Is the plugin industry finally collapsing now?

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Some people are predicting this since many years. But I personally think that this might now really be happening. Too many problematic things are currently stacking up simutaniously. Here are my thoughts about it.

What happened in the past?

• Market is very overcrowded since many years
• In 2020/2021 Corona pandemic had given software sales a big boost. During this time the companies were doing very well and were be growing. After this sales were going back. Not all software companies were able to handle declining sales and created depths.
• NI filed insolvency. Digital River filed insolvency.

What is happening now?

• AI slop is making it more difficult to keep good products visible
• Meanwhile there is lots of good open source available. Then there is (and was always) also piracy.
• Musicians are carful into investing into gear as they are not sure how AI will impact their business in the future
• Computer hardware prices, especially RAM/SSD have raised dramatically due to AI companies buying up everything
• The costs for living have raised in many countries. People are careful with spending money.
• There is war in the Ukraine. Now we have another war in Irania. People are even more careful with spending money.
• (As a result of all this?) many plugin companies are doing aggressive discounts. Prices are dropping

What do you think about it? Please keep the discussion friendly and try to stay objective.

[whyterabbyt]

Over-crowded markets only 'collapse' relative to the state of over-crowding, ie they rebalance to a less overcrowded state. it doesnt mean the market disappears entirely.

[kerfuffle]

AI slop is making it more difficult to keep good products visible

Wouldn't it do the opposite and make good products stand out more?

[Flogs]

Over-crowded markets only 'collapse' relative to the state of over-crowding, ie they rebalance to a less overcrowded state. it doesnt mean the market disappears entirely.

^^This^^

I think there is a massive Suno (and similar software) user base that will potentially spawn future music producers who will use AI prompts along with DAW's and plugins to personalise their own music. My own experience started with 'Music' on PlayStation 1 many moons ago, currently using Logic Pro, Cubase, various plugins, including Icarus 3. NI's predicament is bourne mainly from failure to read the room, possible bad management and maybe also greed.

[audiojunkie]

Over-crowded markets only 'collapse' relative to the state of over-crowding, ie they rebalance to a less overcrowded state. it doesnt mean the market disappears entirely.

Whyterabbyt’s assessment rings true to me. It is sound economic logic. There’s been a superstorm of events lately that have affected the industry negatively. NI’s fate wasn’t because of internal mismanagement, not external circumstances. AI is here to stay, but AI won’t make plugins go away. Things will get better.

[FigBug]

I was at the Audio Developer Confrence in the fall of 2025. The mood in the room was definetly pessamistic. There was lots of talk about AI, but nobody really seems to know what they are doing with it yet. The big fear is that the current models are being sold at a loss, and if you build something on top of them, a big price hike is coming sometime in the next 5 years. There isn't a lot of development being put into models that run locally.

I've seen a decent number of AI slop plugins released, but I'm not too worried about it. I think once people realize how hard it is to market a plugin and how small the market is, they'll move on to doing something else.

Sales still seem ok, nowhere near what they were in 2020. My bigger fear is a lot of the plugin companies were founded about 25 years ago, and still just small operations. People want to retire but these companies aren't really sellable. So much knowledge locked in 1 or 2 peoples head. As sales dwindle people will just walk away from their companies.

[audiojunkie]

I was at the Audio Developer Confrence in the fall of 2025. The mood in the room was definetly pessamistic. There was lots of talk about AI, but nobody really seems to know what they are doing with it yet. The big fear is that the current models are being sold at a loss, and if you build something on top of them, a big price hike is coming sometime in the next 5 years. There isn't a lot of development being put into models that run locally....

From what I understand, the reason it is believed that the price is going to go up, is that no one has figured out how to properly monetize AI yet. A ton of resources goes into making AI work, and the little subscriptions that they are charging for everyone to use AI isn't going to allow these companies to break even. These businesses will have to become financially sustainable sometime soon, and that's why they estimate that the prices will change within the next 5 years.

[Seafire Mk2]

Quality always shines thru. Lack of innovation will be the biggest cause of a devs demise, not AI

[zerocrossing]

Speaking personally, the entire art team that worked on got laid off at the beginning of 2025, and as far as I can tell, none of them are working. This is also a software industry, but game development. Are people not playing games anymore? Are artists being replaced with AI? Not sure, but this is the longest I've been out of work for a really long time, and I keep seeing more and more game companies laying off people.

I hear that AI is able to code really well, so maybe musicians who were previously doing OK at some software company are now also looking for work. Of course, trickle down effects come into play. Maybe the musician who makes burgers at a place near the office is now also looking for work because business has slowed down due to fewer people needed to do the jobs that AI is doing, or helping with.

Because of this, I am only buying absolutely what I need and making sure it's going to be something that I will use a lot. One of the reasons I stopped upgrading Tone2 plugins is because they don't support MPE, which is something I use a lot.

I'm not totally depressed about all of this for several reasons. First off, I think AI generated music is a fad. I think people are going to get really sick of paying for it and listening to it. Even if it does make a good sounding track, who would listen to it when they could just as easily make their own? It's a sort of solitary thing that lacks the fulfilling aspects of actually making music. Inversely, I think some aspects of AI are exciting. I'm able to produce music using voice modeling technology (Synthesizer V) that I could never produce on my own, so I am free to write the melodies that I want, and not have to worry about my limited vocal range. Same with things like SWAM instruments. I hope to see this come to something like Kontakt, where someone could sing in the orchestral parts and have the proper articulations happen. ACE Studio is already doing something like this, but I think it's not sample based.

Second, AI companies are all operating at a loss. This is interesting, because they say it's so awesome. If it is, why aren't people lining up to pay what it's worth? The improvement curve was once really steep, but now it's flattening and resource use is spiking. I have a feeling that a lot of people who are currently being laid off will end up working again when the promise of a workerless business is shown to be unrealistic. The more people out of work, the fewer consumers, the less income that companies will have to pay for AI subscriptions.

[Benedict]

Around 2020 I was making a basic living from music things. Mostly from client work but a gorilla or two from personal things like my albums on Bandcamp and a few niche VST. Then within about a month, it all stopped. Just around the rise of AI.

It wasn't AI as such that did it all in tho, that is merely a symptom. Slop was already taking over. AI is just the perfect slop, seeing that you can take any sense of meaning or purpose out entirely. AI isn't going to be accidentally thinking about its dead gramma, just blindly burping up blandness.

The real issue was that Divisionism overtook the arts totally. It was join the goosestep of meh or be branded a racist hater and pfft. Make real art and you're a racist. Don't like Trailer Swift and yer a racist. Don't like cats, you guessed it, racist. All this division, presented in the utter gaslighting BS about gatekeepers preventing people from expressing themselves. That divisionism is what killed it all.

It used to be that if you did something good, the cream could float. Now if you do anything but mindlessly scream "Till Krump" whilst using AI, you are buried by the people who like that they don't have to compete with Freddie, Bowie... all the people they made un. Divide everyone and make them Other & Wrong. This leaves only scavengers peddling dangerous trash that pretends it does it better. And the dividers like this, as it helps them pretend they are virtuous.

Collectively WE could change this but... This started 20+, 30+ years ago but more people clamored for it than against it. Anyone who suggested it was a dangerous path: racist : cancelled.

[zerocrossing]

Around 2020 I was making a basic living from music things. Mostly from client work but a gorilla or two from personal things like my albums on Bandcamp and a few niche VST. Then within about a month, it all stopped. Just around the rise of AI.

It wasn't AI as such that did it all in tho, that is merely a symptom. Slop was already taking over. AI is just the perfect slop, seeing that you can take any sense of meaning or purpose out entirely. AI isn't going to be accidentally thinking about its dead gramma, just blindly burping up blandness.

The real issue was that Divisionism overtook the arts totally. It was join the goosestep of meh or be branded a racist hater and pfft. Make real art and you're a racist. Don't like Trailer Swift and yer a racist. Don't like cats, you guessed it, racist. All this division, presented in the utter gaslighting BS about gatekeepers preventing people from expressing themselves. That divisionism is what killed it all.

It used to be that if you did something good, the cream could float. Now if you do anything but mindlessly scream "Till Krump" whilst using AI, you are buried by the people who like that they don't have to compete with Freddie, Bowie... all the people they made un. Divide everyone and make them Other & Wrong. This leaves only scavengers peddling dangerous trash that pretends it does it better. And the dividers like this, as it helps them pretend they are virtuous.

Collectively WE could change this but... This started 20+, 30+ years ago but more people clamored for it than against it. Anyone who suggested it was a dangerous path: racist : cancelled.

Uh… are you a racist, though, because I’ve seen absolutely nothing like what you’ve described. I’ve often described Taylor Swift as mediocre at best, and while I’ve had discussions about why I think this, I’ve never been called a racist. If you’re a Trump supporter, that would explain it.

[audiojunkie]

I can't say I've been called a racist either.....

[bermudagold]

seems to be the prevailing opinion
checkout this thread
viewtopic.php?p=9212022#p9212022

most of the new entrants from the pandemic the current market is built on weren't publishing finished songs or performing gigs anyway...plugins in DAWs had just become guitar hero in the PlayStation for a new generation...so they are probably much more likely to abandon the DAW and plugin paradigm for the cradle to grave AI tool paradigm...more familiar results. faster

that leaves the people collecting plugins like baseball cards, the people playing with dsp as a video game, and the traditional musician/composer...for the dsp gamers its about the journey not the destination, so you'll have to keep coming up with perceived "novel" implementations and flashy guis...for the traditionals, you'll have to bring new functionality or time saving workflow enhancements, because they mostly have what they need already...the collectors are probably the only stable predictable segment of the market, because their real hobby is transactional, they will most likely keep purchasing

the pivot might take longer than people think, because as BONES pointed out in the other thread they have a lot of time and money invested in the legacy DAW/plugins paradigm, and no good way to offload it and make a hard pivot or to fund a new hobby

[camsr]

Believe it or not, making new sounds is hard, time consuming, and possibly dangerous to the health (does it sound good REALLY loud?). AI is making new songs, sure, but is not really bleeding edge in new sounds that PEOPLE actually want to hear. I think one day all the AIs may come together and make a new modem or something

[ere2learn]

A big factor I think is DAWs got way better native instruments/effects over the the last 10 years. Logic/Ableton are the two biggest daws & they come stacked nowadays
New entrants really have no reason to step outside the daw to explore the vst market