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I too would live in a pinterest-ready castle filled with toys but i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is. The B&O of our generatio

I too would live in a pinterest-ready castle filled with toys but i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is. The B&O of our generation.

tomashubelbauer 4y ago
I am not saying I wouldn't love to be able to buy an OP-1 or an OP-1 Field for a lower price, I would absolutely love that. But no-one held a gun to my head and made me buy one for a retail price. It is a luxury synth, not a basic good like bread or water people's lives depends on. Everyone who buys a thing from TE and feels like they were ripped off should realize they volunteered to get ripped off.
smoldesu 4y ago
Yep. Ostensibly there's nothing wrong with making pricy hipster audio equipment, but the rampant success of their marketing just makes me facepalm. People out there genuinely think the OP-1 is a $1000 product in 2023, which should inspire riots in the street. The OP-1 Field raising the price instead of lowering it is the last nail in the coffin for me. $800 is a pricy toy - $1500+ puts you in brand-new Octatrack territory. Hell, that puts you in brand-new-Macbook-and-DAW territory. But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble. I sympathize with those people, but Teenage Engineering's products are like the Disney Star Wars hotel of audio equipment. It's a one-of-a-kind, pretty-looking, dumbed-down, expensive scam. Some people will defend it, and particularly affluent guests might even say it's worth the money. Undeniably though, much like every Disney park, TE's product line is built to fleece the customer. I've got half a mind to chew Moog out for the same thing, but they have legitimate excuses for why their instruments can't be mass-produced. Teenage Engineering doesn't.
- kubb 4y ago
  shouldn't there be a normally priced equivalent product on the market? it's not like we're talking about cutting edge silicon here
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    There are. Much like the Disney analogy, there are other cheaper theme parks on the market. The OP-1 is "unique" though, in the sense that (thankfully) nobody else is making a 4-track digital tape recorder anymore. There are hundreds of products like it, but much like the Star Wars hotel, nobody is dumb/rich enough to build a replica of Disney's attraction. I could name a dozen grooveboxes that can be had for under $300 today, but it's all sorta besides the point. People want the OP-1 because it's what they see on YouTube, not because it makes music. Considering how long the product has stagnated, I see no reason that it should cost as much as it does today.
    - bondarchuk 4y ago
      What are the options with similar portability, sampling, synthesis, fx, and multitrack recording, that you can buy new, and is not just an ipad or something, for under 300 dollars?
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        You've sorta missed my analogy. You can get a Novation Circuit, Electribe or even a brand-new Model: Samples for less than $300, but none of them are the "Star Wars Hotel" that the OP-1 is. I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much, but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does. They've "productized" an instrument that shouldn't cost more than $200 to manufacture at their scale. I'm mostly mad at how consistently stupid their target audience is, not the fact that they exist.
        bondarchuk 4y ago
        >I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much Show it, then. (and btw "half as much" is significantly more than "under 300 dollars") >but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does. Probably I will complain that it lacks synthesis, a multitrack recorder capable of making long tracks, an input for sampling, or something. (I agree the animations in TE stuff are silly though).
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  Most people are happy with it even though it's overpriced. Suggesting it's a scam insults peoples' intelligence. The same applies to the Star Wars hotel. It's not for you, nobody is holding a gun to your head making you stay there. For the people paying, it's worth it to them.
- avip 4y ago
  It's not normally called "scam" when you just take a simple product, wrap it with lots of marketing and branding, and overprice it. Or maybe it is, in which case the entire modern economy is a scam. Ok I see where this thread is going from here.
- criddell 4y ago
  What you call fleecing the customer, I call charging the market rate. If your employer offered you a raise, would you turn it down because you don't want to fleece the customer?
- prpl 4y ago
  A nice guitar costs just as much, despite being functionally equivalent to one 1/3 its price. There’s not a ton of rationality in music gear, people like what they like.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Why you are comparing guitar to a synth ? Nice guitar (aside brand tax) has actual cost to make it, plastic toy like OP-1 is very cheap in comparison. Hell, it's probably cheaper to make than random ass $500 behringer synth, even at unit count
  - Supernaut 4y ago
    With respect, that comparison fails, because a $1,500 guitar will be noticeably more playable and have a substantially better sound than a $500 guitar. (Source: have played guitar for 35 years.) The point people are making here is that everything the OP-1 does can be achieved or surpassed with a couple of $10 apps and a low-end general purpose computing device.
- jxf 4y ago
  > But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble. I don't know if this is the right analogy. Some people want to pay for features _not_ to be included in stuff because they enjoy the simplicity. There are phones that don't have a browser or let you download apps, for example. That's not a "scam", that's just marketing to people who want simplicity.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - psychomugs 4y ago
    Leica charges hundreds more for monochrome-only and screenless models of their cameras. The fact that there have been several generations of their suggests it's working and helps keep them afloat.
bookofjoe 4y ago
I dunno, I have always believed that something is worth exactly what someone else will pay for it. Value has no objective correlate: it is a construct agreed upon by the seller and buyer. "Overpriced," "rip-off," and their ilk seem to me ad hominem attacks by people who don't meet at "sold."
- duxup 4y ago
  Most people comparing products have a good understanding of what they mean by “value”. Isn’t what you’re describing more of a “market price” or something like that?
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    If the value is lower than the market price, how does the company continue existing? Unless there was a monopoly or some other kind of market failure wouldn't people just avoid the products of TE?
- playingalong 4y ago
  On one hand... On the other you have marketing which without changing the item/product itself might change its (perceived) value.
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  I agree something being overpriced doesn’t exist. However, rip off or scam is different. That’s intentionally selling one thing as something else. Mostly in the form of not holding up some end of a bargain.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Well, it is overpriced rip-off if you target consumers that don't know any better and could get better for less. But their customers know exactly what they are getting so it is not that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
fogforthought93 4y ago
[flagged]
goldenchrome 4y ago
It’s a luxury product! I’m guessing you just don’t enjoy luxury products. I don’t either, but then at least I can identify them. Some people like luxury.
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  Right. It’s like complaining that a Rolex is $15k because you can buy a just-as-good mechanical Seiko for $75.
SideQuark 4y ago
> i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is Yet people buy their products in large quantities, for well over a decade... They are used by top tier artists and consumer alike, and are used on many hit songs. If you think they're so overpriced, there should be a massive opportunity to undercut them and sell such quality for less. But no one has... Again, for well over a decade... Maybe they understand products better than people that don't make products.
- mattigames 4y ago
  The candles that "smell like my vagina" for $75 by Goop company owned by Gwyneth Paltrow also sold out at launch, doesn't mean that that there's an opportunity to undercut them with better and cheaper crotch candles, not in the slightest; to put it succinctly there is a huge amount of people that make irrational purchases and there is no need to pretend otherwise.
  - SideQuark 4y ago
    Your definition of irrational is not everyone's. I suspect you buy things other people would consider irrational, yet you buy anyways. Does that make you irrational? Or do different people have different utility functions? People buy what they want, not what you think they should.
    - mattigames 4y ago
      Nope, its not that subjective, and not about what I think or don't think I should, food is a product category that is fully rational to buy from and its one of the reasons its prices tend to be more stable and is strongly corelated to the hardships of the production chain, not all foods but certainly a lot, certainly the most basic ones (e.g. potatos). Just like buying a smartphone is a more rational choice than buying a rotary dial phone (assuming you have no phone beforehand), is not that subjective and is incredibly dishonest to even pretend that is so, and also you evaded the main premise that it was being discussed, meaning that you can just undercut a product by creating a cheaper/better one, because with a lot of products the line of thinking is a lot more complicated than that, sometimes predictable but irrational, in the case of Goop is due being the first one to came up with the idea and to be related to a female celebrity (and with it all the celebrity worship attached in culture)
sesm 4y ago
I don't think it's a rip-off. TE is working in 'expensive toy for rich hobbyists' market, not in 'professional music equipment' market.
odiroot 4y ago
It would be half bad if it wasn't for "synthfluencers" who peddle TE's stuff. The company would probably have been long gone under.
lykahb 4y ago
Luxury products cannot always be called a rip-off. They just target a certain audience with different values and less sensitivity to price. Also, the people who create music would be more enthusiastic about the equipment than people who buy purely consumer electronics. So, I'd expect they'd know the options and simply prefer the deal Teenage Engineering offers. In the modern audio landscape I'd rather pick Sonos as an example of a rip-off. High price, closed ecosystem, and data collection through the cloud services.

I too would live in a pinterest-ready castle filled with toys but i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is. The B&O of our generation.

tomashubelbauer 4y ago

I am not saying I wouldn't love to be able to buy an OP-1 or an OP-1 Field for a lower price, I would absolutely love that. But no-one held a gun to my head and made me buy one for a retail price. It is a luxury synth, not a basic good like bread or water people's lives depends on. Everyone who buys a thing from TE and feels like they were ripped off should realize they volunteered to get ripped off.

smoldesu 4y ago

Yep. Ostensibly there's nothing wrong with making pricy hipster audio equipment, but the rampant success of their marketing just makes me facepalm. People out there genuinely think the OP-1 is a $1000 product in 2023, which should inspire riots in the street. The OP-1 Field raising the price instead of lowering it is the last nail in the coffin for me. $800 is a pricy toy - $1500+ puts you in brand-new Octatrack territory. Hell, that puts you in brand-new-Macbook-and-DAW territory. But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble. I sympathize with those people, but Teenage Engineering's products are like the Disney Star Wars hotel of audio equipment. It's a one-of-a-kind, pretty-looking, dumbed-down, expensive scam. Some people will defend it, and particularly affluent guests might even say it's worth the money. Undeniably though, much like every Disney park, TE's product line is built to fleece the customer. I've got half a mind to chew Moog out for the same thing, but they have legitimate excuses for why their instruments can't be mass-produced. Teenage Engineering doesn't.

kubb 4y ago
shouldn't there be a normally priced equivalent product on the market? it's not like we're talking about cutting edge silicon here
- smoldesu 4y ago
  There are. Much like the Disney analogy, there are other cheaper theme parks on the market. The OP-1 is "unique" though, in the sense that (thankfully) nobody else is making a 4-track digital tape recorder anymore. There are hundreds of products like it, but much like the Star Wars hotel, nobody is dumb/rich enough to build a replica of Disney's attraction. I could name a dozen grooveboxes that can be had for under $300 today, but it's all sorta besides the point. People want the OP-1 because it's what they see on YouTube, not because it makes music. Considering how long the product has stagnated, I see no reason that it should cost as much as it does today.
  - bondarchuk 4y ago
    What are the options with similar portability, sampling, synthesis, fx, and multitrack recording, that you can buy new, and is not just an ipad or something, for under 300 dollars?
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      You've sorta missed my analogy. You can get a Novation Circuit, Electribe or even a brand-new Model: Samples for less than $300, but none of them are the "Star Wars Hotel" that the OP-1 is. I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much, but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does. They've "productized" an instrument that shouldn't cost more than $200 to manufacture at their scale. I'm mostly mad at how consistently stupid their target audience is, not the fact that they exist.
      - bondarchuk 4y ago
        >I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much Show it, then. (and btw "half as much" is significantly more than "under 300 dollars") >but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does. Probably I will complain that it lacks synthesis, a multitrack recorder capable of making long tracks, an input for sampling, or something. (I agree the animations in TE stuff are silly though).
xdfgh1112 4y ago
Most people are happy with it even though it's overpriced. Suggesting it's a scam insults peoples' intelligence. The same applies to the Star Wars hotel. It's not for you, nobody is holding a gun to your head making you stay there. For the people paying, it's worth it to them.
avip 4y ago
It's not normally called "scam" when you just take a simple product, wrap it with lots of marketing and branding, and overprice it. Or maybe it is, in which case the entire modern economy is a scam. Ok I see where this thread is going from here.
criddell 4y ago
What you call fleecing the customer, I call charging the market rate. If your employer offered you a raise, would you turn it down because you don't want to fleece the customer?
prpl 4y ago
A nice guitar costs just as much, despite being functionally equivalent to one 1/3 its price. There’s not a ton of rationality in music gear, people like what they like.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Why you are comparing guitar to a synth ? Nice guitar (aside brand tax) has actual cost to make it, plastic toy like OP-1 is very cheap in comparison. Hell, it's probably cheaper to make than random ass $500 behringer synth, even at unit count
- Supernaut 4y ago
  With respect, that comparison fails, because a $1,500 guitar will be noticeably more playable and have a substantially better sound than a $500 guitar. (Source: have played guitar for 35 years.) The point people are making here is that everything the OP-1 does can be achieved or surpassed with a couple of $10 apps and a low-end general purpose computing device.
jxf 4y ago
> But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble. I don't know if this is the right analogy. Some people want to pay for features _not_ to be included in stuff because they enjoy the simplicity. There are phones that don't have a browser or let you download apps, for example. That's not a "scam", that's just marketing to people who want simplicity.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- psychomugs 4y ago
  Leica charges hundreds more for monochrome-only and screenless models of their cameras. The fact that there have been several generations of their suggests it's working and helps keep them afloat.

bookofjoe 4y ago

I dunno, I have always believed that something is worth exactly what someone else will pay for it. Value has no objective correlate: it is a construct agreed upon by the seller and buyer. "Overpriced," "rip-off," and their ilk seem to me ad hominem attacks by people who don't meet at "sold."

duxup 4y ago
Most people comparing products have a good understanding of what they mean by “value”. Isn’t what you’re describing more of a “market price” or something like that?
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  If the value is lower than the market price, how does the company continue existing? Unless there was a monopoly or some other kind of market failure wouldn't people just avoid the products of TE?
playingalong 4y ago
On one hand... On the other you have marketing which without changing the item/product itself might change its (perceived) value.
ryanSrich 4y ago
I agree something being overpriced doesn’t exist. However, rip off or scam is different. That’s intentionally selling one thing as something else. Mostly in the form of not holding up some end of a bargain.
ilyt 4y ago
Well, it is overpriced rip-off if you target consumers that don't know any better and could get better for less. But their customers know exactly what they are getting so it is not that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

fogforthought93 4y ago

[flagged]

goldenchrome 4y ago

It’s a luxury product! I’m guessing you just don’t enjoy luxury products. I don’t either, but then at least I can identify them. Some people like luxury.

ryanSrich 4y ago
Right. It’s like complaining that a Rolex is $15k because you can buy a just-as-good mechanical Seiko for $75.

SideQuark 4y ago

> i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is Yet people buy their products in large quantities, for well over a decade... They are used by top tier artists and consumer alike, and are used on many hit songs. If you think they're so overpriced, there should be a massive opportunity to undercut them and sell such quality for less. But no one has... Again, for well over a decade... Maybe they understand products better than people that don't make products.

mattigames 4y ago
The candles that "smell like my vagina" for $75 by Goop company owned by Gwyneth Paltrow also sold out at launch, doesn't mean that that there's an opportunity to undercut them with better and cheaper crotch candles, not in the slightest; to put it succinctly there is a huge amount of people that make irrational purchases and there is no need to pretend otherwise.
- SideQuark 4y ago
  Your definition of irrational is not everyone's. I suspect you buy things other people would consider irrational, yet you buy anyways. Does that make you irrational? Or do different people have different utility functions? People buy what they want, not what you think they should.
  - mattigames 4y ago
    Nope, its not that subjective, and not about what I think or don't think I should, food is a product category that is fully rational to buy from and its one of the reasons its prices tend to be more stable and is strongly corelated to the hardships of the production chain, not all foods but certainly a lot, certainly the most basic ones (e.g. potatos). Just like buying a smartphone is a more rational choice than buying a rotary dial phone (assuming you have no phone beforehand), is not that subjective and is incredibly dishonest to even pretend that is so, and also you evaded the main premise that it was being discussed, meaning that you can just undercut a product by creating a cheaper/better one, because with a lot of products the line of thinking is a lot more complicated than that, sometimes predictable but irrational, in the case of Goop is due being the first one to came up with the idea and to be related to a female celebrity (and with it all the celebrity worship attached in culture)

sesm 4y ago

I don't think it's a rip-off. TE is working in 'expensive toy for rich hobbyists' market, not in 'professional music equipment' market.

odiroot 4y ago

It would be half bad if it wasn't for "synthfluencers" who peddle TE's stuff. The company would probably have been long gone under.

lykahb 4y ago

Luxury products cannot always be called a rip-off. They just target a certain audience with different values and less sensitivity to price. Also, the people who create music would be more enthusiastic about the equipment than people who buy purely consumer electronics. So, I'd expect they'd know the options and simply prefer the deal Teenage Engineering offers. In the modern audio landscape I'd rather pick Sonos as an example of a rip-off. High price, closed ecosystem, and data collection through the cloud services.