Most common laptops used for music production?

[anukari-music]

[Hey all, sorry if this has been discussed before, but if it has, my search-fu was not up to the task.]

I'm looking for, ideally, a histogram showing which laptops are most commonly used for music production across a broad audience. So something like "Macbook Pro - 32%, Macbook Air - 16%, Windows (Dell) - 12%, ...". I don't expect I'll find perfect data for this, but maybe something that gives me a rough idea is out there somewhere?

I'm a (new) VST plugin developer and this info would be helpful in terms of figuring out which laptops I should focus on testing against first.

[Uncle E]

As a dealer, I can tell you that if a software is PC-only, we hardly sell any, and if it's Mac-only, we sell a lot.

[dellboy]

As a dealer, I can tell you that if a software is PC-only, we hardly sell any, and if it's Mac-only, we sell a lot.

What popular music software is PC only?

[dellboy]

[Hey all, sorry if this has been discussed before, but if it has, my search-fu was not up to the task.]

I'm looking for, ideally, a histogram showing which laptops are most commonly used for music production across a broad audience. So something like "Macbook Pro - 32%, Macbook Air - 16%, Windows (Dell) - 12%, ...". I don't expect I'll find perfect data for this, but maybe something that gives me a rough idea is out there somewhere?

I'm a (new) VST plugin developer and this info would be helpful in terms of figuring out which laptops I should focus on testing against first.

KVR forum is a "broad audience", and I seem to remember a recent poll on here which had a majority using PCs to make music. This is in contrast to the professional music industry where most use Macs.

[whyterabbyt]

I would imagine the most common laptop would be an MBP because Mac users only get one vendor and only a couple of major variants to choose from, as opposed to half a million PC vendors and 30 squillion models and variants.

[dellboy]

I would imagine the most common laptop would be an MBP because Mac users only get one vendor and only a couple of major variants to choose from, as opposed to half a million PC vendors and 30 squillion models and variants.

Good point.

[Uncle E]

What popular music software is PC only?

Magix, Xhun IronAxe

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

There are a lot more PC users out there. But when it comes to sales there are two effects you should consider:

- There is a lot more piracy on PC than on Mac
- Mac users spend more money on their hardware and on the software

I guess that around 50% of the paying customers is on Mac.

Further notes:

- The market is over-saturated since many years. It is a real challenge to start a new business these days.
- AI might seriously change music production in the near future.

For tesing you should do at least these systems:
- A Mac with M1/m2 with Big Sur or higher
- A 64 bit Intel Mac with 10.14 or lower
- A PC with Win11
- A PC with Win10
- Optionally Linux with Wine

You can skip:
anything 32 bit, Windows 8, Windows 7

[audiojunkie]

Linux user here. I use a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 5. The Lenovos tend to work really well with Linux. The same with Dells.

[audiojunkie]

There are a lot more PC users out there. But when it comes to sales there are two effects you should consider:

- There is a lot more piracy on PC than on Mac
- Mac users spend more money on their hardware and on the software

I guess that around 50% of the paying customers is on Mac.

Further notes:

- The market is over-saturated since many years. It is a real challenge to start a new business these days.
- AI might seriously change music production in the near future.

For tesing you should do at least these systems:
- A Mac with M1/m2 with Big Sur or higher
- A 64 bit Intel Mac with 10.14 or lower
- A PC with Win11
- A PC with Win10
- Optionally Linux with Wine

You can skip:
anything 32 bit, Windows 8, Windows 7

Music Production on Linux is a very quickly growing segment, and unlike with Windows and MacOS, the market is not saturated. I would say that Linux with Wine should maintain the same level of importance as Apple and Windows.

Also, remember that Linux users prefer serial number copy protection, and hate subscription, ILok, and challenge/response.

[Shabdahbriah]

I'm a (new) VST plugin developer and this info would be helpful in terms of figuring out which laptops I should focus on testing against first.

I assume you are looking to establish a "minimum/recommended - specs" base line, which is by its nature laptop agnostic, and purely hardware (CPU/GPU/RAM/etc) specific, even if you are marketing your app(s) to a laptop specific audience for some reason. It's the 'specs' that matter. That said: most of the PC laptops that work on par with the apple offerings would fall into the "gamer or creator" market segment.

Bearing in mind that a whole lot can and is done on relatively low spec'd/low budget machines. So perhaps gauge your requirements accordingly. [2c]

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Music Production on Linux is a very quickly growing segment, and unlike with Windows and MacOS, the market is not saturated. I would say that Linux with Wine should maintain the same level of importance as Apple and Windows.

Also, remember that Linux users prefer serial number copy protection, and hate subscription, ILok, and challenge/response.

I run two linux systems. I had very positive experiences during the last years. I do run tests with our products in Mint and Zorin and the recent versions seem to run fine. We use serial numbers and keyfiles.

However there is a problem when it comes to the development of commercial software: Only a very small part of the Linux users do pay money for software. So in most cases it is not economic to develop software for this platform.

I really like Zorin and Mint. No bloatware. No data collection. Fast. Slim. Stable.

[audiojunkie]

Music Production on Linux is a very quickly growing segment, and unlike with Windows and MacOS, the market is not saturated. I would say that Linux with Wine should maintain the same level of importance as Apple and Windows.

Also, remember that Linux users prefer serial number copy protection, and hate subscription, ILok, and challenge/response.

I run two linux systems. I had very positive experiences during the last years. I do run tests with our products in Mint and Zorin and the recent versions seem to run fine. We use serial numbers and keyfiles.

However there is a problem when it comes to the development of commercial software: Only a very small part of the Linux users do pay money for software. So in most cases it is not economic to develop software for this platform.

I really like Zorin and Mint. No bloatware. No data collection. Fast. Slim. Stable.

How did you determine that only a very small part of the Linux users pay for software? Are you using something in your software that reports this information back? I don't see how this would be determined. When a person pays for the software, it doesn't specifically ask. I mean no disrespect, but of the linux music producers I'm aware of, we all purchase software--especially native software, from dealer's such as U-he, TAL, or Audio Damage. Was there a survey that asked this? Or is this simply a suspicion? Again, no disrespect intended.

[anukari-music]

Thanks, everyone, for all the useful inputs here! This is all very helpful in terms of establishing what hardware I'll test the plugin on, and also has helped me decided that I will do a joint release on Windows & Mac (at one time I was considering Windows first, then Mac, but it seems possible that could be very underwhelming). Also the comments about Linux are very interesting -- I grew up using Linux and so I would love to support it.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

How did you determine that only a very small part of the Linux users pay for software? Are you using something in your software that reports this information back?

No. Unlike many other competing companies (which will not be mentioned here) we do not spy on our customers. We do not use and never did use tracking cookies or a cloud and our software does not and never did send out any information that is collected on a server.

My conclusion comes from the communication that we have and especially didn't have with our paying customers: We received no bug reports from linux users although I know that there were some really obvoious GUI glitches in the past. We also received only a hand full of requests for native linux versions during the last 20 years.

You can also get OS and hardware statistics from the steam database (for games):
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey ... e-to-Steam

Further sources:
https://www.datamation.com/open-source/ ... ows-users/

Keep in mind that I like Linux. I am not happy about the current OS situation either.