Yeah, I think this is the on-line thing that Roy is talking about. It seems the industry is currently stuck in the 20th century. Lee posted early on about the ever increasing costs of paper and ink. One way around this is to get rid of the paper and ink. To be fair I have not done all of the business analysis around print subscription vs youtube. But I know I would pay for a subscription to a TAS youtube channel if the content is there. I would much rather watch a series of videos than read a review. Jay is up to 10,000 subscribers which should say something. The youtube videos, in general, are much more engaging and educational. Besides Jay there is Hans Beekhuyzen, GR Research, Darko audio, New Record Day, and many others. All of these people are just single, passionate individuals producing great content. Much like Harry Pearson was back in the day when printed magazines were the way to communicate to a large audience of enthusiasts. I am struggling to understand how a company that already has a fleet of reviewers and the respect of the industry can't make this happen.
For a TAS youtube review , take the RH review of the XVX system as an example. I see a whole series of videos for this. one that focuses on the unpackaging and setup. One that would be an interview with Stirling Trayle on his observations of the setup process. One where RH talks about what all he is hearing and describes the sound and then, of course, a video or two where some recordings are done of music playing on the system. Of course, each of the videos is going to have advertising just like all youtube videos do. but in this case the advertising would be audio related.
I can hear you guys now -- "Youtube sound is so bad why bother." Two reasons. One is that I can't hear anything when I read a RH review. The second is that even with cheap headphones I can hear a clear difference between two presentations in Jay's videos. For example, when he compared the solid state (Gryphon,Solution) vs Tube (VAC 450,Master) it was very easy to hear. But, an even better solution would be to put the FLAC files up on a server for download/streaming. Then we don't have the compression thing on youtube.
Maybe Lee is already working on this. I hope so. Too slow to change and evolution usually takes care of these things.