Are we seeing the decline of the plug-in industry?

[Vectorman]

Sorry to perpetuate the OT tangent, but it has to be said...

To the people who think that human civilization was such a bad idea and is a pox upon the pristine earth, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Lead us by example. Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth, in full harmony with nature, changing nothing about your environment and bending yourself to its will. I mean, seriously, if you think the other animals are living the right way, practice what you preach and go live as they do. But you don't want to do that, of course. You'd rather stick around and posture as some fount of wisdom with all this trendy, pretentious babble about the depravity of human civilization while at the same time you enjoy all the comforts the same civilization you denounce has made possible for you.

I was just watching Cosmos the other day and was reminded of the reverence and awe Carl Sagan had for humanity and the pursuit of knowledge. He didn't regard the dawn of our rational faculty as some insignificant blip on the radar of time, but as an amazing, important event that what came before had been slowly leading up to. What a contrast to so many dreary, nihilistic people today who seem to have no reverence or respect for anything to do with their own species. Personally, I find Carl's take on humanity a lot more inspiring and constructive.

[Lotuzia]

I agree with a lot of the observations made, the pricing is WAY out of line, way ridiculous at too many plugin makers. The freeware today puts many commercial makers totally to shame.

Freeware is not free, it's a gift to the community. The development time for good freeware plugins is typically going to be somewhere between several weeks and months, even a year is possible. If your favorite book author spends a year on writing a kickass novel, will you expect that for free? I don't think so...

Furthermore there can be other costs involved in making plugins, not just development time. It's easily possible to invest thousands into other aspects like GUI Design, Soundsets, Customer support, a well written manual, etc.

Of course some stuff may be overpriced, but more often than not, what you pay is a fair price. Now in the holiday season, typically a lot less than that

Richard

Simple +1.

As for the winner of the DC12 contest, who imho deserves it, its not really totally freeware, because its a contest with prices, so its still another hybrid and more complicated model. Somewhere it looks like the community has given herself tools via KVR ( donations model ) to get a bunch of nice instruments. But people who did not donate will also have the instruments for free too. Hmmm not so simple. Hybridation and innovation in the model, I'd say, thanks to a generous community. Its quite unique in the plug ins world.

Even more hybrid because commercial developpers gave some prizes too, so it seems very strange that people like Telenator opposes the two worlds. Imho they compliment each other quite nicely : Those who want to go only freeware have nice nstruments, and those who want something else are free to do so. Freedom.....

But who am I to discuss all this, when so many people KNOW how the world should rule ............

LtZ

[tehlord]

I think it's not cracks nor any kind of technical decline. It's the opposite imho - the brands named here (Waves and Lexicon) are companies which can no longer keep up. It's the name they are selling, but with more and more smaller companies providing often way better products for way lower prices, they just need to adapt.

I can't speak for the lexicon plugins as I've not used them, but I've been very impressed with Waves recent products. With the regular sales and Waves Universe I think they already have adapted, but people have yet to perceive that change properly.

[BERFAB]

I think it's not cracks nor any kind of technical decline. It's the opposite imho - the brands named here (Waves and Lexicon) are companies which can no longer keep up. It's the name they are selling, but with more and more smaller companies providing often way better products for way lower prices, they just need to adapt.

I can't speak for the lexicon plugins as I've not used them, but I've been very impressed with Waves recent products. With the regular sales and Waves Universe I think they already have adapted, but people have yet to perceive that change properly.

The Waves thing is a very interesting phenomenon. Just 2 years ago, I would have never thought that I'd be a customer of theirs. Their plugin quality had (and still has) the reputation of being among the best. But also the most expensive.

As far as the 'expensive' part goes, this was only partly true. While you needed some serious funds to actually buy into the Waves lifestyle, this was really only because of the way the plugs were bundled and marketed. On a per-plug basis, the cost was actually quite reasonable.

So what happened? Well, someone did the calculation that you could capture more money with different bundling and aggressive/competitive pricing. And, they un-dongled it.

So now, a guy like me--serious hobbyist with grand aspirations--can catch a few sales and have a whole arsenal of Waves stuff for not a lot of upfront investment. And, Waves gets a bigger client/fan base plus some serious cash flow.

The tricky part of this is maintaining the exclusive/quality/cool factor, which they seem to have accomplished with things like their 'signature' lines and specialty bundles.

Like anything else in a competitive environment, you've got to play your strengths and distinguish yourself from the pack.

-B

[Angus_FX]

Current deep discounts on Lexicon. Current deep discounts on Waves software. Ongoing sales by a wide variety of software manufacturers.

Are Kracks killing the industry?

No. If cracks were going to kill the industry, they would have done so a long time ago. Piracy hasn't gone away, but it's less of an issue than it has been for some time - and anybody in this day and age who writes a business plan for a plugin company without taking some degree of piracy in to account is a fool.

Are the software developers trying to fight piracy with lower (and lower) prices?

No. They're trying to fight other companies for a (perhaps) diminished pool of money. There's not a whole lot of point in doing a 10% sale at a time of year when everybody else is going in with 40% - it's either go deep or don't play at all. There are good and valid arguments for both (broadly comes down to building up a healthy sized user base vs. maintaining the perceived value of the product).

I don't see any signs that the industry is in long term decline. Some parts of it aren't doing so healthy (big-box retailers with poor value-add), others are doing just fine (direct model & retailers with genuine value-add). There was perhaps a bit of oversell in the years leading up to the crash.. as in so many other things (cars, houses, computers) a lot of people got sold things that were way too big for their actual needs, people with no technical literacy whatsoever were sold the idea that they should be producing radio-ready recordings on a $5k PTLE setup, when a simple $5 iPad app might have served their recording needs adequately & left them with a whole lot more time to refine their musical craft. So there's been a correction for that, and there's plenty of competition out there for whatever disposable income people have, but there's more than enough market out there to support a decent ecosystem of companies, individual inventors and R&D projects.

[tehlord]

There's a lot to be said for the sell large numbers for little money.

The 'app' business model has shown that can work. It's probably the best way to combat piracy too.

€150 for a compressor is a significant investment, $50 on the other hand is almost an impulse buy.

[pdxindy]

Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth

Caves are quite often dry and not at all filthy... just sayin

[V0RT3X]

Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth

Caves are quite often dry and not at all filthy... just sayin

I want a secret base in a cave with all the modern amenities please.

[Angus_FX]

tehlord - yes, as long as you don't hit something approaching market saturation (or at least diminishing returns) before you've covered your costs. The nice thing with the iOS App Store model is that this is almost free and frictionless (at least if you can get your app noticed at all).. the entire potential audience will get to hear about it sooner or later, and it's a piece of cake for them to buy when they do. The rating, popularity, review model helps the cream rise to the top. So you can post an app for $5, spend almost nothing on marketing, and know that if it's good they'll flock to you.

The plug-ins market doesn't work quite like that - there isn't a single point of sale or a single communication channel, the majority of marketing influence seems to be offline word-of-mouth between friends, the ceiling on the market is low enough - and the incremental trust, hassle etc. costs high enough ("how does this web site work?", "do I trust this developer?", "where did I put my wallet?"), that it's not so easy to make an App Store-style pricing model work. Just getting through to potential customers can cost money (even the most word-of-mouth-centric companies seem to take out banner ads!) and if you're only making $5 per sale, the amount you can spend to reach each customer is proportionally smaller. If there were a million potential customers out there, it might work, but realistically there just aren't.

What seems to happen is that the market optimizes towards sweet spots, those have become progressively lower over time, but unless a new innovation comes along that makes it possible to reach ten times as many customers for the same marketing spend, there's no particular reason to think things will get much cheaper than they are right now.

[tehlord]

I'm not suggesting for one second that complex VST plugins that took years to developed should be put on the market for $5, but perhaps there's a trade off between price and potential market size. Let's assume that it's students and less well off countries that consume the most pirate plugins. Who knows how many of them would actually buy a plugin if it came within the realms of a luxury purchase that they could save up for. I don't for one second believe that all consumers of warez do so because they are immoral twats (although a large percentage surely are), but there's a genuine impossibility for some people to pay. No excuse for piracy obviously, but give them the option to afford it and perhaps some of them will.

[hibidy]

Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth

Caves are quite often dry and not at all filthy... just sayin

I want a secret base in a cave with all the modern amenities please.

I heard this guys is up for sale

[robotmonkey]

I don't for one second believe that all consumers of warez do so because they are immoral twats (although a large percentage surely are), but there's a genuine impossibility for some people to pay. No excuse for piracy obviously, but give them the option to afford it and perhaps some of them will.

I'm pretty sure the immoral twats are a minority. These include commercial studios who make money out of their activities, and those producers and musicians who pose in magazines with warez plugins. Most of the so called pirates are probably kids, people who just want to check something out, or whom music is just a hobby and so they have to carefully consider their investment in stuff etc. I'm sure a lot of the pirated stuff often hardly gets any use at all, as many people seem to download everything just because they can.

Also personal sharing always has been and will be a part of software distribution. Cracks have always existed and will continue to exist. I remember when people were sharing floppies in the 90's. This happened amongst the members of academic community exactly like among the kids. And also there were a lot of talk about piracy like now. But then somehow most of the software developers had quite a sensible understanding of how things were. Everyone agreed that commercial piracy was bad, but most of the devs were were openly admitting that when it comes to personal sharing they rather have people pirating their products than their competition's. It's probably the shock effect of internet that has devs worried - it makes sharing software easier and maybe openly widespread.

But hell, seeing some of the stupid DRM measures taking hold recently, I would not condemn anyone if they would say that crackers provide a valuable public service - like consumer protection or something like that.

Now lets assume we could come up with a perfect anti-piracy solution. Lets assume a closed Apps shop. In the end it would hardly make people rush out and buy stuff. It probably would actually alienate a significant amount of possible future customers. This hypothesis is supported by several recent academic studies that show that there is a strong link between downloading and consumption - those who download stuff are the most interested customers who also buy stuff.

As I said before, I'm sure as long as there are developers who continue to make innovative quality products with good support they continue to stand out and find customers even in an oversaturated marketplace.

[SODDI]

Sorry to perpetuate the OT tangent, but it has to be said...

To the people who think that human civilization was such a bad idea and is a pox upon the pristine earth, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Lead us by example. Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth, in full harmony with nature, changing nothing about your environment and bending yourself to its will.

Join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement!

http://www.vhemt.org/

[hibidy]

I volunteer!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ericj23]

Sorry to perpetuate the OT tangent, but it has to be said...

To the people who think that human civilization was such a bad idea and is a pox upon the pristine earth, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Lead us by example. Quit posting on the damned internet, renounce society and go live in a cave to shiver in the muck and filth, in full harmony with nature, changing nothing about your environment and bending yourself to its will.

Join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement!

http://www.vhemt.org/

Do I get to do the extinguishing of the volunteers?