Honest product reviews are an important part of customer choice. Throughout the many years that Ray, Jared, Darren, and I have done our exhaustive written reviews of DJ gear – and they take a long time (sometimes months) to do properly – we strived to maintain integrity, give a fair shake to the company that supplied to product, and always made sure to leave our readers informed when they decide to take the plunge on new gear.
And as Mark would always say: “Break out the screwdriver”.
While the topic of this video is about how much influence a review can have on the financial health of the product’s company, there’s a more important sister topic he goes into: what role should reviews play in a product’s development?
My take
Marques is right that reviews are unlikely to control the fate of a company. Bad products, bad customer relationships, poor ethics are.
This has a been long running discussion within the team. The role reviews play in the product cycle. One thing that’s clear is that manufacturers/developers have every opportunity to benefit mutually from good quality product reviews. Even ones of bad products.
Reviews of DJ gear need to be trusted. They should be more than just a run through of what the product does. They should offer the benefit of experience, informed opinion, honest feedback, and improve future products. Companies need to look beyond the overall sentiment of a review and understand the point of the details. They should listen to the constructive feedback. Talk with reviewers beyond wining and dining to butter them up (which does happen far too often). And some do reach out.
Over the years we’ve gotten involved at different stages of the product lifecycle: sometimes early on to offer feedback on prototypes, sometimes during a review when there’s been problems or confusion. But very occasionally, after the dust has settled, they’ll ask to listen to our experiences with hardware as a reviewer and user. When that happens, it’s to make the next attempt better.
An example of this would be feedback on the colour scheme of the Xone mixers between the 23/43 generation and the Xone:PX5… There were real visibility problems with the black/orange/white print along with the bleed in the LEDs making it hard to be precise. This was revisited and improved, making the Xone:PX5 a much better low-light user experience, which is vital for a club environment.
It’s why the idea of review scores can be a double edged sword. On one hand, it’s a way of quickly gauging the impressions of the gear, on the other, it can have a danger of skipping the nuance of the feedback within the review itself.
As a reviewer, you quickly learn that whatever happens, someone, somewhere will be unhappy. You give a bad review, you have unhappy PR people emailing and calling, or enraged fanboys calling you a liar. You give good reviews, and you are accused of being inaccurate, or taking bribes… sometimes you even get someone from a rival company unhappy and claiming it’s wrong. All you can do is recount your honest experiences.
Lastly, playing it safe with product development doesn’t mean it’ll be immune to criticism. Boring iterative products can themselves be poor products, aimed at iterative customers. Companies can and should sometimes be brave, reviewers should respect and nurture that bravery, even when the product doesn’t quite meet expectations. In an industry that seems to be collapsing in on itself, these monolithic megacorps are the most risk averse.
Smaller more agile companies like Vestax (or really, even Native Instruments a decade ago) are rare now, but that’s where you’ll see the innovation. On the software side, the likes of djay and Virtual DJ seem to continually push the boundaries. Boutique controller manufacturers try new things, and there’s always a market (however small) for modular gear.
A juxtaposition to the DJ technology industry is the audio product market. This is seemingly continually innovative, with plenty of cottage businesses meeting specific needs, a vast swathe of small software companies developing all sorts of plug-ins and apps, and plenty of cross platform industry standards.
Ultimately, it seems that as choice within the DJ tech world dwindles, nuance between different products within categories evaporates, and it does become harder to make gear reviews relevant and meaty.
Let’s hope there’s a rejuvenation in the DJ tech world and we see more choice, more fun, and more risks.
Your take
What do you expect from a review, as a potential customer? How much do you importance do you place on reviews of gear you’re looking to buy?
