Is plugin market going down?

[iTzPrime]

I'm not sure that comparing plugins with cars is a good idea. The last time I had checked Hyundais still had transmissions made in japan, and China dumped a lot of money on automatic transmissions and yet failed to make one, and they have bought a factory from Australia instead. It's not exactly an oversaturated market. There are many brands but they use the same parts. This is quite different from creating just another EQ that needs to be differentiated with marketing buzzwords.

You are completely right, and I didn't express myself properly. The car market in Germany and Austria is oversaturated especially since the arrival of japanese cars in the late 90s and now with all the korean cars taking over quite a marketshare, while the world market is growing due to poorer countries getting access to cars

Like many people here my plugin folder is overstuffed. The free and high quality choices alone that we have are staggering. Regardless the plugins that I have purchased of late all have excellent user interfaces, nice preset selection, and inspire me to use them. My two examples would be Tantra and Seventh Heaven.

I disagree with some of the posters here who think that the products need hyped up marketing behind them. There is a robust audio press that reviews products and you can find some nice understated gems from small developers who don't have the resources to broadcast with NI level gimmickry by reading reviews. I would put Klanhelm and Kazrog in this category. Their quality speaks for them.

Just my two bits and I would like to hear from other why they bought certain plugins.

Klanghelm has exquisite interfaces, a really cheap price, and a clear product line and a homepage that while not being up to date in terms of design , is really clear in terms of price and functions of the plugins.
While I agree that you don't need a hyped up marketing, you still need a products that are clearly laid out, or it will come to consumer confusion. Something that Voxengo obviously experiences because the conversation rate is going down.

Thanks sparkysparks for the kind words.

[SparkySpark]

The amount of sales and the percentage of the discounts is strange to me. I hate to say it devalues the product, I'm probably wrong saying that, but it's like a meme around here to just wait until any plugin has a sale.

Agree totally with your first sentences. Today's situation doesn't really benefit anyone. Perhaps a better approach would be this:

Studios/"rich artists": pay 100%
Schools: pay 75%
Private persons/hobbyists: pay very little (say 10-20 bucks).

That way we would get rid of the sales hysteria of Waves and others, and everyone would make money. At the same time, we would get rid of warez (the one who wouldn't pay 10 dollars for a plug and go for a cracked version would never be a buyer anyway).

[HoRNet]

Hornet has a good website too. It's starting to get close that famous "messy"

That's why we are redesigning the website right now, evolution, not revolution, but hopefully that "messy" feeling will go away

Saverio

[Daimonicon]

The amount of sales and the percentage of the discounts is strange to me. I hate to say it devalues the product, I'm probably wrong saying that, but it's like a meme around here to just wait until any plugin has a sale.

Agree totally with your first sentences. Today's situation doesn't really benefit anyone. Perhaps a better approach would be this:

Studios/"rich artists": pay 100%
Schools: pay 75%
Private persons/hobbyists: pay very little (say 10-20 bucks).

That way we would get rid of the sales hysteria of Waves and others, and everyone would make money. At the same time, we would get rid of warez (the one who wouldn't pay 10 dollars for a plug and go for a cracked version would never be a buyer anyway).

Stupid idea. No dev would survive. Probably 80-90% of buyers are hobbyists. Should the same be true with cars e.g? Hey I'm a private person so should only pay 10% of the price for that car. Waves plugins are cheap so often nowadays so where's the hysteria? It's not like it was 10-15 years ago when you had to pay like 500$ for a Waves plugin.

[pekbro]

The amount of sales and the percentage of the discounts is strange to me. I hate to say it devalues the product, I'm probably wrong saying that, but it's like a meme around here to just wait until any plugin has a sale. I suppose it helps the sellers discover a reasonable price, almost like a negotiation with the buyers, but never seeing eye-to-eye at the same time. In some ways that's good, because value, to the buyer, is relative to what a plugin should do.

I don't think the sales actually devalue the product. I think they are more
of a solution to compensate for an already existing, perception of devaluation
by the market itself. The days of commanding high prices for plugins, while not
entirely gone, are certainly a relative rarity in today's market. And the mechanism
of revolving sales has become viable, because it exerts pressure on the consumer
to buy when they are in effect. Personally, I suspect that this pressure is so effective,
that a very good percentage of purchases made during revolving sales, would not have
been made otherwise. I think its reasonable to assume that there are companies
implementing this strategy, that are seeing a much higher profit margin than ever,
as a result.

I think Its only natural to assume that this type of model would ultimately prove
unsustainable. But the fact is, we are dealing with intangible products here, and
a curious property of intangibility, is that its difficult to assign a fixed value to it.
I believe, as consumers, this often leaves us amenable to highly elastic perceptions
of value when it comes to software and the like. Because of this, I think its possible
for solution providers to value their products as a range, rather than a fixed quantity.
Allowing them to effectively pursue quantity over quality in regard to sales numbers.

Think about it, does anyone really believe that these companies would operate
as they do, if it were a bad idea? Aggressive marketing costs money. How long
do you think a business could continue down that road if it weren't turning a profit?
Even if it were only marginally successful, to pursue it as fervently as some do
without substantial reward, would likely spell commercial suicide for a business.

Anyway, the signs are there, one just needs to interpret them appropriately.

my 2 cents..

-Cheers

[nonnaci]

The revolving sales tactic is also a method for older plugins to make headlines/news without having to introduce updates to them. It's analogous to re-releasing old singles on a new album as to pad the playlist.

[SparkySpark]

Hornet has a good website too. It's starting to get close that famous "messy"

That's why we are redesigning the website right now, evolution, not revolution, but hopefully that "messy" feeling will go away

Saverio

you also have really great plugs. Great work!

[iTzPrime]

Hornet has a good website too. It's starting to get close that famous "messy"

That's why we are redesigning the website right now, evolution, not revolution, but hopefully that "messy" feeling will go away

Saverio

Have to complement you on your product-designs, there are continually getting better! Nice work

[HoRNet]

Thank you for your support guys

I want to add my 2cents on the market as a whole.

We are in business since 2011 so it's not long ago but neither 2 days ago, we have only seen growth till now and the trend seems to continue for the moment.

I've been a long time forum member here and on gs and i also bought plugin in the past paying them hundreds of dollars so i've been both on the client and the maker side. What i saw is that the market has changed.

I'm 38 now, when i was 25 customers like me where trying to produce good sounding tracks hoping to be signed and distributed sooner or later, a lot of my customers right now are "djs" or producers that makes tracks quickly and distribute them fast then move on to the next track. The idea behing internet marketing is that you have to saturate the market so even if a single plugin (or track) makes you just a few euro, you are selling 10000 of them and having the same revenue. To do this you always have to stay in the news loop and in front of customers. KVR plays a crucial part putting our name in front of customers, brand building is essential since it links you to a specific buying target. Being social is important and making iper targeted low cost ad campaigns on facebook works incredibly well. Also use adsense remarketing for every product, it costs just a few hundred euro/month and always reminds your customers of you.

it all comes dow to your customer target, right now you have to choose if you want to sell to professional or to consumers, we are trying to do the second so we need to be hip, stay in the loop and count on impulse buying, the quality of the plugins has to be fairly high, but to be honest today there is an abundance of frameworks and libraries that really simplify the job.

After all these words, in the end i think you have to have a "credo", what do you want to achieve with your company, we for instance don't want to get rich or make a lot of money, we want to have our lives and put good sounding tool in as many producer's hands as possible.

That's simple!

Saverio

[Richard_Synapse]

Stupid idea. No dev would survive. Probably 80-90% of buyers are hobbyists. Should the same be true with cars e.g? Hey I'm a private person so should only pay 10% of the price for that car. Waves plugins are cheap so often nowadays so where's the hysteria? It's not like it was 10-15 years ago when you had to pay like 500$ for a Waves plugin.

Exactly. The main idea of high prices (say $500) is just to establish value anyway. The idea is not to sell large quantities at such a price. This is why 70-90% off deals are so common for high-end plugins.

Richard

[MadBrain]

Next time you go buy clothes, check out that half the store is 50% off :3

In some markets, this trend dates back decades, because that's what makes people feel good about their purchases ("wow I got this 40$ shirt so it looks good, and I only spent 20$, and I saved 20$" - even though it was probably really a 20$ shirt in the first place).

There's a good reason you see this trend on games on Steam as well (same reason: you're in an intangible market where your marginal cost per copy is extremely low, so there's no reason not to get the extra sales at very low price except for depressing your future prices and the overall market prices).

[camsr]

I think Steam has a different way of approaching "sales", not sure. Items on steam can voluntarily participate in their seasonal promotions, I think it also affects the comission steam receives.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

if you price a thingy 400 but you are running permanently a 50%, the price on the customer side is 200, not 400. After a while they get used to the new price.
It happens the plugin market is a niche, and the customer is paying a lot of attention to details. In other markets customers simply are not aware about constant discounts, and they think there is a deal.
I can tell you our customers are paying a lot of attention to our discounts, and they start immediately a war if they lose money in some way (even after years!!!)

[pekbro]

That's why you should run revolving sales, a permanent discount is a bad idea. Vary the discount at varied times during the year. Internally set a range of values from minimum to maximum, people will more often than not, settle so long as they see it as a bargain, rather than wait for a better discount, that may possibly arrive at a later date.
Some folks will even bite at the smallest discount because they don't care or are not paying attention. It's all a game. As vendors, you need to learn to play it well.

*some will always feel cheated. Even though, it's really their own fault for not shopping smartly.

-cheers

[pekbro]

Steam is a very good example of effective revolving sales tactics. They have marketing experts and psychologists on staff to figure it all out. They don't mess around. That's just one reason they can claim a whopping 60 million user accounts or something.