Oh for the semi-professional or amateur musician/composer - the word "endorsement" really strikes an enticing vision of free or hugely subsidized instruments that one has been coveting for a very very long time. The Bankses/Wakemans/ Emersons (or rather the Godfreys/Wilsons/Rudesses) must be very well endorsed since they always had the latest greatest to fly around and gig with - their talent obviously emanating from the value of the gear and being shown in the most positive light, lending them additional credibility and further stoking the instrument companies to further pad their caches with yet greater and more feature rich instruments that further enhance their fame and adulation...
I'm not sure in reality this is entirely true - but I mean, it was something that for sure I wanted to partake in for a long long time. Once you got an endorsement - you joined the well respected musicians club and everyone thought you were the shit!!
Back a few years ago, when I was recording "The Sound of Thoughts" - and even though I didnt really know it at the time, but recording production release quality material at home which was also fairly good musically was extremely rare - I pulled in some of my Microsoft clout and contacted companies who created/manufactured both software and hardware instruments asking if they would be interested in me as an endorsee... I was suitably humble and highlighted that this was both a true musical endeavor, but really more likely simply a hobbyist type release that would have potentially zero impact in the real world. But I sent off samples of the material showing the quality of what we were doing, and since it was pretty rare for artists to be recording at home with pro quality gear and using VSTs for both synth and guitar processing - I gained some endorsements!! IK Multimedia sent me their entire catalog at the time - T-Racks, Amplitube and Sample Tank software packages that were very expensive for the home hobbyist; Native Instruments sent a ton of stuff - all VSTs but their lineup was incredibly high quality; PRS cut me a discount deal on their at the time brand new line of CE Singlecuts and I received the first production line Black Cherry SE Singlecut equipped with the USA Dragon II pickups! I'd had a working relationship with Charlie Steinberg at the time - supporting the dev team adapting a new C++ runtime - and after working with him tracking issues for more than 18 months, he so graciously sent me a copy of the then brand new SKU of Cubase SX3.0, signed by the development team with a word of thanks!
I very prominently promoted the products - in the CD liner notes, on my website, etc... Since I wasn't a "name" artist, I didnt get any marketing money from the companies, but hey, wth :) They gave me stuff, and the website and various online reviews did the rest of the promotion for me.
Following up for "a fine line between..." - I tried doing the same thing. By this point, home recording became far more prevalent since the profitability of the product grew very thin and artists needed any economic advantage they could get to turn a profit. Companies were also suffering through the same recession I was, and so I was de-prioritized - no longer an endorsee nor eligible for product at gratis...
Now I come to today, and the ongoing search for the "killer app" that will make a big difference in my efforts. I've been eyeing a company that makes an integrated solution for recording workstation and very powerful software based synthesizer/workstation. Over the weekend I established contact - they are not a large company, in fact they tend to make boutique keyboards that encapsulate the needs of the purchaser. But I can see an opportunity for myself and the company to mutually benefit from an association... my background in both recording and performance allowed me to list several items that would benefit the company from a musician standpoint, plus my technical background working for a very large microprocessor manufacturer allowed me to try to give ideas to lead them into a direction which might be highly interesting to said microprocessor company. I have a great deal of interest in this company both in my day job and my musician life - there is a great potential to create a system here that would have high cross purpose appeal and highlight strongly features that a manufacturer would love to show as being very valuable and appealing to everyone.
I've sent the email off with my ideas - numerous and also a bit disorganized but potentially visionary - now to await the reply and hopefully an ongoing dialog...
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