PSA: Make sure to cancel your Pro Tools Expert "subscription"

[YYR123]

5 million views a year with all those ads - I bet the site pays the mortgage pretty easily nowadays

Your absolutely right you have a choice to charge and you shouldn't have to defend it, as well we do have a choice to pay.

Just as in life I believe it takes us different directions for a reason .....Cheers Mike all the best

[DonaldM]

Mike, Thank you for your response and explanations. As I said earlier, I will continue to use PTE and recommend the videos whenever appropriate.

Keep up the good work.

Donald M

[Dudiester]

Hi guys, I honestly do not remember signing up for this service either but saw that I had been charged for 7 months without using the service! I seen a several PTE reviews and I find they’re way too careful to not saying anything negative about a product or make direct comparisons to other competitor’s products. I think they want to remain friendly to all companies to potentially keep advertising open to them. With a million and one plugin and virtual instrument makers on the market we need quality criticism to help quickly guide us through “just another damn plugin” (that someone thinks is alright) to educating us about something that is ground-breaking, extremely efficient or a significant upgrade to mainstay plugs. Agreed that most of their announcements are mostly rehashes which might be useful to some. I don’t like being overly critical but I just don’t see these guys as in depth enough with the software to be experts. However I think they likely do a great job for newbies.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Dudiester

Hi guys, I honestly do not remember signing up for this service either but saw that I had been charged for 7 months without using the service!

How on earth did they get your CC info?!?!

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Dudiester

Hi guys, I honestly do not remember signing up for this service either but saw that I had been charged for 7 months without using the service! I seen a several PTE reviews and I find they’re way too careful to not saying anything negative about a product or make direct comparisons to other competitor’s products. I think they want to remain friendly to all companies to potentially keep advertising open to them. With a million and one plugin and virtual instrument makers on the market we need quality criticism to help quickly guide us through “just another damn plugin” (that someone thinks is alright) to educating us about something that is ground-breaking, extremely efficient or a significant upgrade to mainstay plugs. Agreed that most of their announcements are mostly rehashes which might be useful to some. I don’t like being overly critical but I just don’t see these guys as in depth enough with the software to be experts. However I think they likely do a great job for newbies.

Did you ever sign up for their 'free' trial period?
And you're not being overly critical as regards in depth coverage. To me the only person worth his salt is Mike Thornton aka Mr. RX. Russ is more patzer than expert.

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

How on earth did they get your CC info?!?!

If one signs up for the 'free' trial period they ask for your credit card info and you have to specifically opt-out at the end of the trial period if you don't want to continue. They also don't tell you when the trial period ends - no email or anything. You don't know until you look at a card statement and see a strange billing. Happened to me a few years back as detailed here. The billing name on the card did NOT match what I signed up for. I tried using the website cancel function and that didn't work and ended up going through my card company to get things taken care of.

[Mike Thornton]

Originally Posted by Dudiester

Hi guys, I honestly do not remember signing up for this service either but saw that I had been charged for 7 months without using the service! I seen a several PTE reviews and I find they’re way too careful to not saying anything negative about a product or make direct comparisons to other competitor’s products. I think they want to remain friendly to all companies to potentially keep advertising open to them. With a million and one plugin and virtual instrument makers on the market we need quality criticism to help quickly guide us through “just another damn plugin” (that someone thinks is alright) to educating us about something that is ground-breaking, extremely efficient or a significant upgrade to mainstay plugs. Agreed that most of their announcements are mostly rehashes which might be useful to some. I don’t like being overly critical but I just don’t see these guys as in depth enough with the software to be experts. However I think they likely do a great job for newbies.

Hi Dudiester,

Mike, editor of Pro Tools Expert here. Thank you for your feedback, it is much appreciated. There are a number of comments you have made that I feel I need to address.

On the issue of your credit card being charged for 7 months. The video platform we use for both our free tutorials and our premium tutorials is hosted on a 3rd party platform run by a company called Pivotshare and it is their payment policy that when you took advantage of the free 7 day trial (which you must have done, even if you cannot remember) you will have needed to enter your credit card details when you signed up and if you felt that you didn’t want to start paying for our video platform then you had the opportunity to cancel. Also because it is now a monthly subscription, you are not committed to an annual payment, so if you decide not to continue paying for our video platform you can cancel at any point and the longest you have to wait is one month. Yes even with the 7-day trial you will have to provide your credit card details. This is Pivotshare’s terms and conditions, but you can cancel at any point during the free trial period and you will not be charged at all. But you have to cancel your subscription with Pivotshare, we cannot cancel your subscription for you as we do not manage their payment system.

Regarding your criticism of us being too friendly with brands when it comes to reviews, I have to take issue with that. Firstly we have a very clear review policy which you can read in full on the site, but essentially we will not revise or be told by brands what to say in our reviews even if a brand is spending money with us. We are very clear with all brands that we must retain our editorial independence or we are lost and I need to stress that we will (and have done so on a number of occasions) immediately part company with brands you ask us to modify our opinions in articles and/or reviews. The smart brands get this and respect our editorial independence.

You say "With a million and one plugin and virtual instrument makers on the market we need quality criticism to help quickly guide us through “just another damn plugin” (that someone thinks is alright) to educating us about something that is ground-breaking, extremely efficient or a significant upgrade to mainstay plugs." You are absolutely right and that is what we try our best to do. There is no way we can review every one of those million and one products, so what we try and do is highlight the ones that we feel are worth your while taking a second look at. If a brand asks us to review a product and we don't feel that it is worthy of a review we will say so, but we do this behind closed doors, we don't shout about it on our site or other forums. The same goes with us providing feedback to brands on how to make a product better. We provide feedback in private and then if and when they improve the product we will consider reviewing it again at that point. With our tutorials, we try and walk that tightrope but it isn't easy to get that balance correct and a tutorial that hits the spot for one person will be boring and of no interest to another.

With regard to your critic that "Agreed that most of their announcements are mostly rehashes" we always rewrite press releases when we put together a product announcement story.

Picking up on your view that "I just don’t see these guys as in-depth enough with the software to be experts" Firstly the ethos about the Experts brand is that we do not profess to be the experts on our own, but that together as a community, whether is is ProTools, Logic Pro, Studio One or Synths, together we are experts, because usually, someone in the community has the answer to an issue. That said, we have a very experienced team, just take a look at the Team page we have a lot of experienced and talented people on our team who work incredibly hard to bring as much high-quality content which everyone can access for free.

We do not profess to have all the answers, we are all learning new things every day and as humans, we don't always get it right every time. If you have some suggestions for more "in-depth" content then I would like to hear about it.

In addition, if anyone can concerns or questions about what we do, then my door is always open. Please use the Contact Us page to get in touch.

The same goes if you or anyone else would like to contribute content to the site, please do get in touch.

[musicman691]

Trying to cancel through Pivotshare was a nightmare when I tried it. Had to go through the PTE site as at the time there was no direct line to the company.

My advice is to never EVER signup for something that's 'free' that asks for your credit card info. Free should be really free with no strings attached.

[Mike Thornton]

I don’t like being overly critical but I just don’t see these guys as in-depth enough with the software to be experts.

I would just like to introduce some of our team members...

Kevin Becka - Kevin has been a recording engineer for over 25 years and a musician since he was 11 years old. He's been on the production teams for the top names in music including Kenny G., Quincy Jones, Michael Bolton, George Benson, George Lynch, and more. An experienced educator, Kevin is currently the co-director and instructor at The Blackbird Academy in Nashville. He has taught advanced recording at Belmont University, surround recording and lectured at the Danish Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was director and instructor at the Conservatory of Recording Arts for over 10 years. Kevin is also an experienced audio journalist and author who has worked as editors of Pro Audio Review and Audio Media USA, technical editor of the industry-leading Mix Magazine for 15 years, and is the author of The Blackbird Academy Foundations, a book on must-know audio and recording principles.

Alan Sallabank - Alan started in Bristol, at Video Village, Bristol Post and BBC Bristol, and was lucky enough to work on some major productions, including with Aardman Animation and the BBC Natural History Unit. Over the years Alan has been a dubbing editor, Foley / ADR recordist, re-recording mixer, sound supervisor, head of audio, technical director and now he runs his own company 8dB Sound Limited. He sat on the BSi committee that set up the LEQ(m) standard for theatrical commercials and trailers and was for some time on the AMPS Council. Alan has specialised in surround sound and digital audio, starting with Steinberg Pro12, AudioFile, Pyramix, Sadie, Akai, Waveframe, Sound Station and ProTools. He did his first Dolby Surround mix in 1993, and his first 5.1 mix in 1997.

Julian Rogers - He has a background in live sound and has been a Pro Tools user since 2001. He has been working in education since 2006, during which time he has introduced many new users to Pro Tools. He is a Certified Pro Tools Instructor and is very familiar with the mistakes and misconceptions common to new users.

Then finally myself - Mike Thornton is Editor of Pro Tools Expert and has been working in the broadcast audio industry for all his working life, some 35 years as a broadcast engineer at Marconi and then Piccadilly Radio & Key 103. He has been an OB engineer for Piccadilly Radio and then with his own sound OB truck Omnibuss Mobile. He has worked with Pro Tools since the mid 90s growing up with it when it was 4 tracks on a good day with a following wind! He has been recording, editing and mixing documentaries, comedy and drama for both radio and TV as well as doing the occasional music project.

I hope that demonstrates that our combined expertise is sufficient to help support more than just the newbies in the Pro Tools community :)

[YYR123]

Mike have you ever thought about doing a video of a session (music) from start to finish?

I really liked puremix’s videos with Andrew shepps (I mean Marley Session, and a RHCP mix, what’s not to like)

Those in-depth videos are really what I consider as valuable (obviously I am not the only one on the planet, nor have I considered what is most profitable for you guys just what I want most as a consumer)

A music session at Blackbird Studio sounds like an amazing video product .

Three Parts

Studio Setup
Recording / Mixing
Mastering / Delivery / media types

Have each for sale!!!


I would consider purchasing that series....depending on Genre obviously

[Mike Thornton]

Mike have you ever thought about doing a video of a session (music) from start to finish?

Hi 'YYR123', Thank you so much for this idea. We will definitely look into it, and asking Kevin to do it would be cool.

Thanks again, please keep them coming...

Mike