why are most soft synths and effects so expensive?

[Angus_FX]

Lots of freeware breaks the 10,000 downloads barrier; I've heard of things breaking 100,000 and beyond -- and this was several years ago, no doubt some of them have gotten to a quarter million by now. NS Kit are claiming that number for their various freebie drum kits. I've heard a few cases of devs starting with freeware, then writing business plans around that and getting badly burned, selling only 50 copies of $30 "pro" versions after 10K downloads of the freeware.

For that matter, on a single pirate site we monitored around the time of GURU's release last year, we saw numerous *commercial* VSTs getting several thousand downloads. From a *single* site (and God knows how many there are).

Even scarier is the demo downloads:sales ratio on most commercial VSTis. Easily 100:1 in a lot of cases even for good and relatively popular VSTis -- not much different to what cold-callers and direct-mail (postal) spammers get, and yet these downloaders are (supposedly) already expressing an interest in the product.

[Shane Sanders]

That's a highly depressing post for wannabee's like me.

Are any freeware dev's willing to put up download numbers?

Grim indeed. I suspected this intuitively and it was factored into my decision to invest in a sample-only type business. With a sample, it is what it is, but it works and can't be buggy unless an i/o operation like saving goes sour. The success or failure of it will boil down to quality and the mystique of what makes any sort of noise interesting to someone or not. At any rate, Sample Squad will probably always be a tiny boutique type of fringe outlet.

[nuffink]

Lots of freeware breaks the 10,000 downloads barrier; I've heard of things breaking 100,000 and beyond -- and this was several years ago, no doubt some of them have gotten to a quarter million by now. NS Kit are claiming that number for their various freebie drum kits. I've heard a few cases of devs starting with freeware, then writing business plans around that and getting badly burned, selling only 50 copies of $30 "pro" versions after 10K downloads of the freeware.

For that matter, on a single pirate site we monitored around the time of GURU's release last year, we saw numerous *commercial* VSTs getting several thousand downloads. From a *single* site (and God knows how many there are).

Even scarier is the demo downloads:sales ratio on most commercial VSTis. Easily 100:1 in a lot of cases even for good and relatively popular VSTis -- not much different to what cold-callers and direct-mail (postal) spammers get, and yet these downloaders are (supposedly) already expressing an interest in the product.

It just gets better and better.

Cheers anyway, Angus.

[waveriderarts]

Lots of freeware breaks the 10,000 downloads barrier; I've heard of things breaking 100,000 and beyond -- and this was several years ago, no doubt some of them have gotten to a quarter million by now. NS Kit are claiming that number for their various freebie drum kits. I've heard a few cases of devs starting with freeware, then writing business plans around that and getting badly burned, selling only 50 copies of $30 "pro" versions after 10K downloads of the freeware.

For that matter, on a single pirate site we monitored around the time of GURU's release last year, we saw numerous *commercial* VSTs getting several thousand downloads. From a *single* site (and God knows how many there are).

Even scarier is the demo downloads:sales ratio on most commercial VSTis. Easily 100:1 in a lot of cases even for good and relatively popular VSTis -- not much different to what cold-callers and direct-mail (postal) spammers get, and yet these downloaders are (supposedly) already expressing an interest in the product.

Well with GURU priced at what it is, or many other vsti or vsts, I am not surprised. I do not think any virtual instrument is worth more than 100$, and most should be not more expensive than 25$. Well there is a curve of sales depending on the price and I am sure you would make lots more money selling at 25$ than at 299$.

If you think about how many synths and fx you need in your palette, and when you face prices like 180$ US for a simple synth or $200 for a sampler or 400$ for a few mastering effects, it is totally insane. All that will be worth very little someday when the technology will change. And sometime you cannot even re-install on a new computer if the software house is gone.

There is also the issue of knowing if you are going to use the thing for really making tunes with it, or just fool around with it for some time and realize it won`t be part of your sound. Most demos are too limited for me to find out.

I would make many more purchase if the prices were very low, and others would too. 10 000 sales at 25$ is better than 500 at 300$!!!

[nuisance sonore]

Even scarier is the demo downloads:sales ratio on most commercial VSTis. Easily 100:1 in a lot of cases even for good and relatively popular VSTis -- not much different to what cold-callers and direct-mail (postal) spammers get, and yet these downloaders are (supposedly) already expressing an interest in the product.

A possible explanation by example, and my confession to having a part in this at the same time . When I was shopping for a drum machine/sampler, I downloaded and tried every possible suspect with a demo I could put my hand on; I had interest in drum machine of course, but not necesarly the one I was downloading as I was searching for the perfect one for me. I ended up buying only one, I can't see the point of having a multiple of them, so all those other downloads were "wasted" if you want to call it that.

And that's for drum machine, for synth it's probably worst as the choice is broader. I just ended a two week download/demo spree looking for anything that makes sound with the word FM in it; I ended my choice on a piece of freeware, and not on account of price, it just happened to suit my present needs perfectly. Of course all the others got uninstalled as I had found what I needed.

[Muff Wiggler]

Well with GURU priced at what it is, or many other vsti or vsts, I am not surprised. I do not think any virtual instrument is worth more than 100$, and most should be not more expensive than 25$. Well there is a curve of sales depending on the price and I am sure you would make lots more money selling at 25$ than at 299$.

I can't say what they are "worth", all devs have to pick this on their own based on their costs and needs.

However I can say that with average VSTi price climbing above the $150 mark, happening at the same time that a lot of VST users like myself are saturated in VST products and have all the bases covered....it's getting harder and harder to buy these $150 and up VSTs. I've started building a Blacet modular, because I have all the VST i really need, and a single Blacet module is around the same price as a new VST plugin. for me there was a VST buying frenzy for a couple years, now that I have all the synths and samplers and FX i could reasonably need, it's back to hardware for me.

Is it because I have lots of VST? Is it because VST prices are getting higher? I don't know, a bit of both. I do know that when VST prices start to be comparable with hardware, people will for the most part buy hardware instead. I will (and do) anyway.

[eduardo_b]

After all the threads on this topic that consisted mostly of supposition (and I'm as guilty as anyone else in this), it's so interesting to actually read what developers have to say about their businesses. My first reaction is, why would anyone even want to be in this business given the numbers. I wonder if the same customer base is buying most of the plug-ins or if the market is large enough to support a lot of developers.

Second, it seems that having a larger customer base may not be a good thing because of the levels of support needed. Is this because the products are too complex or because the customers are not experienced enough to resolve issues?

Thanks to Jon, Urs and Torben for sharing with us.

[dover666]

meh... my stuff is free - but's it's just stuuf i finish while i'm learning. i guess it's how i'm learning; by getting my stuff out - seeing what people say so i have a better perspective on what i'm doing.... in relation to what i'm trying to do.. does that make sense?

[Shane Sanders]

I can also speak to the piracy issue first hand. Years ago I made a texture disc for 3D artists and graphic designers. It was one of the earliest of its kind, and it had 400 images on the disc, 100 of which were seamless. It takes a lot of work to make a rust pattern really seamless. Lots of work.

Anyway, I printed 1000 discs professionally, shrink wrapped and everything (this was before the download model of doing business was as obvious as it is now). Within less than a month, the disc was being pirated and served off a Chinese site. Soon after, sales dropped to nothing. I still have boxes of discs in my garage. Burns me up to just think about it. And loads of those people who downloaded my hard work surely went on to put work they'd done using my images on their reels and got work for themselves.

[JonHodgson]

Lots of freeware breaks the 10,000 downloads barrier; I've heard of things breaking 100,000 and beyond -- and this was several years ago, no doubt some of them have gotten to a quarter million by now. NS Kit are claiming that number for their various freebie drum kits. I've heard a few cases of devs starting with freeware, then writing business plans around that and getting badly burned, selling only 50 copies of $30 "pro" versions after 10K downloads of the freeware.

For that matter, on a single pirate site we monitored around the time of GURU's release last year, we saw numerous *commercial* VSTs getting several thousand downloads. From a *single* site (and God knows how many there are).

Even scarier is the demo downloads:sales ratio on most commercial VSTis. Easily 100:1 in a lot of cases even for good and relatively popular VSTis -- not much different to what cold-callers and direct-mail (postal) spammers get, and yet these downloaders are (supposedly) already expressing an interest in the product.

Well with GURU priced at what it is, or many other vsti or vsts, I am not surprised. I do not think any virtual instrument is worth more than 100$, and most should be not more expensive than 25$. Well there is a curve of sales depending on the price and I am sure you would make lots more money selling at 25$ than at 299$.

If you think about how many synths and fx you need in your palette, and when you face prices like 180$ US for a simple synth or $200 for a sampler or 400$ for a few mastering effects, it is totally insane. All that will be worth very little someday when the technology will change. And sometime you cannot even re-install on a new computer if the software house is gone.

There is also the issue of knowing if you are going to use the thing for really making tunes with it, or just fool around with it for some time and realize it won`t be part of your sound. Most demos are too limited for me to find out.

I would make many more purchase if the prices were very low, and others would too. 10 000 sales at 25$ is better than 500 at 300$!!!

Except that the actual experience of the developers is that dropping the price below a certain level DOES NOT increase sales notably.

As for what synths are worth, how do you judge that?
If it's by the work it takes to develop them, then they're too cheap, if it's by the pleasure they bring you, then I can't see that being less than a decent meal for two with wine in London (over in an evening) is bad value for hundreds of hours of pleasure, if it's for the income they can generate as the tools of your trade then mechanics pay more for a single spanner than many VSTis cost.

I don't know how many people worked on GURU, but I'll bet it was quite a few and it wasn't cheap. Developing a software synth is not all that much cheaper than developing a hardware one, once you've figured in all the extra time required to support multiple platforms, hosts, processors, plugin standards, and then there's the support costs, all it takes is for a host developer to change something or screw something up in their update, and the customer doesn't go to them, he goes to the plugin developer.

Why is it that when it was impossible to pirate musical gear and recording equipment (because it was all hardware) and it cost a significant fraction of the price of your house, people found the money to buy them in the hundreds of thousands, but now that they cost less than your TV, or in some cases less than a good meal or filling your car with petrol, they're suddenly too expensive for even a fraction of those people to afford?

The guys at Ohmforce will tell you that even when they tried having supercheap but very useful little plugins, their ratio of sales to piracy stayed about the same.

The people selling plugins aren't idiots, if they could make more money by dropping the price, they would, but they can't, they try to find the price which maximises their profit, and just hope to god it'll be enough to keep them afloat.

[soulata]

After giving it some thought:

if I can make the plugin pay for itself in some way (be it bussiness or personal pleasure ...ok rarely that), I'll buy it.

I can see the logic behind expensive mastering plugins - if you use them to make money you'll have the cost covered in no time (maybe not for tdm plugins hehe).

If I need it, I'll buy it.

But (having the base covered) it's really hard for me to throw cash into something I might not be using for a long time (that's why my leads and some basses still come from micro modular, xt, iblits and asynth), I just can't see any need for anything else.

One reason being all my stuff starts with rhodes, drums and bass.

k

[Angus_FX]

Well with GURU priced at what it is, or many other vsti or vsts, I am not surprised. I do not think any virtual instrument is worth more than 100$, and most should be not more expensive than 25$. Well there is a curve of sales depending on the price and I am sure you would make lots more money selling at 25$ than at 299$.

I'm absolutely certain we would not. You can't sell a product like that in a store for 25$ (music stores won't go near it, and the appeal isn't broad enough for Wal-Mart or even Fry's to be interested), which limits you to the online market. I know plenty of developers who've sold $25 VSTi's online, nobody has ever sold more than 2,000 copies of a $25 VSTi.. and if you think GURU cost only $50,000 to develop, package, market, sell and support, I suggest maybe you take an elementary math class before you go to business school

An *exceptionally good* coder in one of the poorer parts of Europe could probably have done all the coding on something close to GURU for $50k (say two man-years of full time coding -- I guess a salary of $25K will go quite far in Poland or the Czech Republic), but that's *just* development.. and that coder would have to be a truly exceptional individual, there's more than one discipline involved in GURU's coding and it couldn't have been "what it is" without at least three of the coders (and again, that's just coders) that were involved.

If you think about how many synths and fx you need in your palette, and when you face prices like 180$ US for a simple synth or $200 for a sampler or 400$ for a few mastering effects, it is totally insane. All that will be worth very little someday when the technology will change. And sometime you cannot even re-install on a new computer if the software house is gone.

Let me guess -- you're either a student, unemployed, or don't live in a rich part of the world. That's not to say you don't deserve good software or equipment, of course!

I would make many more purchase if the prices were very low, and others would too. 10 000 sales at 25$ is better than 500 at 300$!!!

Assuming a fixed cost per unit of zero. In practise, you're looking at a fixed cost of $10 per unit (credit card fees and what I'd call ethical-minimum customer support); add another $10 if there's a box involved, and another $5-10 again to provide a more acceptable level of customer support.

A possible explanation by example, and my confession to having a part in this at the same time . When I was shopping for a drum machine/sampler, I downloaded and tried every possible suspect with a demo I could put my hand on; I had interest in drum machine of course, but not necesarly the one I was downloading as I was searching for the perfect one for me. I ended up buying only one, I can't see the point of having a multiple of them, so all those other downloads were "wasted" if you want to call it that.

Naturally.. no developer is expecting 1:1, but 10:1 for a product considered to be among two or three market leaders doesn't sound unrealistic.

Is it because I have lots of VST? Is it because VST prices are getting higher? I don't know, a bit of both. I do know that when VST prices start to be comparable with hardware, people will for the most part buy hardware instead. I will (and do) anyway.

Comparable with hardware... hmm... I'm in the market for a small hardware modular synth, if you know where to buy a Doepfer or similar for VSTi-money, PM me

After all the threads on this topic that consisted mostly of supposition (and I'm as guilty as anyone else in this), it's so interesting to actually read what developers have to say about their businesses. My first reaction is, why would anyone even want to be in this business given the numbers. I wonder if the same customer base is buying most of the plug-ins or if the market is large enough to support a lot of developers.

As far as download sales go, from talking with other developers there seems to be a pool of a couple of thousand users (including Mac AU as well as VST) who probably account for 80% of all online VST sales, and a smaller group of perhaps 50 individuals who buy pretty much anything that doesn't obviously suck.

Second, it seems that having a larger customer base may not be a good thing because of the levels of support needed. Is this because the products are too complex or because the customers are not experienced enough to resolve issues?

To some extent, both, but there's a third factor -- it's not the complexity itself, rather that most developers are inexperienced in packaging this complexity in a way that makes it easily accessible to your average inexperienced user. It's quite evident that any idiot can drive a car or operate a cellphone, both of which are much more complex pieces of engineering than your average VSTi.

[JonHodgson]

After giving it some thought:

if I can make the plugin pay for itself in some way (be it bussiness or personal pleasure ...ok rarely that), I'll buy it.

I can see the logic behind expensive mastering plugins - if you use them to make money you'll have the cost covered in no time (maybe not for tdm plugins hehe).

If I need it, I'll buy it.

But (having the base covered) it's really hard for me to throw cash into something I might not be using for a long time (that's why my leads and some basses still come from micro modular, xt, iblits and asynth), I just can't see any need for anything else.

One reason being all my stuff starts with rhodes, drums and bass.

k

What you offer is all I ask, I suspect all that many developers ask.

If everybody stuck to your rules I think the market would be much healthier for everyone involved, developers and consumers.

Thanks

[Torben]

Cracks have a big blame for the prices we got today. From traffic we have tracked from a single crack site we estimate that for every time someone buys one of our products 50 is using the crack. If cracks was not available I guess that at least 1/10 of those using cracks would purchase the product which would result in that we could settle with 20-25% of what we charge today. And considering all the other sources to cracks the problem is defiantly a lot worse. And we are not the only one having products on this site, all the other new synths and effects are available too (and no you wont get the link). So when you or some of your friends uses cracks you / they are not better than a shoplifter; paying customers has to pay for what the thieves steal. So if you want cheaper products it start with your self and your friends; don’t make excuses for using cracks, start paying and convince your friends to do the same.

Torben

[sosayweall]

IMHO, the whole focus of discussion is misplaced. Really. As hussle bussle as the scene appears here at kvr, most people are still unaware of and lack a way to be exposed to the VST world. At least that's what I thought.

We need to find a new way to reach the potential customers. That's the real challenge for all the devs.