Quote Originally Posted by Effem View Post
It's all well and good having an "open source" of information, BUT, that is an entirely selfish viewpoint and I would ask you to turn the tables to imagine that it was YOU that spent many years and every spare penny you had creating a new innovative product, only to chuck it out on the internet FOR FREE and let the vultures descend on it? I think not somehow.
I am of course coming from a different place as you say (didn't fancy a full quote in the post) - I've come entirely from the secondhand market , buying old magazines to try to work out what's out there and what was supposedly good and bad. In that context you can get so much for relatively cheap that there almost doesn't need to be an industry any more (from my way of doing things) only a servicing and upgrade industry.. Then again I'm fairly non- (sometimes even anti-) consumerist and everything electronic I use, computers, phones etc seems to be secondhand or restored or upgraded old stuff. OK, I got a 6 month old phone recently and I did buy a Blackberry Playbook cos they were discontinuing them for very cheap... otherwise..

Still, I don't see that it's anyone's particular right to earn a living in any field - you make it work or you don't! If people don't want to pay for new expensive gear because they can have a boutique manufacturer make something just as good from vintage valves etc, then that's the market and that's the competition. No subsidies for a flailing industry unless there is some kind of cultural heritage involved.

I noticed that a dealer's ebay account had clocked up £120k in sales in last month alone! Selling some DIY stuff, cables, vinyl care products.. some sub £500 good gear too, but not the mainstay of their sales. (Use www.goofbay.com ebay tools to check on seller's turnover for the last 30 days..)

The service market, upgrade market! £120k per month! OK, might be a peak time of year but still.. they've got the right idea. That could subsidise getting a good product to market, even as a deliberate tax loss. I remember a small youtube video by eBay from a seller called Good-Hifi (no longer trading) had a £1m or so annual turnover with old Leak tuners, vintage stuff.. said he could do more but didn't want to get bogged down in hiring other employees..

In other words, there's plenty of money about in the hobby but big ticket items are not looking as good value for money these days. People can ask what they want for stuff, their right, but they've no reason to expect people to go along with it. The market will speak (as free market fans will say).