Are we seeing the decline of the plug-in industry?

[bmanic]

Current deep discounts on Lexicon. Current deep discounts on Waves software. Ongoing sales by a wide variety of software manufacturers.

Are Kracks killing the industry?

Are the software developers trying to fight piracy with lower (and lower) prices?

Anyone have thoughts about what's happening out there?

I mean, I love the lower (and lower) prices, but I hope this isn't pointing to major difficulties that software developers are having with kracks and piracy. That would totally suck.

I know that one of Lexicon's main software programmers left early this year...is this due to the challenging nature of that industry?

I'd say it's the contrary. More and more people have access to cheap music software. The audio industry is surprisingly large with a massive "hobbyist" user base and it's growing all the time.

A lot of my younger cousins and various friends have gotten into music making as a hobby after messing around with garage band or something similar. Now they are all getting into plugins as well. I think this is awesome!

If you have a good product and an attractive price, giving the user a sense of "good value for money" then you will do well (and have reasonable demos and non-restrictive DRM).

We are seeing the same thing on other computer software fronts as well.. like games. Prices have been coming down lately by quite a margin, or at least there are way more sales.

Cheers!
bManic

[lotus2035]

Hey man, I like animals too.

But let's not kid ourselves. This is a man's world, for a good reason.

Even if the human race builds a massive galactic empire that lasts a million years it will still be nothing compared to the age of the earth and minuscule compared to the age of the sun which has another 5 billion years to go before it transforms fully into a red giant. And giving us one million years is being pretty generous I would say. The human race is nothing more than a temporary bacteria living on the parts of the earth's crust that just happen to be protruding above the water. We don't own shit.

In any case human beings are the only creatures on earth who don't follow their natural programming. I reckon we are WAAAAAYY off course. We have centuries of primitive religion/politics to thank for that.

Am I in HPC?

[pdxindy]

And giving us one million years is being pretty generous I would say.

Am I in HPC?

50/50 we don't make it another 300 years... and 10 to 1 odds we don't make it 100 more with our arrogance intact

[Quietinthedark]

I thought that was all normal around the 2 biggest holidays?

Two things:

1. It's the holidays.
2. There is a lot of competition in the marketplace where great plugins can be had for low prices, which probably works to cannibalize the sales of more expensive plugins. The more expensive companies probably want to compete without depreciating the value of their plugins, so they opt for big sales.

I have paid a lot for hardware and software over the years, but for me, it really is #2. The quality of some of the free (Variety of Sound, Reaplugs) and cheap (ToneBoosters, Valhalla, Stillwell) plugins is a huge factor.

[ontol]

[pdxindy]

so to sum it up:

Animals are cracking our software, and it makes some people mad, while others are drinking non-alcoholic beverages. The industry itself may outlive us, but it will be at sale prices.

Excellent summation!

[@midnight]

In any case human beings are the only creatures on earth who don't follow their natural programming.

That's a very ambiguous statement. I mean, first of all, how do you define natural programming and in what way does homo sapien not follow it?

Homo sapien does what it needs to do in order to survive. It always has. Religion and politics arose out of tribal/communal style living, which is something homo sapien needs to do to survive.

Are religion and politics fcked up? Of course they are. But I fail to see your point about how we don't follow natural programming. I'm not sure what that means. It's like some generic statement that the "animals good, people bad" type like to use.

Even in terms of modern society, we are still following our natural programming. Men beat their chests and seek to be leaders, women long to start families and spend much of their time preening.

Preening, like what animals do most of the time. You ever watch birds? Or cats? They spend a large amount of time preening.

Like the female homo sapiens. If you really observe people, we are incredibly animalistic in our behavior.

We're just much smarter than average animals, which is why we don't attack each other on sight, like wild animals do. We've learned how to build societies and stuff. But other than that, we still have and follow the same impulses that drive them.

The earth wasn't anything but a giant, cruel warzone until homo sapien got control of it.

[liquidsound]

It is either Programming or Natural.

[GeckoYamori]

As long as computers are around people will be capable of coding their own music software and distributing as they see fit. Doesn't even matter if the entire current status quo would somehow crumble. If there's one thing humanity is good at, it's figuring out how to make money from something.

[Mutant]

I think by natural programming he meant the instinct which many men and some women love to go against in our times...

[Jace-BeOS]

You'd think I would post a three page rant here with this anti-human topic but I'm not going to.

[dalor]

Haven't read 8 pages but this Industry has shown their pricing structure is random and relies on mass sales on festive seasons. Waves, Lexicon, Plugin Alliance, Slate Digital, Flux have paved the road for hobbyists (who are the majority and hold their business) to only buy on festive seasons. Good luck selling anything ever full price again.

[pdxindy]

We're just much smarter than average animals, which is why we don't attack each other on sight, like wild animals do. We've learned how to build societies and stuff. But other than that, we still have and follow the same impulses that drive them.

The earth wasn't anything but a giant, cruel warzone until homo sapien got control of it.

The great majority of the time animals do not attack each other either... If you spent time out in the wilds, you would not have such a one dimensional view... like a caricature.

[tintala]

its the holdays, waves even has xmas decorations....

[hibidy]

Holidays

But, most of these ARE too expensive anyways.