Is plugin market going down?

[masterhiggins]

However, the thing that created this plug-in business ecosystem - globalization through the internet - is currently targeted a lot for political reasons in various countries, including two major markets (UK and US). I see a risk that, in a few years these markets may be more difficult to enter with otehrs to follow, i.e. by restrictions to internet payment and data transfer. Now that might make things ugly.

Did the mandatory VAT requirements hurt business ?

I like VAT/GST, because of its fairness it's preferable over many other forms of tax. Unfortunately it is also a form of tax that has an impact on sales, particularly if it varies from A to B.

So...in other words...yes?

[Urs]

However, the thing that created this plug-in business ecosystem - globalization through the internet - is currently targeted a lot for political reasons in various countries, including two major markets (UK and US). I see a risk that, in a few years these markets may be more difficult to enter with otehrs to follow, i.e. by restrictions to internet payment and data transfer. Now that might make things ugly.

Did the mandatory VAT requirements hurt business ?

I like VAT/GST, because of its fairness it's preferable over many other forms of tax. Unfortunately it is also a form of tax that has an impact on sales, particularly if it varies from A to B.

So...in other words...yes?

It can't have hurt business yet. Neither has the Brexit happened yet (little less than two years to go) nor has any dictatorship yet imposed any kind of GST on intenrational online sales.

If you mean EU wide VAT requirements, I can not compare to a time before VAT was mandatory.

[MadBrain]

Take this for example:

[VIDEO]

Great tune, made with a tracker and ancient plugins. It doesn't take much -- and woe betide the sellers of the "much" as this becomes more broadly recognized.

Kinda curious, which tracker is that? (and which plugins?)
I guess logically it should be either Renoise or Modplug.

[iTzPrime]

I am not a native english speaker, so please forgive all my upcoming mistakes.

Having been in the product industry for now over 25 years working with BMW, VW, Aldi and more, and having experienced what the difference between a successful product and a failed product is, I want to give you a few tipps.

Web-presentation:
Your homepage is outdated. Period. The design is from 2005 and the interface isn't easy to handle. It isn't clean how to buy stuff, or if stuff is free and you don't have a fast way to look up the prices. There is also no javascript implementation on the different tabs, they reload every time, which is a no-go in 2016 especially for mobile users, which will become more and more.
Even Sonnox realized that a neat homepage is important and updated their homepage.



product-design
You will not like it, but the product design is how should i put it? Really bad. I cannot differentiate the plugins on first glance, and there are way to many of them. Fabfilter does a great job at designing their product, which is the reason for their success. There is nothing Fabfilter plugins can do , that other can't, but the way their products are designed, easy to use and recognizable is the reason for their success.

There is a reason apple products are so popular, and it is mostly ease of use, their design and their one product per niche (which they have changed since Steve jobs died, but a lot of the success was due to that).

You have too many plugins in a niche that are to similar to eachother


Product - Presentation
There are not fancy pictures, no videos, not tutorials, no why you are special.Your product descriptions are quite bland, and we don't know why we should even buy your plugins.
Again look at apple and fabfilter and how they present their products.

Also people will buy your ideas and then your products. What is your idea behind them? Why do you design them?

Your product presentation is what and how.
An example of what - how: my limiter, limits the music very well with some special algorithms.

Nobody will buy that. And there is a reason apple doesn't promote their product with: we design macbooks with the newest technology. That wouldn't sell, and you probably can see that by your decreasing sales.


A good ad and product presentation is always why - how - what:
An example: We want people to experience emotion while listening to music, and we want to achieve that with helping producers, audio engineers and musicians to get the best out of theirs songs. With our new limiter, which uses a special algorithm it is possible to achieve great results no matter if you are a musician who writes his first song or an expert in your field.


Now that is just an example and one I made in five minutes in a foreign language, so obviously it isn't that good, but it is already a lot better that the what - how example.

Product presentation is king, and kickstarter is the obvious example that you can raise millions, by just having a great product presentation

There is a great video on how great leaders inspire action by Simon Sinek.


Listening
All you have done in this thread is to defend yourself from more often than not really helpful criticism and pretend that it is not the fault of yourself or your products why you are loosing sales, but that of the oversaturated market.

The market is oversaturated, of course, but so is nearly every other market on the planet. VW, BMW, Ford , Toyota and other big car companies have stayed at the top of an extremly oversaturated market for a few decades and one of the reasons is because they listened to the market and the consumer.
Instead of arguing with your potential customers with your "data", try to listen to them. (the only data you should listen to are sales)

The market and the customer want neatly, easy to use , great looking, easily distinguishable plugins that are neatly represented, are fun to use and easy to buy.
Sadly your don't fall in any category of those and your sales obviously tell you the same story.



Don't get me wrong, your plugins sound and work great. But that is not enough. There are thousands and thousand of plugins that sound and work great. However the ones that most people come back to are the ones that are easy to use and look good. That is the reason why Sonnox gave their plugins a new overhaul, why the iPod and iPhone where a huge success and why Slate has been getting a lot of customers in the recent years.

You now have the choice. Revisit your plugin line, and redesign and redo your plugins and homepage or quickly fade away, like so many other great products and companies that lacked the connection to customers and their needs.

[murnau]

Take this for example:

[VIDEO]

Great tune, made with a tracker and ancient plugins. It doesn't take much -- and woe betide the sellers of the "much" as this becomes more broadly recognized.

Kinda curious, which tracker is that? (and which plugins?)
I guess logically it should be either Renoise or Modplug.

It's Renoise.

[SparkySpark]

Hi ItzPrime and others,

I too come from a marketing background (in music software). I can't comment on the product line you refer to, but must say that I feel that you are spot on in your marketing advice. I think that all developers who read this thread should read your long post several times - there is some really good stuff in there.

I have looked around for many hours during the past weeks looking for VSTs, and what you are complaining about goes for quite many developers. I teach e-business today and always tell my students that if they want business value - look at customer value. It's much easier to gain revenue by seeing your product from a customer's perspective than thinking of new business models or features that no competitor might have.

Also, as ItzPrime mentioned, it's great if your product line is consistent. I think that the Melda production product line is a great example of this: they all share a similar great look and feel. In addition, all products are high quality and often intuitive - but so are many competing products. However, Melda has a great web site, great looking products, professional videos, adequate pricing, and a really fair attitude towards customers: pay once - get all upgrades for free, use on any number of computers, educational discounts etc. In other words, they have really understood that doing e-business is much more than coming up with nice reverb algorithms or so. They also keep adding new products (major and small) to keep attracting customers and create buzz.

I wish all developers the best of luck. We should really be happy that music software is an "oversaturated" field!

[stratum]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[JCJR]

Bing Crosby recorded the immortal "White Christmas" in 1941 using technology that can't hold a candle to a netbook. You don't need much to make great music, and people -- producers and listeners alike (increasingly, these are the same people) -- are getting wise to this.

Ya the netbook is such an equalizer that nowadays with a netbook, all you need to work like bing is:
_ A big room with passable acoustics.
_ A few good mics.
_ A talented arranger.
_ A talented singer.
_ A platoon of seasoned talented sidemen.
_ An engineer who knows sheets from shinola.
_ A budget big enough that all of the above will deign to show up same time, same place, and willing to play white christmas however many times are necessary to get a wrap.

So yeah, nowadays the netbook has made it near falling off the log easy and cheap to work exactly like bing!

[ghettosynth]

Bing Crosby recorded the immortal "White Christmas" in 1941 using technology that can't hold a candle to a netbook. You don't need much to make great music, and people -- producers and listeners alike (increasingly, these are the same people) -- are getting wise to this.

Ya the netbook is such an equalizer that nowadays with a netbook, all you need to work like bing is:
_ A big room with passable acoustics.
_ A few good mics.
_ A talented arranger.
_ A talented singer.
_ A platoon of seasoned talented sidemen.
_ An engineer who knows sheets from shinola.
_ A budget big enough that all of the above will deign to show up same time, same place, and willing to play white christmas however many times are necessary to get a wrap.

So yeah, nowadays the netbook has made it near falling off the log easy and cheap to work exactly like bing!

Yes, but, in fairness, he was talking about the technology. I don't think that most of what you have listed can be viewed as technology.

If we move away from those kinds of exceptions to more pedestrian productions that are still revered today I think the point holds. What did JMJ use for Oxygene? Maybe more than you can do easily with a netbook or an iPad, but, if you're not an analogue purist, not that much.

Something a little closer to present day is Jagged Little Pill. That level of technology does fit in your laptop.

The Stones Exile on Main Street was recorded in a mansion in France with a mobile recording van. That's pretty much the equivalent of a home studio, maybe a little more with the rooms in the mansion, but, I'm pretty sure that they weren't treated. So, if your band is as good as the Stones, hey, many are, then you don't need whatever budget that they had to record "exile on main street. The van can mostly be replaced by a netbook.

Of course there's Nebraska, but that's a bit of an outlier, particularly since it doesn't actually sound very good.

Boston's debut album was largely recorded at a home studio.

Although Epic Records thought that the band was heading to the West Coast to record the bulk of the album in a “proper studio”, Scholz went ahead and recorded almost everything in his apartment except “Let Me Take You Home Tonight” and Brad Delp’s vocals, which were recorded at Capitol Studios’ Studio C with Warren Dewey engineering.

“More Than a Feeling”, ranked the 39th best hard rock song of all time by VH1, was supposedly played on a $100 Yamaha acoustic and recorded with an Electro-Voice RE16 microphone. To date, Boston’s first album has sold over 17 million copies.

The point being that, beyond talent, a lot of the other factors aren't strictly necessary to create good records. The "technology" of a netbook is certainly capable of creating a recording more pristine than Bing's 1941 studio. Whether or not it will be as compelling without the vintage mics and tubes warming everything up is a bit different question.

Back to Jarre, if we're talking about things that aren't mic'd, e.g., a LOT of electronic music these days, I think it becomes even more compelling.

[Distorted Horizon]

What's your opinion on that?

Just visited Voxengo website and my honest opinion is, that if I didn't know any of your plugins, I propably wouldn't buy any on those. Downloading freeware was easy but buying commercial products?

Why?

Website is quite messy. Doesn't look like "hey I'm selling high quality products here". For example if I wanted to buy some plugin, it took me way too long to search the price list.

For example Melda has pile of stuff for sale. Products are easy to find, easy to buy, looks great.. List goes on.

And where's the show and flashing lights? By the looks of the webpage the image I get from the Voxengo is flat, dull and grey. I like the GUI of Voxengo plugins though, they are clear and have personality. Maybe a bit old looking but personally I don't care.

Audiodamage website is very clear and intuitive. Maybe doesn't lure me in to buying but makes everything so easy that it's inviting.

Ohmforce site works. It also has some of that "show -spirit" that I mentioned earlier.

Hornet has a good website too. It's starting to get close that famous "messy", but it works, looks good and has all the info easily available and way too easy to click that buy -button which I haven't of course clicked way too many times


Btw I really like your plugins

[SparkySpark]

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 to make things clear: I don't think that marketing hype is necessary (and Melda is perhaps doing it a bit much). What I think is important is clear descriptions of what the products are for (as the other poster mentioned) and providing a feeling of honesty. As DistortedHorizon wrote:

"Audiodamage website is very clear and intuitive. Maybe doesn't lure me in to buying but makes everything so easy that it's inviting. ... Hornet has a good website too. It's starting to get close that famous "messy", but it works, looks good and has all the info easily available and way too easy to click that buy -button"

SoundToys does this well: http://www.soundtoys.com/product/little-alterboy/ First a sentence on what this product does. Then a longer explanation of why one should buy it. Then some (maybe a bit too much) marketing hype. Then tech stuff, alongside a features list. Then some videos or similar. Note that for every SoundToys product, you can clearly see a price tag and a Buy button already on the Products page: http://www.soundtoys.com/product/ .

I don't think this is too much to ask for, especially given the time that developers have already spent on creating their plugs. I don't care much whether or not the developer is highly fluent in English, produces great videos etc, but I do want some information. One final thing I want is an easy way to download the product, with no need for copy protection dongles etc.

When it comes to Voxengo, I think that this is actually well done here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/crtiv- ... by-voxengo The wordings let me judge if I want to download a demo or not.

[camsr]

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

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.