How Many Units Does A Hit Synth Sell?

[multree]

You compare apples with pears (as we say in germany)

actually we say Erbsen mit Möhren.... no wait... Kraut und Rüben???? Bohnen mit Speck??? Pommes mit Mayo? ---- heck I don't know....

[sonkeysankey]

A synth(software) which is perhaps not a hit, but very good and good known at the users, there you can calculate surely 1000+. But without good marketing etc the sales will be much lower.
And also don't forgot that a synths will be sold over a long time.

So, is it likely that Omnisphere, for example, will only sell 1,000 copies? That's only £329,000 in revenue, of which Spectrasonics will only receive a percentage, yet it cost a fortune to produce (much more than £300,000 I imagine).

Didn't IK Multimedia celebrate their 'one millionth download' in 2008? I presumed those were actual sales of software, not demos downloaded, correct me if I'm wrong. I know that IK Multimedia have many products, but it still amounts to a lot of money if they are all sales. Does anybody know?

[Blue Wind Project]

Zebra, less than 3000.

I did the math, that's nothing to cry about.

[Cyforce]

1000+ can be also 20000... 1000+ - you understand^^

no normal user know how many some synths are saled, don't forgot le-crossgrade, oem-versions(german oems) etc...

and there are also many very small developers outside, which sale perhaps only 20, and some sales 1000, and some like ni will sell 5000 or 10000 etc....

the topic was a rough questions, and no detailed marketplace-analystic

[whyterabbyt]

Zebra, less than 3000.

I did the math, that's nothing to cry about.

for a product first released in 2003? its nothing to cry about, but for one of the major 'hit synths', it aint exactly amounting to a fortune.

[JPQ]

One basic reason why there so many uses pritated software most of sample libraries (what i count to softsynths) cannot reselled anyway and there is no good demos for all tasted (applies for pure softsynths) like orchestral demos are almost all big orchestral sound and in soft synths something like trance,dance,hiphop etc no berlin school etc. I mean demos dont tell to all users much. (like me) And softsynths are so many are buggy. And ik multimedia total workstation 2 (i dont remember which psubroduct is exactly) have very sample name problem one sample which clearly square wave is marked to saw and one clearly saw wave is marked to square. ps. btw i dont use pirated software.

[willit]

I hate it that people can pirate this stuff so easily. Especially when they laugh at you because you actually paid for the product. Such a foul attitude to have especially for small companies. I've had one bad experience with a certain small company which some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, but I could never pirate the software. I code in html, js, php and just recently Flex (for the company I work for) and I would be mighty pissed if someone stole my hard work - and my stuff wouldn't be even close to the effort and knowledge required for vst development...

I'm actually pro-software key protection... I got what I think is a synchrosoft dongle with my KLCDE software, and given that I can't remember what it's called, nor can I even see it since it's plugged in the back of my mac, it's pretty much a seamless thing that provides a reasonable level of protection for developers. I know not everyone agrees to this, but hey at least developers know that they've got an option...

[amiga909]

if you want to know the sales of any products, ever, in any situation, look at the costs.
how big is NI ? (apparently, 350 employees)

as a low-ball estimate, what number of units would need to be sold to cover employee costs? (49000)

NI homepage states 140 employees (in Berlin and LA). would be still ~25000 units/year.
then, they also have services (website says: events). i've seen once NI doing all the audio installations for an art exhibition in berlin. i remember that the CEO spoke about doing services (installations, consulting; maybe exclusive software too).
i wonder if such private deals make a substantial income?

as was already mentioned, it's unlikely anything like a dx-7, minimoog or M1 will ever appear again.

note: minimoog (again, some google info) only made it to 13000 units. not surprising if u consider that only rare stuff gets more expensive in time (DX7, and especially M1 are cheap as hell nowadays..).
as for software ur prolly right.
i'd say for software mass markets there are in every field only a very thin elite that makes high profits (like OS: Microsoft, Apple; Graphic: Adobe; Webstuff: Macromedia)..

..the democratic potential of computer+internet as in having an equal distribution of welfare hasnt come true. smaller companies only get by with selling IT knowledge rather than IT products..

[Bastiaan from Tone2.com]

This isn't a rumour at all.

I made a thread about it ages ago.

I had the demo of Gladiator installed on my machine about 18 months ago and when I fired it up in Cubase IE opened up with a great big warning telling me that Tone2 had logged this IP address blah blah and would be filing for prosecution etc etc.

I even came on the Tone2 section of this website to let them know that the demo had this flaw and the response I got from them was 'if you bought the product you wouldn't get this issue would you?'

I apologize if the reply at that time seemed harsh, but honestly none of our demos use this kind of copy protection, never have and never will.
Hence the 'official demo' remarks by us, code that's not implemented simply cannot be triggered, not much else we can reply to such a claim or rumor.

[kelvyn]

I hate it that people can pirate this stuff so easily. Especially when they laugh at you because you actually paid for the product. Such a foul attitude to have especially for small companies. I've had one bad experience with a certain small company which some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, but I could never pirate the software. I code in html, js, php and just recently Flex (for the company I work for) and I would be mighty pissed if someone stole my hard work - and my stuff wouldn't be even close to the effort and knowledge required for vst development...

I'm actually pro-software key protection... I got what I think is a synchrosoft dongle with my KLCDE software, and given that I can't remember what it's called, nor can I even see it since it's plugged in the back of my mac, it's pretty much a seamless thing that provides a reasonable level of protection for developers. I know not everyone agrees to this, but hey at least developers know that they've got an option...

+1

If everyone steals music_software_film etc then we are on a slippery slope to nowhere... We live in a capitalist society where buying and selling product is how our economic system functions. If companies don't make money then they can't employ people who pay taxes and the whole house of cards collapses. What seems like innocent internet kleptomania is having a drastic effect/impact on peoples lives. Short term thinking leading us to a deadend with no way back. Cue scary film music.

[GeorgeZ]

Wow, some of the devs on here have proven me wrong, and have spoken out. Good on you guys!

[cooljazz58]

if you want to know the sales of any products, ever, in any situation, look at the costs.

how big is NI ? (apparently, 350 employees)

what is the typical salary? (probably an average of 35,000 usd)

what then is the yearly cost for employees alone? (12250000)

what is the average price of the products sold by NI? (250)

as a low-ball estimate, what number of units would need to be sold to cover employee costs? (49000)

this number is ridiculously high in my opinion even though it doesn't factor in additional costs. i think the 350 employees at 35k salary data is wrong - although it is possible. if those numbers are correct 50k units per year would be the minimum number of sales in order to sustain the company in an ideal business world. in reality they are paying taxes, have overhead costs, shipping costs, supply costs, advertising, etc etc.

for a small company? let's say two employees (assuming you and your wife or friend or whoever) paid 35,000 each selling the typical small product for 99.

that would be minimum 700 copies per year in order to make a living from the product......

Also consider the the revenue from licensing their Kontakt platform to other companies/developers. Kontakt as a shell for other software/samples is fairly wide spread. I'm sure that adds a couple of euro dollars to the bottom line.

cj58

[Urs]

Zebra, less than 3000.

Nah, 3000 was taken a few weeks ago... still quite some headroom upwards. I expect to fill that once there's a skin with rendered 3D-knobs (and of course, the switch of the serial scheme in 2.5 has left certain people in disbelief). The pro music market is relatively conservative, many people still prefer to buy boxes in real shops. Things have progressively been changing over the years though and more people seem to accept that some great stuff can only be had online.

Regarding group buys: A dev is lucky if 50% of the people who sign up buy.

Regarding piracy: The most successful day of ACE wasn't the day it came out, but the day when a timer driven deep check un-cracked the crack (several thousand downloads on various torrent sites each) for testing purpose. All of the sudden sales spiked up 300% for one day. That IMHO was remarkable evidence that an insane number of people are freeloaders, and not because they can't afford it but because of sheer convenience. Hence abusing piracy as a marketing technique is a great turn of paradigm.

Urs

[sonkeysankey]

Zebra, less than 3000.

I did the math, that's nothing to cry about.

for a product first released in 2003? its nothing to cry about, but for one of the major 'hit synths', it aint exactly amounting to a fortune.

3,000 x $200 = $600,000

Nothing to cry about, even it was released twenty years ago...

It depends on how many people were involved in creating the synth. I presume that Zebra was created by one man, whereas a synth with a large sample library might require many, many people to create all the samples, which increases its production costs.

[sonkeysankey]

By the way, I thought that the M1 sold 250,000 units? So isn't there an even bigger market for VSTs today?