The State of Digital Discourse: What a Sentiment Analysis Reveals About Popular Music Producer Forums

[LinkedMusicians]

Marketers have been using sentiment analysis to better understand consumer data since the 1990s. Google has been refining it — using it for analyzing what becomes search results — for more than a decade. Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) quantifies emotional tone and attitudes from text. So I provided Google’s Gemini AI tool with uniform criteria to analyze and measure toxicity and the politicization of the major legacy forums plus the developer forum LM’s beta group came from and put the results side-by-side in a chart. I designed LinkedMusicians based on being the antithesis of the toxicity, bias, trolling, sniping, culture wars, bigotry, and developer- and advertiser- focused censorship of those forums, and one year after our public launch, I wanted to see how Google’s AI finds we compare to the legacy forums. It’s one thing to build ethical and non-toxic policies for a community; effectively implementing those policies is a completely separate challenge. I believe that we’re on track. But I wanted to know what Google’s analysis found.

In the blog post, I share the unedited results of the analysis. Please check out the blog post and share your thoughts below. What  do you think? Does being in an environment where you won’t be trolled or censored for a post sharing a negative opinion of a developer site owner, advertising, or affiliate partner matter to you?  Do you find that toxic environments stifle open and honest conversations?

[See the full post at: The State of Digital Discourse: What Google’s AI Analysis Reveals About Popular Music Producer Forums]

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

5

[LinkedMusicians]

On a lighter note, I’ve trained Gemini not to give the kind of praiseful comments popular Large Language Models (LLMs) are programmed to give users. I want facts and analysis, not programmed compliments. Subsequently, the results are often brutally frank. For example, I cut and pasted in my first draft of the blog post linked above  and Gemini responded that it was excellent, but that it read like a “white paper.” The response made me smile. I realized that it was right. I tend to write out facts in a very analytical manner on a first draft and later come back to inject personality and humor into content by the second or third round. Consequently, I revised the post to be a lighter, more enjoyable read, and made the headline less dry and more newsworthy.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

6

[fretman]

I’m surprised at some of the toxicity percentages posted in your blog. Some are much too forgiving/optimistic. I’ve sensed the toxicity right away in some of those forums.

Studio One, Windows, RME UFX, Yamaha MSP7

2

[LinkedMusicians]

On fretman said

I’m surprised at some of the toxicity percentages posted in your blog. Some are much too forgiving/optimistic. I’ve sensed the toxicity right away in some of those forums.

I largely agree.

I find that VI-Control is easily 10x more toxic than any of the other big forums. When it’s mentioned by developers and composers that I know — the word most often heard is “toxic.” Gemini is analyzing a snapshot, one moment in time and that moment might not be a period of high toxicity. But I do think it made some accurate statements about each of the forums it analyzed. It provided additional analysis beyond the chart, but I wanted to keep the information manageable. I find no other LLM does these analyses at the same level of depth of Gemini. Google’s deep index and Knowledge Graph give it an edge that no other AI has. I’ve gone deep and did prompts on various developers and individuals I know and have been amazed at how much information Gemini knows about privately owned businesses and their private situations.

Gemini isn’t going to share all the details of how it arrives at its analysis. But if this were a project where I had a PhD to work with, I would want to design it so there are a series of analyses over, say, a period of 30 or 60 days.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

2

[joegyork]

Thanks Peter – the blog is really interesting and confirms what we all either knew or were becoming increasingly aware of in terms of the toxicity of certain platforms and the civility and kindness of this one. I imagine if you put Facebook through this process it would come out as 80% toxic!

2

[peter]

On joegyork said

Thanks Peter – the blog is really interesting and confirms what we all either knew or were becoming increasingly aware of in terms of the toxicity of certain platforms and the civility and kindness of this one. I imagine if you put Facebook through this process it would come out as 80% toxic!

I completely agree with you on Facebook. But I don’t think VI-Control is any less toxic than Facebook. And don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of wonderful people there and at every one of those forums. It’s really more about management, policies, the tone management sets, and what they permit. While I realize that the idealism behind LinkedMusicians is unlikely to happen in these profit-centric communities, I think they could all do much better IF their management cared to do better.  I think that a community like LinkedMusicians could survive long-term if it had enough funding to do the advertising it took to reach a large group of targets. But on its own, as it is, I would need to continue to be the primary sponsor. It’s very difficult to persuade people to fund something they think of as free.

There’s an old saying in the digital world — if you’re not paying, you’re the product. These forums, especially the developer-owned VI-Control, are really just marketing tools for developers. They’re not designed around musicians. Music producers are the target market, and the prey. And in some cases, like VI-Control, you’re getting some of the most deceptive marketing practices that you’ll find in any legitimate industry online today. That was the inspiration for this experiment called LinkedMusicians. If I had the time and budget, I would continue LinkedMusicians for much longer.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

2

[LinkedMusicians]

I just made the official announcement. I leave it up to you folks to work on influencing what you can to push against deceptive marketing and demand better ethics in this space. LinkedMusicians served as my attempt to build what I wish existed. Hopefully, it planted some seeds about ethics, transparency, and civility that might influence things at some point.

The Evolution of LinkedMusicians

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

3

[fossile]

probably need some more: KVR, Fender Studio One, Avid Pro Tools, Home Theater, AVS 🙂

also, i would probably exclude things like “off-topic”, and “coffee house” etc sections since by design they’re meant to be a free for all.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by fossile.

[LinkedMusicians]

On fossile said

probably need some more: KVR, Fender Studio One, Avid Pro Tools, Home Theater, AVS 🙂

also, i would probably exclude things like “off-topic”, and “coffee house” etc sections since by design they’re meant to be a free-for-all.

A community’s policies for user behavior have to be implemented consistently across the community, not allow anything goes. A free-for-all should never mean permission for allowing racist, bigoted, or hyper partisan rants. That’s reprehensible. No ethical forum permits that. Now, I realize that you and I might have a philosophical difference on that call. Obviously, I  created this place with a specific mission against toxicity, trolling, racism. bigotry, politics, religious proclamations — the very stuff that flourishes at Cakewalk Discuss and violate their community guidelines, which they’ve basically stopped implementing in recent years. That’s likely due to BandLab writing off the Forum has basically just there for legacy reasons. Third-party estimates are that Cakewalk Discuss, in whole, receives less than 50,000 active users per month, for a $450 million software company with a social media property with millions of users, that’s the equivalent of a rounding error on the balance sheet at best. Now, I get if you take a more libertarian perspective and say — anything goes, including bigotry, trolling, harassment of other users, let the community members fight it out. But that would qualify as a toxic community. Even if you enjoy that kind of environment, it still falls under the title of toxic.

Gemini was examining the entire Coffee House Forum, BTW, which includes the Deals forum we grew out of. I actually never spent much time at the Cakewalk Coffee House. I didn’t share the more detailed analysis that Gemini provided to keep things simple and stuck to the chart summary. I thought it did a great job of analyzing the various sites.

My take, I would rate VI-Control as the most toxic forum — by far. Though it’s a ghost town, I included Cakewalk Discuss Forum because our early members came out of it, but it easily ranks as the second most toxic forum at this point. It’s always been hyperpartisan, but the air was sucked out of it when there was a group attack against an LGBTQ member last year (one of our members alerted  me and I copied the text of the pages; candidly it was shocking to see the moderation fail an LGBTQ member being harassed and bullied so blatantly; it appears that Gemini noticed that, but didn’t make a specific reference to it in the more detailed summary it made along with the chart). Back when I was part of Cakewalk Discuss, that was the kind of thing I was openly reporting, and getting shut down; clearly, since I left no one has been doing that. I would put GearSpace in third. While I registered there many years ago, I never felt it was a fit for me. It’s, far too often, people getting angry over petty things. But I’ve since learned, largely from one of our members who is a former music magazine co-editor, about their practices, that are very consistent with what Gemini described. I would rank KVR last for toxicity. It’s there, and that is why I eventually gave up on a forum I once loved. I still stay in touch with a moderator from there and I made a bunch of friends from the 00s at KVR. I just think that they grew so fast they couldn’t manage moderation and, all too often, there are waves of trolls that suck all of the oxygen out of the place. But, like all of these forums, it has become a money grab. Still, on a relative basis, out of all of the forums included in this analysis that aren’t LinkedMusicians, KVR would rank as the one I like the best.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

1

[swijaya]

Still, on a relative basis, out of all of the forums included in this analysis that aren’t LinkedMusicians, KVR would rank as the one I like the best.

So, your toxicity leveling is actually the opposite of Gemini’s?

Btw, I like the blog post, and this is exactly why you should keep blogging.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by swijaya.

[LinkedMusicians]

On swijaya said

Still, on a relative basis, out of all of the forums included in this analysis that aren’t LinkedMusicians, KVR would rank as the one I like the best.

So, your toxicity leveling is actually the opposite of Gemini’s?

Btw, I like the blog post, and this is exactly why you should keep blogging.

Well, I definitely am not saying that I know more than Gemini or that I did formal analysis, I didn’t. My take comes down to this. I’ve spent a lot of time at KVR in past years. I know what developers I respect and trust have told me about the ownership, and I’ve known one of the moderators for around 20 years, we’ve been connected of Facebook and I think he’s a great guy with a good heart. I don’t believe that the owners of KVR have shown any signs that they are deliberately okay with toxic environments. I think the problem there is effectively moderating a community that large. I think the others on the list are well-known in the industry for problematic practices, where I don’t need to go beyond what Gemini wrote. I think of all of the forums on that list (not including LM), KVR is the one community and that list where I don’t think the problem lies with the ownership’s deliberate actions (now I’m taking the manipulation that Gemini wrote about off the table for that statement because i just don’t know enough about the acts) , but is the result of not being able to effectively police a very large community. I would attribute the other forums’ issues to being a reflection of the owners’ values or lack thereof.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

2

[LinkedMusicians]

I think I’ll add this to the blog post in an update. I ran a marketing sentiment analysis (it is what marketing strategists do to better understand how people think instead of guessing!). These are the unedited results (I ran LinkedMusicians  after running everything else, and for some reason it came out formatted slightly differently; I just cut and pasted the results here). You can tell that I just ran this from the negative sentiment terms about LinkedMusicians that are a reference to moving the community to the subreddit):

Market Sentiment Analysis: Legacy Forums vs. Modern Alternatives

Composer Forum

Positive Sentiment: Professional, Expert, High-level Research.
Negative Sentiment: Toxic, Elitist, Gatekept, Censored, Conflict of Interest.
Market Perception: The “Gated Country Club”—valuable info, but you must “bend the knee” to the old guard.

Gear Forum

Positive Sentiment: Massive Archive, Historical, Peer-to-Peer.
Negative Sentiment: Snarky, Outdated, Boomer Energy, Unwelcoming to Beginners.
Market Perception: The “Old Bar”—lots of shouting and “back in my day” arguments.

Plugin Forum

Positive Sentiment: Essential Database, Functional, Transactional.
Negative Sentiment: Ghost-town (Forum), Cluttered, Transaction-only.
Market Perception: The “Filing Cabinet”—good for finding a plugin, but not for building a community.

LinkedMusicians

Positive Sentiment: Safe, Transparent, Ethical, Unbiased, Signal-over-Noise.
Negative Sentiment: Niche, Work-in-Progress, Target of External Trolls.
Market Perception: A purpose-driven community focused on protecting independent creators. It is recognized for prioritizing “Human-First” ethics and factual data (like the NI Insolvency Hub) over the “pay-to-play” and gatekeeping culture prevalent in legacy forums.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

3

[swijaya]

It even recognizes LM as “target of external trolls” LOL

There’s no escape from AI, no matter how hard some people resists. Sure, it needs to be regulated, and there isn’t enough regulation (yet?). Really “all & everything AI is bad & evil” movement isn’t going to succeed. In fact, instead of “ban all AI,” they need to push their passion for “responsible & regulated AI.”

 

1

[LinkedMusicians]

On swijaya said

It even recognizes LM as “target of external trolls” LOL

There’s no escape from AI, no matter how hard some people resists. Sure, it needs to be regulated, and there isn’t enough regulation (yet?). Really “all & everything AI is bad & evil” movement isn’t going to succeed. In fact, instead of “ban all AI,” they need to push their passion for “responsible & regulated AI.”

 

Recent external attempts to smear this community’s reputation are a documented reaction to our Zero-Tolerance policy regarding hate speech. Specifically, after addressing multiple instances of antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric—including direct threats made against our members on legacy platforms—we have seen a coordinated retaliatory campaign. LinkedMusicians was founded to be an ethical alternative to environments where ‘No Politics’ is used as a shield for bigotry. We remain committed to that governance model, regardless of anonymous detraction.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

1

[LinkedMusicians]

On a lighter note, “Boomer Energy” — that gave me a laugh.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

[swijaya]

@linkedmusicians I found out that the above AI analysis is quite spot on (within my very limited knowledge & time involved on those forums). That’s the reason my remark about AI.

Also, after seeing an announcement from a notational software that it now supports an AI synthesis plugin (which the creator has stated openly that all voice sources are willingly recorded, compensated, and earn royalties as their voices get used), which enables it to sing the notated lyrics, was met with some comments regretting the software’s “AI use.”

I appreciate you naming those prejudicial users. I recognized them as active posters elsewhere.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by swijaya.

2

[LinkedMusicians]

On swijaya said

@linkedmusicians I found out that the above AI analysis is quite spot on (within my very limited knowledge & time involved on those forums). That’s the reason my remark about AI.

Also, after seeing an announcement from a notational software that it now supports an AI synthesis plugin (which the creator has stated openly that all voice sources are willingly recorded, compensated, and earn royalties as their voices get used), which enables it to sing the notated lyrics, was met with some comments regretting the software’s “AI use.”

I appreciate you naming those prejudicial users. I recognized them as active posters elsewhere.

I operate here under my real name because transparency is the foundation of a healthy community. My career and background are public record, as is the history of the coordinated harassment we’ve seen from anonymous actors who rely on vitriol rather than discourse.

I’ve heard from many creators who were targeted by bad actors on other platforms. I believe it is a professional and moral necessity to ensure our communities are free of racism and bigotry. This isn’t about ‘politics’—it is about the basic safety and dignity of our members. Our community includes friends from across the entire political spectrum, but we are unified by one standard: a zero-tolerance policy for hate and targeted harassment.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

12

[Author]

Posts