KVR Audio

Tweakkk · Post by **Tweakkk** » Wed May 14, 2014 2:13 pm

Hi There!

I am hoping I can get some help on this forum. It seemed to be one of the interesting ones to look on.

I am busy with a school for a project regarding software synthesisers. And in this project we also have to include some statistics about the most popular Synthesisers on the market. I have looked everywhere on the net, but I cannot seem to find some statistics of which plugin sells the most or which one is being used the most. I need to make an external analysis about the software synth market.

Does anyone know where I can see some statistics or perhaps previous analysis reports in this market?

Thanks in advance!

bob bobwood · Post by **bob bobwood** » Wed May 14, 2014 7:33 pm

Hi Tweakkk and welcome to KVR.......

I can offer you no information relating your specific query. And I wish you luck in your quest and hope others can help.

I think you'll be lucky if you find anything beyond;
"I had 13,000 downloads of the demo version which resulted in 5 sales".

"the most popular Synthesisers on the market" does this include free ?

If any company knew if one of theirs was the in the top 10, I'm sure they would let us know about it. But they can't be sure as they have no idea of anyone else sales. Even if company accounts were ALL available and easily accessible, it would need some serious number crunching to figure out unit sales.

I think you'll have to think outside the box on this one, and come up with a way of providing a statistic based some other method of appraising popularity.

Well you know what they say about statistics......

Good Luck.

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Wed May 14, 2014 7:58 pm

Yeah I think any popular company will not reveal any numbers, but Native Instruments is popular for many reasons, and you can buy a huge bundle for $400.

U-he synths are popular here, as far as talked about.

UltimateOutsider · Post by **UltimateOutsider** » Wed May 14, 2014 8:13 pm

Tweakkk wrote:I am busy with a school for a project regarding software synthesisers. And in this project we also have to include some statistics about the most popular Synthesisers on the market. I have looked everywhere on the net, but I cannot seem to find some statistics of which plugin sells the most or which one is being used the most. I need to make an external analysis about the software synth market.

If this information existed (almost certain that it doesn't- at least not at the granularity you're looking for), it wouldn't be free.

As far as I know there's no research group like NPD or Gartner tracking such things, and the way they collect their data for game and consumer product sales is by talking directly to publishers and vendors. They do a ton of legwork, and the data they collect doesn't come cheap.

Most music software publishers (and a lot of vendors/resellers) are privately held, so you're not likely to even find annual revenues for an entire company, much less at the per-plugin level.

Bob is right, though, you can probably glean some meaningful data by some clever searching for historical and current trends rather than raw sales figures.

DSmolken · Post by **DSmolken** » Thu May 15, 2014 8:14 am

RunBeerRun wrote:U-he synths are popular here, as far as talked about.

Didn't Urs once write that Zebra is his best seller, or am I remembering that wrong?

LimboLoves · Post by **LimboLoves** » Thu May 15, 2014 11:02 am

Maybe pm or email some developers and ask? Since it's for school, and not a blog on the internet, they might accommodate you. I think they sell more than the common person thinks. I'd be more interested in preset and sample sales.

elassi · Post by **elassi** » Thu May 15, 2014 11:19 am

Depending on the kind of company there are some ways to find out about numbers. But I bet you won't get inside information. And honestly, if I'd be a developer I wouldn't talk about it either. I don't talk about it in my own business too - for good reasons.

solidtrax · Post by **solidtrax** » Thu May 15, 2014 11:34 am

LimboLoves wrote:Maybe pm or email some developers and ask? Since it's for school, and not a blog on the internet, they might accommodate you. I think they sell more than the common person thinks. I'd be more interested in preset and sample sales.

At the moment, we have one commercial sound bank available, and it has been for 6 weeks now. We have not reached the 20 sales yet...not even close.

It's save to say our sales numbers are not representative at all, the well known names in this business seem to be able to earn enough to get some food on the table. (Talking about sound designers now.)

I often wondered how many copies of Sylenth1 have been sold. Is it 1000? (and the other 499.000 users have an illegal copy)... 10.000?... 25.000? Maybe even more? I have absolutely no idea!

fluffy_little_something · Thu May 15, 2014 12:11 pm

Sound banks are different. Most people make their own patches, for instance by modifying factory presets.

But it is an interesting question, I have no idea regarding the numbers. With some hardware synths there were numbers out there, and I assume software synths sell much better because of their affordability.

I wonder why developers don't publish data on their sales. What is so secret about it?! Knowing the sales numbers might even make more people buy stuff when they think, wow, this sounds good and that poor developer has sold only 13 copies in 2 years, let's support him

If I were a developer I would put a sales counter next to each product I offer on my site

andrew71 · Post by **andrew71** » Thu May 15, 2014 12:22 pm

Most businesses are reluctant to publish their sales figures unless required to by law. From my own experiences (nothing to do with music production or computer software), I wouldn't want my competitors to know which of my products sold best, as the highly competitive nature of the market would likely see them produce similar products and try to undercut me.

To the OP, you could try looking at some of the plugin 'superstores' like JRRShop and PluginBoutique, as they might have charts or bestsellers categories.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu May 15, 2014 12:24 pm

[DELETED]

LimboLoves · Post by **LimboLoves** » Fri May 16, 2014 3:58 pm

solidtrax wrote:
LimboLoves wrote:Maybe pm or email some developers and ask? Since it's for school, and not a blog on the internet, they might accommodate you. I think they sell more than the common person thinks. I'd be more interested in preset and sample sales.
At the moment, we have one commercial sound bank available, and it has been for 6 weeks now. We have not reached the 20 sales yet...not even close.

It's save to say our sales numbers are not representative at all, the well known names in this business seem to be able to earn enough to get some food on the table. (Talking about sound designers now.)

I often wondered how many copies of Sylenth1 have been sold. Is it 1000? (and the other 499.000 users have an illegal copy)... 10.000?... 25.000? Maybe even more? I have absolutely no idea!

I am guessing that Goldbaby and other big sample firms make thousands every month. Sorry to hear about the bank sales. I think 20 isn't bad for a preset bank, but I don't know what the average is. Do some bank publishers sell thousands of banks? Is the market increasing? I think it's obvious it's been saturated, but are the pie pieces still enough for me to save up and get a ntg-3? So many questions...

Harry_HH · Post by **Harry_HH** » Fri May 16, 2014 4:35 pm

Hi,

I have worked in the market research business as an executive - my approach would include the following steps:

1. List the major music software companies - rather easy task to do if you have interest in to the music producing/project studio - if you have not followed the area, someone who has (e.g. someone in KVR) could do the tentative list which you can complete/get others comment.

2. The turnover and other financial company key figures are public data, you can also buy this kind of statistics from the companies specialized to this.

3. In the Internet you can find all the products by these companies. Usually you find the prices, too, but you should take in to account the sale campaigns and the dealer prices, too. Select just the products which you find essential for your survey - here you need some knowledge of the products/this area.

4. You can make a small survey e.g. among the KVR and Gearslutz members where you list the plugins/products of the above companies and estimate the popularity of each product. Adding upp the above data you can get some robust estimation of the popularity/financial importance of the products.

This could be a start which you can elaborate.

Harry

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Fri May 16, 2014 5:50 pm

I think that on KVR you can list VSTs by popularity. It's based on their rating. My guess is that the most popular plugins are the best sellers. Diva seems to be the most popular commercial offering at the moment:

http://www.kvraudio.com/ratings.php

mcnelson · Post by **mcnelson** » Fri May 16, 2014 5:58 pm

You might also use the feedback thread to identify what people are privately buying / selling. Bit labour intensive though.

NMG

Plugin sale statistics