Downloadable products on esoundz - discussion.

[Squids]

Hello. As usual we like to factor in your opinion on potential enhancements to www.esoundz.com There are some great things to look forward to for next year. We'll have a few surprises in the "hardware" section (and no it's not a toolbox... or at least not a traditional one ). Sonic Reality T-Shirts and hats are coming in the merchandise section and they are really cool looking! Wicked design with the Sonik Synth 2 ball and shiny bubbly capsule-like instrument graphics. I'd wear it.

But, one of the things that has been requested a lot lately is downloadable sounds and apps for purchase. We're totally open to doing it but if we do we might as well factor in your opinion on how it could be done to satisfy esoundz members (since many of you are).

So, have you purchased downloadable music products before anywhere? What did you like or dislike about that system? Was it a hassle? Was it hassle free? Was it worth it? Did the demo match what you ended up getting? Was there a demo? What is the largest size downloadable product you ever got? How long did it take you to download? Was there a time limit for how long you had to download it? A special link that expires?

For sounds, do you like the idea of a "club" where you can download a certain amount of sounds each month in bulk? Or do you like the idea of being able to cherry pick individual sounds (not ALL of our sounds would be made available this way by the way but we could do some that are downloadable products...in fact it might even make some sounds exist that would not otherwise be available- like what happens with the group buy products).

For certain apps that can be downloadable it can be done by a special email link or it can be done by access to a page with the download link after you've placed your purchase (do any sites do it that way now?).

Those are just some starting points for discussion if you are interested. Share your thoughts. We're listening.

[Lunch Money]

I've purchased from an online source before. It was inexpensive and -immediately- available, which was important to me at the time. The transaction went smoothly, and the product was quality. Therefore, I count myself a happy customer.

I would be interested in a pick-and-choose system, but only if the individual sounds' costs were really low. It would have to be one of those things where I could say, "Wow, a quality 50MB piano for only $10!" or whatnot. Diversity would also be welcome, because sometimes you just want, for example, a hand drum, and you don't want a whole ethnic percussion kit to get it.

I'd be up for it, but I think what would set it apart would be a really great pricing scheme, which may or may not include a rewards program. If you go with a rewards program, be sure that the samples are a bargain to begin with, or people won't download that crucial first sample set. If the reward is then instantly transferrable to a new purchase, the temptation gets even stronger. Adding a bargain to a bargain will usually make a repeat customer.

Greg

[Mighty_Hero]

I also have bought alot of downloable stuff. I feel it helps all of us on price, since there is no fancy box and shipping to be added into the price. Plus as you might guess, you get to use it right then, which is what we all want right?
I think it's a great idea, plus if we could buy just the sounds we want (maybe a 10 second same midi file preview, so we can just hear the patch) or maybe a smaller group of patches, it's cheaper for us, and in the long run you all might get a couple more customers who are put "off" so to speak of a 199$ + price tag.

[M'Snah]

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[scuzzphut]

I have no problem with buying downloadable software

I've bought these , which are all downloads / emailed

EnergyXT - download demo - unlock with license file by email
Wusikstation - download - around 500Meg IIRC
AMG One/Solo - bought online with the whole app emailed.

I think it's a wonderful way to cut down on shipping costs when, let's face it - those boxes will just sit on the shelf.

Benefits to Squids
- no shipping or inventory costs
- more of a chance of folks impulse-buying


go on, Squids - you know you want to

[spacefox]

I buy ONLY downloadable products.
Being in a country where prices are highs and many products are unavailable, and being skint (currently unemployed)- I wish to taxes and shipment fees - make buying downloadable projects the only sane option for me.

I can say that one of the reasons I haven't considered investing in a commercial sample library, is the fact most of them are shipped rather then downloaded. The only commercial samples I use are those in DR-008 user library (downloadable from their site).

[Meffy]

I wouldn't mind downloadable samples. I also like these massive batches like ST2XL, the Everything bundle, and of course SS2. But something tells me once SS2 is installed I'm going to be pretty well set for most kinds of samples. Specialty items are another matter altogether, and for those it's nice to be able to pick and choose individual sounds or small packs.

Meffy

[pricer]

i'm all for downloadable sounds, but you have to get some solid infrastructure in place first - i think the Steam system (http://steampowered.com/index.php), which is used for gaming and is very good, as that opens up the door for a whole host of extra options (automatic updates of software/news feeds/demo software) and would be a good system to base a downloadable system on.

Though, your security is going to have to be top notch, people try to hack these things more than you think, already Valve who operate the Steam downloading system, have already banned 20,000 people for attempting to decrypt files before the official release of a product. Though to be fair, Steam is for the release of high-profile games, where most people in that area know a thing or two about decrypting files, torrents, peer to peer networks and other such things.

More relating to online sample-distribution, sounddogs.com offers a very reliable downloadable sample system, often from sfx collection which cost £1000's (Sound General 6000 series, etc). The way they work is allocating you a specific FTP address for your order, which has the advantage like the Steam system of reliable and safe downloading, for example if your download is interupted say by a power cut, then you haven't lost your purchases - which can potentially occur, if say downloading from iTunes or bleep.com

One other good idea sounddogs have, is the mixed bag option - just a variety of sfx samples, loops etc for a cheap price, they even have a funny xmas offer at the moment - 100 sounds for 1 dollar - http://www.sounddogs.com/suppliers/1061.htm

The only issue i can imagine is the way that the sounds can be demonstrated - maybe like sounddogs do with their sfx, you could offer a very low quality version of the sound, a trial version of the sound, or just go for a variety of mp3 riffs.

I think online purchases are great, like scuzzphut states there is a greater chance of impulse buying and lowering prices for the customer and the potential of increasing your custom and popularity for your company.

[Bassballjg]

This is indeed an important discussion, one in which I am currently engaged:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=65496

There seems to be an irrefutable dmand for downloadable samples, the question is thus how does one technically impliment it, and what makes sense as a business? This has to be looked at something that you have to do to meet customer demand, but how you do it in a way that makes economic sense as a business can't be everything to everybody. I think that the different models have both their technical and economic pros and cons. In order to both meet demand and satisfy commercial imperitives some aspects of both a club system and an ala carte system are needed. What balance that takes will depend on how the demand side and the implimentation aspects correlate. This is probably only knowable after some real experience.

A downloadable service does not necessarily mean reduced costs and labor intensity ipso facto. It means more expense for server space and bandwidth, new tasks for the staff to impliment and administer the system, and more labor on the creative side to create the actual downloadable products. All of this will cost time and money in advance of any sales and without any assurance that these new costs will be offset by savings on packaging and manufacturing, since the disc service will be continuing anyway. Not to mention that the work to do the sampling and create the sounds remains unchanged.

Products appropriate for download will probably be different to those available on disc. Obviously, there can never be a downloadable SS2. But some of those elements might be made available. But is this to be done one instrument at a time or in packages?

What formats are to be supported and how does multiformat support translate into storage issues with redundant wave data in different proprietary forms, eg ST2? Do you bundle NNXT patches with the appropriate wav files and then do so again for Kontakt patches so the customer gets a single downloadable package for their respective format?

A lot of demand for downloadable sounds comes for the wish for instant gratification and I won't knock that at all as a reasonable consumer deamnd. But there is also an expectation that prices should be lower simply because of downloadability and the lack of packaging and manufacturing costs to the producer. But this view does not adequately take into account the costs in time and money of adding a download service to an existing disc based service, especially when the disc service cannot be eliminated. Of course, a product that is totally virtual will have no costs associated with physical production and should be priced accordingly. This is appropriate for most plug-ins and is the way the market is trending. Or you can have something like Wusikstation, a downloadable product with a disc option for a fee. But SR and the way it does sound libraries is different, and any download service it does should reflect that difference.

An Expansion Tank or ReFill that's only a couple of hundred megs or less, sure, I'll buy it downloadable. Or if I really need an NNXT tabla set on deadline, hell yeah. But I don't realistically expect an SR sample supermarket where I can just pick and choose at will from all there is available from all the many libraries in all the differnt formats. I see it as a limited add-on to the existing business. Perhaps certain extant titles that are realistic in their size as downloads,compressed, and a small ala carte service of individual basic sounds in the important categories, eg, piano 1, 2 and 3, organs 1-4, drums 1-10, etc. That individual sound inventory could rotate periodically, and that could be the club level of the service.

There are some companies that do downloads of sounds and loops but they are mostly idomatically and or format narrow. I know of no company with the breadth and volume of SR's sounds in either format or area terms. So, I say yes, SR should go to a downloadble service, but it should do so on its terms and in a way that continues and compliments what makes it special as a company.

I raise all the points I do to say that it just isn't as easy to do as people might think.By all means, yes, do it, but do it carefully and be flexible about how to do it in reaction to real demand. It's better to take the time to do something that is win-win than to go into something to scratch an itch, however real, and get it wrong. Squids, I have every confidence in you and your team to make something good happen. I can wait for you to get it right.

BassballJG
dBu

[pricer]

Hmm, some great points - this is turning out to be a great thread topic. I agree that certain products should be disc-only - it both offers customer satisfaction in having a big shiny disc and dvd/box case to reflect their mighty purchase, cuts out the pain of d/l'ing 8 gigs of sound and greatly reduces any underhand behaviour from any third party.

It may be an idea to draw up some numbers on who out of your customers would be willing to purchase online, then draw your own conclusions on what scale of operation is needed, if from the positive support shown here it may be worth considering investigating a system similar to Steam, as having such direct contact with your customers would probably increase further revenue down the line, highlighting offers and products that they would normally have to come to KvR to see. Obviously a whole new range of staff would need to be employed, but if there is an interested market, you could make a go of it - i imagine it would be a long journey before you see the benefits, but going from the success of Steam, Sounddogs and bleep, this system can definetely work to your benefit.

For example, I totally missed the Tron offer to begin with, as i rarely ventured over to the market place forum, with an online system, you could offer these clearly in the 'forthcoming' section of the main app, through the news section, or a 'SR recommends' section similar to what Amazon use when you make a purchase on their site, say when i purchased a similar product or sound.

Though you would need some serious bandwidth - this is how much the Steam server bandwidth uses - http://www.steampowered.com/status/content_servers.html

As you can see it's quite a lot to distribute one series of game, and you can only imagine the man-power behind it to maintain it all.

Finally, this interview relates to bleep.com
http://www.midem.com/App/PrintFriendly. ... ame=100412
As you can see on the last paragraph, they are just about breaking even, so even a popular label like Warp (now includes Ninjatunes amongst others) find it difficult just to stay afloat.

[smp]

I'm on dial-up (which due to telco infrastructure goes no faster than 31.2k ). Most things I have bought in the past are download-only eg Tau Pro, Angelina, Massiva and EnergyXT and FL Studio. At 30+ MB, FLS is getting to be a real PITA to download because it takes me a couple of hours, and using download assistants sucks - it might give me decent resume support but often it also doubles download time. Oh, and I also downloaded DR-008 but Angus kindly sent me the gigs worth of drum kits on 2 CD-Rs, postage free (Fxpansion - like Sonic Reality, kings of customer service in my books )

My point is for me to buy download only things, they have to be relatively small in size to make it worth my while. I'm also not likely to download sounds but that's because apart from some specific ST libraries and Sonic Synth (soon to be SS2), I don't think I will have much call for more sounds in the near future. SS2, Symphony Strings, Pukka Massala, all those drum kit goodies in DR-008 - for my level of compositional skill and knowledge, that's more than enough to keep me going

I think I've wandered off track here a little. I'm sure there's something useful that can be gleaned from the above though...

-s

[Squids]

I don't think we'll be making any of our libraries available as downloadable products. But, individual sounds can be a possibility. Maybe a light version of a particular library or a group of sounds as a package. I've had this in mind for years actually. The name "esoundz" sort of suggests it really. But, if we do it I want it to be balanced between security and ease of use and a good experience for the customer.

Has anyone purchased from Sonomic? (sp?) How was that experience. Do you like their system? What about Primesounds?

When you purchased any downloadable sounds, what happens if you lost that sound. Could you easily get it again? What hoops did you have to go through? Could you get it automatically or did you have to contact the company or were you not able to get that sound again?

By the way, I don't need to be talked into it. I am for it. So is everyone involved in esoundz.com But, we want to do it in the best way.

[Lunch Money]

The company I used gives you 3 downloads on your user account. Ideally, you'll make a physical backup once they're downloaded, but after that, you've got another 2 chances to download and make your physical backup.

Greg

[Sicklecell666]

Downloadable service is a great option to have.

I would be glad to see it available from Sonic Reality, and have no problems doing business that way at all..

[M'Snah]

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