Is the plugin industry finally collapsing now?

[digitalboytn]

Quality always shines thru.

It is certainly a crowded market place these days and that presents many challenges to the developers - especially when so many of the plugins that are available for free are as good and sometimes better than many of the commercial offerings...

We are bombarded with new toys on a daily basis - the latest wizz bang thing - and our minds are becoming saturated with the burdens of it all,so we turn away from to get some respite...

A digital detox is very good for the soul

How many EQs,compressors, saturators,reverbs,delays and all the rest do we really need ?

I find that when I turn off most of that stuff and focus on making music,that I breath a little easier and find the ride much more enjoyable

[xhunaudio]

Instead of making a deep, full, 30-minute long analysis on this topic - starting with the fact that "plugins" industry CAN'T collapse in any way and that the practice of releasing "pro audio gears" as "virtual goods" represent the Present and the Future of the whole Pro Audio Industry (well, also the Past of the Industry, since 30 years have passed from the first VST plugin was released), etc. etc. etc. - I would focus on a central aspect, imh.

It's true that prices are generally lowering, that market is very overcrowded since many years, etc. But this are not necessarily bad things, at all.

Ok, everything was different 20 or 10 years ago, I remember it well.

Today (from several years, to say the truth), a new "model" rised. Today the scope of buying/purchasing a commercial "plugin" is not related to "music production" purposes. Today you can produce a full Hollywood Blockbuster Soundtrack using exclusively professional, high-end DAWs, virtual instruments and virtual effects available for free and as open-source. The point of commercial plugins - today - is to offer new / niche approaches to research and development.

Here's a generic example : Company A and Company B release two Minimoog analogue physics simulations. The two Companies use two *different* approaches to physics. Both are correct and accurate. Company A and B describe their theoretical approach on their website. Potential customers **read and understand** both the "Minimoogs" research and development descriptions. Since prices are kept low, potential customers can easily choose to support both Companies. This is a win-win-...-win.

The problem here is that - in order to have this model working (as it successfully happened for many years) - you have to count on an "educated" - or at least - "informed" audience. And this is where things become very very sad, unfortunately.

I'm still lucky enough to have professional composers/producers among my Customers (they're educated, informed and polite people indeed : it happens when you stay away from socials). But, generally speaking, if a Company wants to promote itself, 99% it has to pass through the "socials" etc. and - very sadly - you'll find a gigantic increase of irrecoverable ignorance, vulgarity, stupidity there. It is very clear : that kind of people can't (and even don't want to) understand, learn, study anything.

No more educated composers/producers, who studied for a lifetime, before speaking. Just masses of Youtubers (or even worse) yelling again and again : "I want that fkng Apple Silicon, stupid Yamaha corp. ! Do this or I don't buy your shit ! I want MPE, stupid Roland corp. ! Where's my resizable GUI ? That shitty developer doesn't support woke agenda !" etc.

In this context, the "model" I described lines above simply can't apply. When anyone else in the room is angry and yelling, Pro Audio Companies have serious difficoulies in explaining key aspects of a new / niche development, a new approach to physics, a new technology involved to the few "educated ones", so the "model" virtuous circle is blocked.

So, after making a 80-minute long post (instead of the 30-minute one I wanted to avoid), I can safely say today it's an "audience" problem (sadly) or - let's say - a "Company -> audience" communication problem, when you consider the big numbers. No more professional or students or real passionate users as auditors. Just "Youtubers" and "trappers" (or generic psychos who just want to become rich, famous and popular with their "trap monsterpiece") which represent 90%+ of the crowd. It's not a problem of industry, or sales. It's a problem of chaotic, noisy ignorance - making the wrong perception of a contaminated, collapsing industry - with the misconception of each instrument/effect being basically the same as any other one available, with no differences.

Solution : fortunately, when AI's "TRAP whinesongs generator" will be integrated into the Youtube video editor or similar, all that people in bulk will fade away from the "music production" discussions/contexts in about 3 minutes, leaving (let's hope) space to more fair discussions and better Companies-audience communication. Because 90%+ of the "forum partecipants" today are not really interested in music production, they can't and don't want to understand the inner working (and beauty) of a Reverb engine. At that point, they will just type "AI, add reverb to my burps in my YT video", without the need of using a dedicated reverb processor. And the "Effects/Reverbs plugins" section on public forums will magically be less overcrowed.

[quikquak]

AI: If there's no creativity or engineering process to make music, then we're royally f**ked. But I'm not convinced that's going to happen, there is not a Quincy Jones level of music understanding in any of it.
If people are just going to say to an AI "add effect to this" they are completely losing the reasoning and timbral elements behind it, and they probably won't be able to tweak anything very well, or even know what they are doing, as the more people use AI, the more we'll lose over time, e.g. "What's the point of learning engineering if the engineer IS the AI, right?" - what a load of dingo's kidneys that is!
That sounds like a world of crappy homogeneous dirge to me, with zero creativity. Call me silly, but I'm biased towards human minds and their ability to find unusual detail and feeling in what they do.
(yeah, I starting calling modern Pop music, "homogeneous dirge" years ago, but that's not the point )

[jamcat]

What I see is something a little different. For years, decades even, most of the top tier pro-audio hardware companies stayed away from plugins. When they did get in, they released some watered down, middle of the road plugins that simply carried their name, or some variation on it (e.g., TC Works.) The few that did go all-in mostly limited their plugins to DSP platforms and unreasonably high prices, to try to create an artificial scarcity to maintain their name cachet. In the last several years, a trend started with the majors getting in finally, but with subscription-only services tethered to unreasonable use restrictions, like having to be logged into a cloud server at all times while using them. But they have relaxed these systems considerably more recently, and once sky-high prices have come down to earth.

So now we find ourselves really where I think most audio software users always wanted to be from the beginning, with official software versions of the famous synths and effect units that dominated analogue studios back when this all started, provided by the companies that actually made them. We all can now use reasonably priced plugins of our favorite gear directly from Roland, Lexicon, SSL, Fender, Ampeg, Universal Audio, Harrison, KORG, Eventide, TC Electronic and more, no near-beer emulations necessary. I think this is squeezing indie developers from the top even more than AI and Github freeware is squeezing them from the bottom. We're seeing a market consolidation in the storied audio device manufacturers who are now raking in most of the available plugin dollars out there, while the remaining market share for everyone else continues to both shrink and become even more over-saturated.

[ghettosynth]

Because 90%+ of the "forum partecipants" today are not really interested in music production, they can't and don't want to understand the inner working (and beauty) of a Reverb engine. At that point, they will just type "AI, add reverb to my burps in my YT video", without the need of using a dedicated reverb processor. And the "Effects/Reverbs plugins" section on public forums will magically be less overcrowed.

Do you think that this was ever the case? Do you want me to go back to the Effects forum from the early 2000s, or posts some queries from mailing lists? Moreover, it doesn't really address the main point of this topic. For certain, people won't come here to add reverb to their burps on youtube if youtube allows them to express that in a prompt, and it might. However, even if that impacts the forum, how does it negate the thesis of this thread?

At any rate, I don't think that AI is a primary reason why we're seeing consolidation in the market in recent years. Most of that predates the AI bandwagon.

[xhunaudio]

If carefully read, my post above explains it fine in any aspect.

Point 1 : AI is NOT the problem (and never will be) - I mean NOT for the Pro Audio Industry. Maybe a problem for the average music "content" industry (for music composers, producers) on the mid-long term, but this is off topic.

Point 2 : diffused, creepy human stupidity and ignorance (exalted/rewarded by "the Socials" on a daily basis) is THE problem. That prevents Pro Audio Companies to properly elevate the discussion and inform the "few educated people" who - instead - ARE part of the music industry (as real professional and/or real passionate Customers), definitely.

Point 3 : Sadly, "the Socials" do attract all that kind of narcissistic (or worse) people. That kind of people - years ago - were the ones who used to spend their days in the bars and gambling dens. Today instead, they are 24/7 on "Socials" and "Forums" and "Chats" insulting and disturbing Pro Audio (or any other kind of) Companies. That kind of "YouTrappers" have nothing to do with music, in any form. They just have to do with tattoos, followers, likes, shitstorms and they call themselves "musicians" just because they have a cool, fashion haircut and want to become rich and famous - or because they just purchased the new Apple FanBook Pro. And they are millions, unfortunately (to be clear : I'm not against having a YouTube channel, I'm just trying to describe the average "Forum Social chatter/hater"). They prevent the "good communication model" virtuous circle (I mentioned in my previous post) to happen.

This is why I strongly think "the Socials" are the saddest thing ever happened to music since the introduction of minor chords.

Note #1 : Again to be clear, Socials/Forums themself are NOT the primary cause of human society degradation. This degradation has deeper and creeper origins. Socials/Forums represent a "inner propaganda" mechanism for which the worst (of the worst) humans/conformists are regurarily exalted and prized, making this degradation problem to litterally explode.

Note #2 : in the previous page, if I remember fine, someone said a problem could be the "recent geopolitics instability", making people prone to save money instead of spending it. I consider this correct, generally speaking - also if it has not a huge impact on Pro Audio Industry in particular.

Note #3 : it'd be very long to tell and explain, but if I could make a consideration, all "hardware" pro audio companies 20 years ago (or more) perfectly understood the superiority of virtual (software) compared to hardware, since day one : their top-class lead engineers just did the math with then-available superior (workstation-class) CPUs performance power (GIPS/GFLOPS) and accuracy (native 32-bit or 64-bit float processing - basically something never seen before on hardware coprocessors) compared to hardware DSPs. They didn't entirely jump on the "virtual" wagon since day one, just because they used to gain (also today, under certain conditions) a bigger share/money revenue with selling hardware products compared to software ones. TC-WORKS' Mercury 1 (just as an example, but it applies to other companies too) was a masterpiece, much more defined than any hardware-DSP based synthesizer of the time, in terms of processed audio *accuracy* and *clarity*. Then (as an example) one could prefer the less accurate Yamaha AN1x because of the more colored, saturated DAC output - but that is a mere matter of "personal tastes".

[maxchristensenaudio]

Definitely a scary time for sure...

[gambero]

I mostly agree with everything (and have been saying the same about misinformation and lack of technical knowledge for a looong time) but I only have 1 note/question.

Point 1 : AI is NOT the problem (and never will be) - I mean NOT for the Pro Audio Industry. Maybe a problem for the average music "content" industry (for music composers, producers) on the mid-long term, but this is off topic.

Wouldn't that mean a smaller user pool in the long run? AFAICT that has been the biggest/primary target for most plugin manufacturers for the last 10/15 years.

EDIT: grammar

[Zeisner]

Because 90%+ of the "forum partecipants" today are not really interested in music production, they can't and don't want to understand the inner working (and beauty) of a Reverb engine.

Absolutely. And it's not just production, it's composition, arrangement and performance as well. It's like people don't want to create anything anymore, they just want to play the AI lootbox game and pose as musician.

[xhunaudio]

Wouldn't that mean a smaller user pool in the long run? AFAICT that has been the biggest/primary target for most plugin manufacturers for the last 10/15 years.

Probably a lower number of *compulsive* buyers in the short period - but a higher share of informed, truly passionate, solid Customers on the mid-long run.

[ghettosynth]

I mostly agree with everything (and have been saying the same about misinformation and lack of technical knowledge for a looong time) but I only have 1 note/question.

Point 1 : AI is NOT the problem (and never will be) - I mean NOT for the Pro Audio Industry. Maybe a problem for the average music "content" industry (for music composers, producers) on the mid-long term, but this is off topic.

Wouldn't that mean a smaller user pool in the long run? AFAICT that has been the biggest/primary target for most plugin manufacturers for the last 10/15 years.

EDIT: grammar

I don't. It's a poorly thought out polemic that starts with a few genuine observations that devolve into wild and unfounded explanations and concludes that other people are his problem. The thesis shoots itself in the foot. Here he is on social media insulting potential customers with an ignorant rant and poor communications skills. He is his own problem.

Your point is correct.

[Dexter US]

I was pushed into using my own vocals by ai detection systems and then ended up failing with vocals with ringmod added to them... I have a tendency to buy bundles and I have noticed at least three software subscriptions that include distro.. fruitloops where they take the instruments away landr where you keep them forever and I forgot the other one so I don't believe magazine type structures are dead. alot of the software does not support good indexes so having to many plugins can be hard to look at as far as that software goes. I could see suno colapsing due to energy costs and coming back later when it all becomes more effecient. that is my guess for the buisness and it could be a subscription with the plugins, I don't see a reason why it is better than quickly using plugins for a backing track...

A good subscription where I get to keep some of the plugins at the end of it is something I find interesting although it may cost more than sales.

[xhunaudio]

blablabla !#

Eheh. No "sales" (or other) problems here. No rants at all. I didn't start the thread even.

I simply took a picture of today's sad situation - which unfortunately extends way beyond things like "sales" or similar. It's a degradation problem affecting all kinds of "industries" or "contexts".

Thank you for your insults, angry words and for showing yourself as an example of the degradation we (me and other observers here) were talking about, in our posts. Goodbye !

[ghettosynth]

blablabla !#

Eheh. No "sales" (or other) problems here. No rants at all. I didn't start the thread even.

I simply took a picture of today's sad situation - which unfortunately extends way beyond things like "sales" or similar. It's a degradation problem affecting all kinds of "industries" or "contexts".

I know what you did, and I criticized your conclusions. I disagree with you, I think that you are a poor communicator, both in language and visually. I think that's part of the reason that you're in this thread.

You wrote:

It's true that prices are generally lowering, that market is very overcrowded since many years, etc.

Your prices are lower. I'm going to assume that's because you can't sell them at full price?

Thank you for your insults, angry words and for showing yourself as an example of the degradation we (me and other observers here) were talking about, in our posts. Goodbye !

You are actively demonstrating the degradation that you think exists in others. It's projection. I am the customer that you fantasize about. I evaluate technically and buy technically. But go on, insult KVR users all that you want.

[xhunaudio]