What is your plugin budget? Or how much do you spend if no budget?

[TechHaus]

Curious - do folks here have monthly or yearly budgets set?

How much do you spend in those time periods on average?

Also, if you feel like mentioning if you are a pro or hobbyist, that might be an interesting data point.

Feel free to answer outside of those questions / parameters if applicable.

[pekbro]

If you knew how much I can spend in a week at times, you would understand why I may complain about pricing on occasion. Some dev's think were all made out of money.

Still, my habit of collecting plugins and whatnot, is likely not overly rational "at times" as a hobbyist.

I do go out of my way to get the best deal possible, and pride myself on that understanding
of the market actually. It can be quite complex...

[vurt]

i spend very little on plugins over a year, maybe a hundred pounds sterling. obviously any host upgrade (when they actually fix things or add worthwhile things) then it's a bit more, but that's not really plugins.

please refrain from asking about hardware
i don't spend more than i have available. no credit card purchases, unless i can pay it straight off.

[pekbro]

I go back and forth between HW/SW. Currently on SW.

[vurt]

I go back and forth between HW/SW. Currently on SW.

my next software related purchase is going to be hardware too old computer is showing its age a bit now. may need an upgrade if it keeps messing about.

[hardyharrharr]

i have never spent any money on plugins ever
i could save up but i fear i could get addicted to buying plugins
for a while there, i was addicted to hoarding free vst plugins

at the moment i am still learning to make a song that i am happy with
i try many times, i fail many times, change that to all the time
i try to not throw the failures away thinking i can maybe someday get good at fixing them

anyways, i just use free plugins
i am pretty happy with them

bass plugins
drum plugins
les paul guitar plugins
acoustic guitar plugins
distortion plugins
some synth plugins
organ plugins
etc

i just try to use free plugins that try to sound like the real instruments that rock groups use
rock music is the one i collect and enjoy listening to
might as well try making that, rock music i mean

to me, real instruments and/or plugins are secondary for now
to write proper songs is primary

it's hard since songwriting is not my natural thing
i am no paul maccartney
but john lennon is no paul maccartney? neither is george harrison?
i admire john lennon more since he did it even if he was no paul maccartney
he went toe to toe with "the natural one"
but who knows, maybe it's the other way around

what was the topic again?
something about buying plugins?

[TechHaus]

Ayy, I appreciate the responses. I have talked myself out of hardware by keeping it limited to instruments, and transducers (mics / speakers / headphones). Keeping far away from the pedal rabbit hole. I could use new pickups on my guitar...but I also hardly record said guitar.... Yet, I do have my eyes on a couple of fancy DI's... (Cloudlifter CL-Zi and a Radial Firefly I can get for $199 at a pawn shop because it needs the power supply).

---

I started this thread because I am trying to come up with my own plugin budget. As a Linux user, there is so much new stuff coming to our ecosystem - especially exciting when established devs are bringings their 'ware over. But also a lot of new devs are doing the three OS thing thanks go Juice and other frameworks. Lost of gaps are being filled, and I want all of the gap filler!

My budget: I think I'm giving myself a $100 budget a month until black friday, where I may splurge.

So $500-$600 or so until the end of November.

I already set a rule for myself - no plugins over $39. I've been sticking to it, except when 39 Euros bring me over (Toneboosters Morphit).

Most months I buy nothing, but the GAS is getting to me. Well, the need to expand my toolset is getting to me.

Bundles give me a way to bring the average price of a bunch of plugins down below $39. Like the apulSoft or Kazrog bundles, if I went for those, would bring those average prices down. But I am talking myself out of the Kazrog bundle for now because I just don't need that many more compressors. I really don't have a toolset gap there.

So yeah, my brain feels at ease with a framework to spend my money. Took me a few days of thinking it through...

How much do I need to make with my studioto allow for a $100 budget, brain? That's where my brain is at now. How much should you put back into your music business? Is 5% too much or too little (random number). I do want some fancy mastering plugins that cost more than $39 but I have to weigh that during my potential black friday splurge.

[balisani]

Curious - do folks here have monthly or yearly budgets set?

How much do you spend in those time periods on average?

This might shock some, but I've not bought any new plugins since the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, say March 2020, I racked up thousands of $ in plugins from the likes of UAD (90+) and Plugin Alliance (50+), PSP (all of them), Waves (50+), etc. Most of them I'd paid full price for, before the great sales fever took over all plugin developer companies.

At any rate, between paid purchases, and maybe a few dozen free plugins (by your usual suspects: German PhD candidates, Russian and Turkish coders come to mind), and of course, the Arturia and Komplete suites of plugins (which I don't think I've ever used, come to think of it - they're just there), I have (let me check now) 839 plugins in my Components folder.

I don't think I've even come close to using half of them - to that point, I uninstalled all my (paid) Waves plugins a year or two ago, or whenever it is they went berserk, and however much I love their Abbey Road plugins, I just was no longer comfortable associating this company with my projects.

To your question then: I no longer spend a dime on plugins, but I did spend well over $12k over a ten year period, so that makes it roughly $1,200 per year - until the Covid lockdown brought me back to my senses I guess.

Full disclosure: my production partner is more impulsive than even I am, and keeps buying some plugins still. We share an account, so inevitably, the plugins he buys will show up on my machine when I update my installs, but that's his money, not mine.

[Dexter US]

I was spending $100 a month but it is getting hard to find anything unique. I think I went over on a couple of months..