Monthly Patch Downloads

[Improv]

I don't know where you got the idea we were mailing stuff out unsolicited. We'd never, ever cold-mail anyone. Only people who fill in the registration form to register their Computer Music plugins with us get access to the patch area, and its these people that we have been sending the monthly passwords/newsletters out to. If we can't get through to them and an email is rejected, it is removed from the database.

I got the idea through misunderstanding.

I thought that you did the mail out to all registered users. But I figured that if some weren't getting their mail shot, then
perhaps they could send an email request to you. That way, if they couldn't be bothered, they wouldn't get anything. IMHO, it wouldn't be too much effort to send you an email once a month in exchange for those juicy patches. And you would know who the active users were.

[Muon Software Ltd]

But I figured that if some weren't getting their mail shot, then perhaps they could send an email request to you

We get quite a few requests like that - but if we can't send a mail via our automated mail system to them, there's little point in sending a password manually. They might get it, but they almost certainly wouldn't get their password the next month.

I guess the problem is that some mails don't reach their destination, but we don't get a failed notification back. It is awkward and time-consuming to follow up each and every mail that goes astray, so we really can only apologise to people who don't get their mails, and remove them from the database. Hopefully people would rather we were spending our time writing code and servicing paying customers

Regards
Dave

[Improv]

We get quite a few requests like that - but if we can't send a mail via our automated mail system to them, there's little point in sending a password manually. They might get it, but they almost certainly wouldn't get their password the next month.

Man, I thought our Telephone company was getting bad! It must have something to do with economies of scale: most utilities seem to self distruct once they get to a certain size.

My cousin in Bath has BT internet, but she's never mentioned how bad it is. Do you
people not have any alternatives to BT for high speed business internet?

I guess the problem is that some mails don't reach their destination, but we don't get a failed notification back. It is awkward and time-consuming to follow up each and every mail that goes astray, so we really can only apologise to people who don't get their mails, and remove them from the database. Hopefully people would rather we were spending our time writing code and servicing paying customers

This is where my misunderstanding came in. Originally, I thought the thread was only about paying customers, not magazine freebies! I went about all this bass-ackwards: I got Electron and Tau Pro before
going to my CM cover disks and trying CM101 etc. IMO, freebie users should be greatful for what they get, afterall, it IS free.

In terms of priority for Muon and it's customers, it should be paid customers before freebie holders and fixes/updates on commercial synths before presets of any kind for free or paid products. Extra patches are fun, but they are extra. After all, how much does it take to tweak Tau Pro or Electron? There are already several banks for both. Those presets can be used as a 'jumping off point' to tweak your own.
Or, if you have Chainer, go to the preset lab and morph/tweak your own. Finally, users can (gasp!) learn to program the instruments from scratch.

Maybe a user presets area on Muon to upload patch banks to for users? I for one appreciate your effort to try and offer these monthly presets, but if you can't, we can live without it. At least you gave it an honest effort. (Unlike BT!)

[TrekStar]

It's strange...I always received the muon mails....but this time....zero.

Did anybody reach one of their mail at all? Just for interest.

[Muon Software Ltd]

Given the numerous bounces, auto-responders and lord knows what other kind of junk flooding into our mailbox this week, I'd say that patch area passwords are definately reaching their destinations. Patience is a virtue, folks.

However, I'm very disappointed to see that numerous people seem to think that a) they need previous month's passwords for some reason and b) that we're going to sit here all day manually sending out passwords.

OK - here we go again:-

The current month's password allows you to access any of the files in the patch area. You do not need previous month's passwords for ANY reason at all.

Don't ask us to mail passwords manually - we don't have time

Hope that clears up any confusion.

Regards
Dave

[Muon Software Ltd]

Do you people not have any alternatives to BT for high speed business internet?

I'm positive that there are alternatives. However we're stuck in a one year contract and have to wait until it expires. Secondly, none of the other internet providers actually own their own networks - they license the service from BT, rebrand it and then sell it to end-users in a new package. I'm not sure though that Freeserve or Pipex, for example, know how to run an SMTP server any better than BT do though.

Regards
Dave

[skygge]

If you got August's you'll get Octobers. There was no update mail sent out in September (at the time, a lot of people still hadn't had their August passwords thanks to BT!).

I received the august password on 08.13., haven't heard from Muon since then.
Unfortunatly that user/pass combination isn't working anymore.

I'm afraid my freemail provider, which has a pretty straight spam policy,
could have blacklisted your address.

Thank you,
skygge

[Muon Software Ltd]

I'm afraid my freemail provider, which has a pretty straight spam policy,
could have blacklisted your address.

We've had very few 550 (not authorised) bounces since BT finally secured their mail server so I wouldn't jump to such a conclusion straight away.

I can't comment further on individual cases, so please no more posts saying "I didn't get my password yet". Once the mails have left our server here there's nothing else we can do.

Dave

[Teksonik]

Wow sorry Dave,as usual I've opened up a can of worms for you.Wish I never started this thread now.Is it really worth all the headaches and work to password protect a handful of patches and a couple of Sr202 kits?I understand not wanting crack users to access the free stuff but it seems like all the hassle just isn't worth your trouble.Sorry.

[Muon Software Ltd]

Wow sorry Dave,as usual I've opened up a can of worms for you.Wish I never started this thread now.Is it really worth all the headaches and work to password protect a handful of patches and a couple of Sr202 kits?I understand not wanting crack users to access the free stuff but it seems like all the hassle just isn't worth your trouble.Sorry.

Nah, don't worry about it. Not a big deal.

The files are only protected to conserve bandwidth, which is a pretty expensive commodity. We have no way of knowing if someone is registering a cracked CM instrument or not, but so long as only people who have actually registered can access the files that's fine by us.

If we opened up the patches to all and sundry we'd get a massive bandwidth bill at the end of every month and have no database to use in future marketing.

Regards
Dave

[Pantsdown666]

please no more posts saying "I didn't get my password yet". Once the mails have left our server here there's nothing else we can do.
Dave

Well this is one to say that i did get my password today. 20.10.03, dated 13.10.03. Just thought it might help you to know. Thanks Dave!

Simon

[Improv]

please no more posts saying "I didn't get my password yet". Once the mails have left our server here there's nothing else we can do.
Dave

Well this is one to say that i did get my password today. 20.10.03, dated 13.10.03. Just thought it might help you to know. Thanks Dave!

Simon

5 days? Yikes!

[VitaminD]

hey today I just got my copy of CM (october copy) for this year (yes I only get one about every year)

I just want to say thank you for the free plugins as well as the many samples and banks available for them!

Right now im downloading all the various ds404 patches off the futurenet site while waiting for my muon password.. life is good.

[kalkin]

patch area passwords are definately reaching their destinations.

Dave,
I haven't gotten a password since march Eventhough I tried to straiten it out with you, you never got back to me. You also never got back to me about purchasing your products with international moneyorders. I realize that you are busy, but I would apreciate it if you would just let me know (especialy when you said that you would). So if you give a crap please PM me.
I don't mean to sound like a jack ass, but you support was once much better.

[Muon Software Ltd]

If you haven't received a password since March, I can say with confidence that our automated system has been unable to contact you. Chances are, your ISP's spam filter has removed our mails before they've got to you, and there's nothing we can do to influence that process unfortunately.

Every month, the whole database is mailed - the mails that bounce back (typically 200-300 each time!) are then marked as undeliverable on our system and never mailed again. This is how we keep the database up to date. If we didn't keep the database up to date, it would be useless in about three months as you can see given the levels of returns.

If we can't email you via the automatic system we don't have time to manually send out 200-300 extra passwords every month - and anyway if we can't email you, we can't email you to tell you that the email didn't get through!!

The patch area, ultimately, is a free service. It costs us a lot of money in bandwidth and a lot of time and effort to run it. I think it proves conclusively that we do indeed "give a crap". Unfortunately, in the odd cases where things don't work there isn't a lot we can do.

As for money orders, we can't accept them - we emailed you about this but evidently you've not been receiving emails from us...

Regards
Dave