KVR Audio

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:09 pm

(Commercial) Plugin shops shouldn't distribute free plugs at all, IMO. Plugin Boutique is the only shop which does this to attract some customers... But I've never downloaded any free plugin from them, I don't even have an account there. I found my free plugs mainly at KVR, Gersic and VST4Free, and most of them I downloaded at the developer pages...

CableChannel · Post by **CableChannel** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:14 pm

Don'tCrack also has free plugins on their site.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:22 pm

CableChannel wrote:Don'tCrack also has free plugins on their site.

At least they have a (download) link to the developer sites and they don't distribute anything from Tokyo Dawn Labs...

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:35 pm

FabienTDR wrote: http://www.pluginboutique.com/product/16-EQ/952-SlickEQ

Well, if it's any consolation, I just tried that link and it went directly to their home page, and SlickEQ did not show up in a search, so I guess they pulled it.

Timman · Post by **Timman** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:47 am

Sounds like a real bad "business plan". Never bought from them anyway.

Robmobius · Post by **Robmobius** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:56 am

Hmmm.... I think I bought one of their own plugins ages ago.

Think I'll pass in the future. Cheers for the headz up.

LimboLoves · Post by **LimboLoves** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:21 pm

I have six reward dollars but nothings that cheap. I hate to waste them.

Plugin Boutique · Post by **Plugin Boutique** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:21 pm

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Dear KVR community

We thought it would be a good idea to leave a response to this thread to give our view of the scenario presented.

Pluginboutique.com is a site that has paid and free plugins. The free plugins resource aims to bring the best free music software from a variety of small and independent developers in one place which can be easily searched and rated by musicians across the globe.

We either host the plugins (actual installer) with the consent of the developers, or link directly to their website – and are sure to credit them and provide links to their website for site linking and in order to gain them traffic. This is all done in good faith and while we are also running a business selling paid plugins this resource is totally free and is also setup to give good exposure to the developers who have free resources available which we feel are creative and useful tools.

The scenario with this plugin, “Slick EQ” is that it's a collaborative project between Variety of Sound, Vladgsound and Tokyo Dawn Records. We already have an agreement in place with Variety of Sound and Vladgsound to link to their free plugins (not host the installer) and we noticed this new plugin and added it to the site late friday afternoon.

We would like to point out that links were included on the SlickEQ description page to both parties and we did NOT host the installer.

Where we made a mistake was that we didn’t get express confirmation from Tokyo Dawn Records to link to the plugin, and in retrospect – we should have.

For that we apologise, the link was live from Friday afternoon last week.

On Saturday we were contacted by Tokyo Dawn about the issue, and as soon as the email was picked up – the product was removed, less than 24 hours from when we were contacted.

This was a simple mistake in good faith and we do feel that our response time to it was fast, and that we were simply trying to expose another great free plugin to the masses which has a positive effect for us in bringing the best free software to music producers around the world, and giving exposure to the developers.

Again we apologise for the error in communications and that we assumed the plugin was covered via our agreement with the other two developers mentioned.

We hope that you will not judge us unfairly over this small indiscretion – we are just a group of guys trying to bring the best plugins and music software to you in a great website, we also develop our own plugins and we make mistakes just like everybody else.

Best Regards

The Pluginboutique.com Team
www.pluginboutique.com (http://www.pluginboutique.com)

bbaggins · Post by **bbaggins** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:46 pm

Excellent response.

So Fabien, if they never hosted the installer and merely linked to your site, what harm did these "parasites" actually inflict? How is it any different from, say, Music Radar linking to it?

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/tdr ... gin-597418

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:54 pm

A storm in the waterglass...

Orbit-50 · Post by **Orbit-50** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:24 pm

Plugin Boutique wrote:We hope that you will not judge us unfairly over this small indiscretion – we are just a group of guys trying to bring the best plugins and music software to you in a great website, we also develop our own plugins and we make mistakes just like everybody else.

I was watching this play out and pretty much figured that PluginBoutique wouldn't be stupid enough to jeopardize their reputation and their business by knowingly breaking laws. Particularly over a free plugin? No unfair judgement here. But I do know that this thread is going to become a cesspool of bile spewing, and an endless vomiting of biased opinions will ensue. Have fun guys!

.-.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:42 pm

More KVR Dramaz

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:43 pm

Seems reasonable to me.

A thread title change could potentially be in order

djscorb · Post by **djscorb** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 4:22 pm

I can see both sides but:

a) Vendors selling plugins shouldn't be taking traffic away from developers giving their hard work away for free. They can say they want to expose great free plugins to the world but clearly any extra traffic drawn to their site is in their interest and not Fabiens. There are plenty of resources online for finding out about free plugins and most don't have an ulterior motive.

b) Fabien has every right to be annoyed because his EULA is totally unambiguous. Giving away SLickEQ and his other plugins are part of his business model to promote Tokyo Dawn Records and future GE products etc.

c) If they apparently did it before, then they should have triple checked this time. Being in the trade they should know better than to "assume" (we all know that "to assume makes an ass out of u and me")

d) Perhaps Fabien should have given them a few days grace to sort the problem out without doing laundry in public.

No-one comes out looking great from this incident.

Cheers

Scorb

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 4:32 pm

djscorb wrote: No-one comes out looking great from this incident.

Nicely put, Scorb.

Personally, I think I've only purchased one plugin from Plugin Boutique , but they didn't strike me as being shady. Seems like an honest mistake to me, but I can see why Fabien was not happy about it. Oh well, it all seems like water under the bridge to me now.

Plugin boutique dev issues [solved]