What's new

Why Software/Hardware Have A Positivity Bias

Markrs

Complete Beginner
If you watch or read reviews often you will find the majority are always positive and negative reviews are pretty rare.

Positive reviews are very beneficial to sales, this has been this way for a long time. This is why even "consumer" reviews are gamed on places like Amazon, where you might get sent a random item you didn't pay for, so that a positive review of the product can be posted on Amazon buy the purchaser.

The main issue is most reviewers get a copy of the software for free, or if hardware sometimes free, sometimes a "loaner" of the hardware. They will want to keep a good relationship with the company, especially if they are an advertiser, or have affiliated links to the product in the description.

In my view this creates 3 types of reviewer:

Type 1 (Positive Reviewers) - They will only reviews items they like and anything they don't like, they don't review or mention. They will often say this at beginnings of reviews, however this means all their reviews are positive.

Type 2 (Influencers) - These reviewers will often call themselves "influencers" and tend to review everything they are sent (sometimes they are also paid) and only find the positive in it and never comment on any shortfalls except occasionally in passing.

Type 3 (Purchasers) - They have normally bought the item themselves and so tend to be more honest. However it takes a lot of time to create a review, especially if it is a negative review. Negative reviews are when it is particularly bad, or not fit for a specific purpose.

The result of this is that you end up with a lot more positive reviews for everything, this asking with aggressive sales is a reason for GAS and the subsequent buyers remorse.

One of the reason I use comments on forums like this to gage the quality of an item is because it is much harder to game the reviews. The negative is they are often short comments, often limited to a specific aspect of the product, though you can then normally ask further questions.

Whilst most people will know all of this, it is helpful hopefully to new people coming into music production or composition to be aware of the type of reviewer they are reading or watching.
 
I've written reviews for about fifteen years for one of the most ancient computer magazines in my country. We were nerds coming from the age of the software code lessons included as a detachable supplement. The magazine had a positive vibe, but also contained critiques that caused debate with readers and manufacturers.

Then the magazine was bought by the main financial paper, and started only reviewing products from companies that could also support it with advertising. They did the same with the whole technical publishing in the country. Negative reviews were no longer a thing.

It lasted a few years, and then all the technical publishing simply disappeared. Nobody wants to pay for stories they already know.

Paolo
 
If you watch or read reviews often you will find the majority are always positive and negative reviews are pretty rare.

Positive reviews are very beneficial to sales, this has been this way for a long time. This is why even "consumer" reviews are gamed on places like Amazon, where you might get sent a random item you didn't pay for, so that a positive review of the product can be posted on Amazon buy the purchaser.

The main issue is most reviewers get a copy of the software for free, or if hardware sometimes free, sometimes a "loaner" of the hardware. They will want to keep a good relationship with the company, especially if they are an advertiser, or have affiliated links to the product in the description.

In my view this creates 3 types of reviewer:

Type 1 (Positive Reviewers) - They will only reviews items they like and anything they don't like, they don't review or mention. They will often say this at beginnings of reviews, however this means all their reviews are positive.

Type 2 (Influencers) - These reviewers will often call themselves "influencers" and tend to review everything they are sent (sometimes they are also paid) and only find the positive in it and never comment on any shortfalls except occasionally in passing.

Type 3 (Purchasers) - They have normally bought the item themselves and so tend to be more honest. However it takes a lot of time to create a review, especially if it is a negative review. Negative reviews are when it is particularly bad, or not fit for a specific purpose.

The result of this is that you end up with a lot more positive reviews for everything, this asking with aggressive sales is a reason for GAS and the subsequent buyers remorse.

One of the reason I use comments on forums like this to gage the quality of an item is because it is much harder to game the reviews. The negative is they are often short comments, often limited to a specific aspect of the product, though you can then normally ask further questions.

Whilst most people will know all of this, it is helpful hopefully to new people coming into music production or composition to be aware of the type of reviewer they are reading or watching.
I agree with this. You won't get much negative in most cases from people who got the library for free to review it. A library can be quite expensive. They tend to just take you through it, glow in a few places and leave out the problems. Also sometimes you have to use a library for a while before you find some of the faults and people who get the library for free want the review out there asap maybe before getting to know it. Very often those folks will take a pass on a review rather than do a bad review so as not to endanger them getting future free libraries.

There is another category which is just people who showcase a library. Nothing against that but you don't usually get much negative from those showcases and they don't really call it a review but it kinda is a positive endorsement in my opinion.

I'm thinking the only two reviewers I've ever seen go negative are Daniel James and Cory Pellezzari. James puts some time in with the library and really does understand the strength and weakness from his point of view as a working composer. I often disagree with some things but my priorities are different and the contrary opinion is very useful even when one disagrees with it. I appreciate the brutal honesty over the sort of Mr. Rodgers reviewer approach you usually see.

At least on this forum you will often see the problems of libraries begin to pop out. Sometimes people nitpick things and get on the total opposite side of those glowing reviewers and that's kinda problematic too. But at least the negatives get put on the table. You see that when Spitfire puts something out lol. People get hung up on some single negative aspect and can't objectively view the rest.

So it's really great when people post separate threads (not the release thread) of a library to share their honest opinions and experiences with something.

Oh and one other thing, often you don't get comparisons to other similar libraries in those "glowing" reviews. That's because sometimes when you compare one library to another you can see that one is clearly better or a better value and it might not be that nice free library the reviewer just got. Comparisons are important in a real legit review.
 
I thought this was a great example of the positivity bias. Has to do with the brand new Baby Audio Taip plugin. If you watch videos on it almost every one out just takes the plugin by itself and puts it on a track. People play around with it. Nobody compares it to anything else or even looks at what it is actually doing to the audio.

This is the first review I've seen on this plugin that does this and it isn't very positive.
 
In my early days of researching gear and plugins, I didn't know all this and gave weight to the online reviews. No more. My first tip was how they all mostly recommended the same stuff in any "best" article and even said the same things and almost all of it positive, rarely even the slightest criticism. Then I heard about how they get kickbacks (essentially) from companies for positive reviews and dismissed them outright.
 
Top Bottom