feel the need to chime in.

Buying expensive, boutique synths as opposed to the cheaper clones is not an ethically superior choice - it’s a choice from privilege. This action is simply shifting from supporting one unethical company to supporting another, less-bald-facedly unethical company, and then heaping conspicuous consumption on top.

It seems to me that the most ethical choice here is to either purchase a clone (or DIY option to minimize exploitative labor practices), and then donate the additional cash to a charity of your choice. If 10 people who would have bought an $800 Moog over a $300 Behringer take this course of action, that’s $5k going to charity - which is not an insignificant amount for many charities.

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#491

I don’t know how to feel about this.

there are genuinely destructive aspects to normalizing and actively supporting business practices that break the tenuous ability for small, inventive instrument makers to cobble together an existence based on their craft.

it’s fair to treat that concern lightly when weighed against, like, the issue of conspicuous consumption and privilege in society as whole, but I even in that context I still care a lot about the health of that community (or that sector of the market, if someone thinks that language is too naive or something).

the most ethical choice is to not buy any of this shit at all.

I think encouraging people to be intentional about when they unethically choose to consume resources for the selfish purpose of expressing themselves is definitely easier from a place of privilege, but it’s still a conversation worth having.

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#492

As someone who grew up poor, I was made to feel like badly about myself in a direct and less by people who could afford ethical brands of clothing, food, etc. I think we really need to change the conversation from how to shop better (which if you are poor isn’t an option) to how to work collectively towards systematic change. I am not saying it isn’t worth it to take action against behringer, not buy their stuff, whatever. I don’t think that using purchases as a way to feel good about yourself morally is okay. It’s strikes me as a bit like buying indulgences from the church or whatever. If you are upper middle class, or rich and can afford lots of fancy analog synth gear, you get to both have high quality stuff and look down on the people that bought the knock offs for being unethical, all while not questioning your own culpability in this system.

I’m happy to just take a moment to be a gadfly here and annoy people slightly by calling them smug and pointing this out them if helps forces a discussion about this in our scene. In the coming years building solidarity is going to be increasingly important, and in this elite circle of people helping to shape the tools, aesthetics and cultural practices of electronic music, it’s actually even more important to reflect seriously on the tactics we are using to deal with problems in capitalism.

On the other hand, I get where folks here are coming from, and I’m not trying to end this conversation. I just think it needs to go deeper and we don’t confuse everything and have our opinions about the tackiness of behringer ripping off and existing product cloud our judgments about the other aspects of what they do. I feel like the aesthetic and the moral are getting twisted up here. I think by kicking the hornet’s nest here, that was my goal. What happens when the fancy things that give you aesthetic pleasure also have origins that make you queasy, do you just ignore it because it makes you feel good. If so, can you really consider yourself ethical.

I am also someone who feels pretty strongly about labor ethics, and have been subjected to violence from an employer that was supposedly ethical and “liberal” (the University of California, Santa Cruz… happy to name names in this isntance).

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