If your inbox is anything like mine, hardly a day goes by in which you don’t receive a flurry of emails telling you about the latest innovations in music technology. I can live without the emojis in the email headers (yes, I’m sure my mixes would indeed be ‘fire’ if only I bought your software), but I’ll never tire of scanning through a press release to see if a new product could slot into my studio workflow.
Scanning music technology press releases is my job, so I’ve got quite good at it, but it can still take me a surprisingly long time to sift through the waffle before I learn that a “Game‑changing innovation leveraging the latest technology” is a USB interface with a DI input on the front. A picture, though, speaks a thousand marketing words, so it’s often quicker to just spin the mouse wheel down to the bottom of the email and click the ‘images’ link so you can see whatever it is you’re being marketed.
From a purely practical point of view, a nice hi‑res photo of the back panel of a piece of hardware will tell you volumes about it in a matter of seconds. Take a peak at the rear panel of any audio interface, for example. Does it have eight XLRs? If so, I can record drums with it. Does it have ADAT I/O? Then it could probably replace my current interface. Does it have a Dante port? Then I can’t afford it. And so on. A front‑panel photo will likewise be instructive (although, curiously, the blanker and plainer the front is, the more likely it’ll cost thousands, especially if it also has a Dante port round the back).
I’ll never tire of scanning through a press release to see if a new product could slot into my studio workflow.
But the real fun is in the ‘in use’ or ‘lifestyle’ photos. They serve a useful purpose in giving you a sense of scale, so you can see just how tiny the latest Teenage Engineering gizmo is, or whether a new groovebox could fit in that bit of space between your mouse and your MIDI keyboard. They are also, of course, intended to inspire you to buy the product in question. But for me, those photos are a chance to enjoy a world in which home studios are spacious, welcoming rooms, tastefully decorated in the Scandi‑chic style, bathed in soft natural light, where there are no unsightly tangles of cables, where desks are free of clutter, and gear is artfully placed so that everything is in reach, inviting you to play. I can (and do) spend hours looking at these photos, only to look down at my own desk and see coffee rings, crumbs, cables and chaos. And I wonder if I could ever live like the invisible producers in these minimalist marketing studios do.
So, in their own way, these marketing departments do inspire me — if only to have a little tidy‑up every now and then. And perhaps to wonder if I should buy a pot plant...