Reverb Sold By Etsy to Fender Parent and Firm Led By SoundCloud Alum

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Hmmm...

Robot arms with pincers...

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Coincidence?

I think NOT!






Reverb's Spidey-sellers are DOOOMMMMED!!!

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They are not too Draconian but they take particular offense to the wording in listings. For instance, my Pompeii IS a Fuzz Face, right down to the text and faux stomp pad.

But the only time I ever had my listing flagged was when I called it a fuzz face in the listing.
It's arbitrary. I currently have at least two listings with Fuzz Face in the title that have been there for a month.
 
Specifically Harmonic Percolators and Zvex stuff. Both of those asshats pursue cloners. I don't clone artwork, but I also don't obfuscate or relent. Ebay let's them bitch but stops short of any real action, but Etsy era Reverb was swift and done by real, and malicious people.
My experience with takedowns is that they wouldn't work with you to be compliant with their policies either. Wouldn't even indicate if the non-specific issue was the title, description, or pictures.
 
Boutique builders complaining about micro-scale cloners as if they didn't get their start by building clones themselves, insinuating that their own production pedals aren't clones either
In partial defence…
As I understand it, (living U.K., used to work for a US corp)
To protect a trademark in the US you have to show you have defended it. So if they don’t want to loose their trademarks they kinda don’t have an option but to defend their trademarks.
 
In partial defence…
As I understand it, (living U.K., used to work for a US corp)
To protect a trademark in the US you have to show you have defended it. So if they don’t want to loose their trademarks they kinda don’t have an option but to defend their trademarks.
Then along comes little old me me telling their customers that all their trademark is worth is a $300 paint job over 50p in parts.
 
I always felt like Reverb (at least in the "Etsy-Era") was super arbitrary with regards to trademarked names/titles/etc.

I've experienced all of the following outcomes:

1. Listing suspended, virtually no correspondence, no way to un-suspend

2. Someone from Reverb would just change the title of my listing to something "generic" and send an email saying nothing more needed done

3. Get asked to remove the name from listing, upon which taking the PedalPCB approach of "Compare to" would be totally fine: for instance, "PedalPCB Paragon - Compare to Analogman King of Tone" could be used as the listing title and it was A-OK

4. Have a listing flagged due to a trademarked name in the title, but no mention or issue with the fact that the first line of the listing would say in bold text "THIS IS A CLONE OF (#####)"

It got to the point where it was almost a bit of a game to see what would fly or not....But really it seems to pretty much be dependent on A.) whoever reviews the listing and B.) the item in question's original manufacturer (as mentioned, Zvex, Fulltone, etc are particularly protective)
 
Parallel topic, but I'm curious how much of that came from the Etsy ""craft"" side of things, with smurf accounts selling cheap MiC tees, towels, shower curtains, or other interpolations of people's art, etc. And with the sheer mass of those types of sellers, their understaffed teams just implemented a blanket, quasi-automated, detached method to simplify the process. A few of my artist friends had terrible experiences 15+ years ago with places like Spring—where they got squeezed out of any profit they would have made—and it seems Etsy experienced an influx of those fleeing those sinking ships. Then after that, it didn't help that you had Etsy seller smurf accounts where people outright steal that art and peddle MiC garbage trash. (don't get started on major corporations doing it, too)

Harder to get seen, harder to sell, the more loud and clout-y making it hard for people to sell what they're legally allowed to. Not unlike youtube's content matching gordian dumpster fire.

***

Tangent, but has anyone priced out / experienced Stripe Atlas? A friend told me about it, and on the surface it seems less expensive than having to go the decade-old route of hosting + wordpress + magento/woo/shopify. I honestly don't know. But then you're on your own for marketing, SEO, etc.
 
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