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

[vata44]

I hope so, because i am seeing a decline in my bank statement. Impulsive.

[MFXxx]

The real problem the plug-in industry is suffering is from a bunch of ass-hole pirates and spoiled brats who feel entitled to have everything for free, who have the nerve to be self-righteous and proud about it, as if they were doing the world a favor, rather than realize what hideous and loathsome parasites they are.

Would those people buy the product if the products weren't available freely?
I imagine the users are more obsessed by the hunt and the kudos in themselves (and maybe friends) than the end result, as is the cracker.
However, people who are making money of the back of this is the real issue.

I am however surprised that developers dont keep their eye on the scene and get takedowns performed to drive the issue further underground or is the visibility a necessary evil?

Anyway all I can say is thanks to those who do release top quality products at a resonable price and those who do it for free (Tal, Bootsy and the likes).

What does perplex me is the whole issue with the end user.

They crave for older vintage gear that is out moded, incompatible in many ways with modern gear (midi interfaceing, servicing, parts and so on), yet complain regarding software not being upto date? Makes me chuckle.

[fluffy_little_something]

Unfortunately, unlike with public companies plugin development is little transparent in terms of business data. We don't know the turnaround and revenue of a plugin developer, how many people they employ etc. So it is hard to tell whether or not a developer charges too much or too little for their stuff.

u-he has 5 employees and an average of 2 freelancers at any time, plus a bunch of contact services (cleaners, bookkeepers). We advertise in British Magazines, on Google and on Facebook. We do a trade show a year. We run a studio with top notch vintage gear. Our monthly costs sum up around 30000€, that's about 360000€ annually, to which we need to add other expenses (hardware, software, stuff). Our 2012 revenues were slightly beyond half a million Euros - thanks to buyers of Diva and The Dark Zebra. After costs and taxes, I think we have made a profit somewhere in the region of 10000-30000 Euros. Which is great, but not brilliant.

20% of our revenues are generated from "expired demo versions". If that factor dies because of a perfect crack, then we have to cut back massively.

Wow, I didn't think it is such a big business Thanks for the information...

Regarding your last paragraph, do you have any information on what percentage of demo version users actually buy the product? One in five? One in ten?

[Urs]

Hehehe, this is still considered a small business. A 300 people company such as NI is considered mid-sized.

I have no similar numbers for any other company of course, but I think we're doing exceptionally well (which I think is related to being as open and transparent as we possibly could)

Regarding your last paragraph, do you have any information on what percentage of demo version users actually buy the product? One in five? One in ten?

The "demo version" has a link to our website. This is clicked a few hundred times each month. Thanks to Google Analytics we can relate a considerable amount of those clicks to sales. It may be just the tip of the iceberg, or it may be a lucky month here ot there, I don't know. We have only recently started to bother with this a bit deeper, so we're trying to figure out which "demo limitations" work best.

[schnapsglas]

NI employees 300 people? Wow, bigger than I thought. Now there really is no excuse if they don't bring that 'one synth to rule them all.'

If you put talented developers with administrative staff and form a 300 people company, I think we would see some fantastic stuff.

Urs, how many people have been shown the way to light by "expired demos" so far? You could be doing the whole industry a service.

[hibidy]

Hehehe, this is still considered a small business. A 300 people company such as NI is considered mid-sized.

I have no similar numbers for any other company of course, but I think we're doing exceptionally well (which I think is related to being as open and transparent as we possibly could)

Regarding your last paragraph, do you have any information on what percentage of demo version users actually buy the product? One in five? One in ten?

The "demo version" has a link to our website. This is clicked a few hundred times each month. Thanks to Google Analytics we can relate a considerable amount of those clicks to sales. It may be just the tip of the iceberg, or it may be a lucky month here ot there, I don't know. We have only recently started to bother with this a bit deeper, so we're trying to figure out which "demo limitations" work best.

@demo limitations: Hell, I use yours as a feature

I HATE "psssssssssssssst" noise demos. Some companies like Kuassa have it pretty faint so it doesn't just ruin the experience. Some companies actually have that AND the silence (hello, overloud?? )

I hate the silence insert too.

What I like are demos that time out (like 30 minutes) or that have a time period to try. Nothing scientific, but I prefer not having silence or hissssssing.

[schnapsglas]

@demo limitations: Hell, I use yours as a feature

I HATE "psssssssssssssst" noise demos. Some companies like Kuassa have it pretty faint so it doesn't just ruin the experience. Some companies actually have that AND the silence (hello, overloud?? )

I hate the silence insert too.

What I like are demos that time out (like 30 minutes) or that have a time period to try. Nothing scientific, but I prefer not having silence or hissssssing.

Yes, I have to agree with hibidy here.

Developers, can we please, have some time to enjoy the plug as a demo? Sometimes I want to test the latest plugin, and I'm in mood and in the zone to tweak the setting, and *white noise*. I don't like time outs either. If you want time out, make it little longer please. An hour, maybe.

What I prefer is full 21~30 day demo (maybe without being able to save presets or DAW not recalling the settings) with no limitations. Then I really get to figure out whether it fits the bill.

I mean it doesn't have to be like Stillwell Aduio, but I like how Plugin Alliance does it.

[fluffy_little_something]

With 300 employees NI is like a giant corporation by music software industry standards. I suppose a lot of those 300 employees take care of reactor safety

Regarding demo modes, I am totally against disabling saving patches. When I test a synth, I do it really thoroughly, for days usually. In the course of those tests I often create patches I would like to keep. So knowing they are all lost would piss me off rather than make me buy it.
Demo versions without any limitations for several weeks don't really make sense, either. One could record a song with some free SE crap synth, then download, say, Diva, program the patches for a week and then mix the perfect song using the demo version.

[overhishead]

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?

What does this have to do with "instruments"? If you can't take the time to read the title of the forum you're posting in, and there's 18 pages of replies, we should all take a pause and wonder to ourselves: "WTF"

[hibidy]

It hardly matters though, I mean most people get what he's getting at (whether they agree or not). Maybe it should be in effects instead. It's kinda late to get picky about it

[robotmonkey]

NI employees 300 people? Wow, bigger than I thought. Now there really is no excuse if they don't bring that 'one synth to rule them all.'

That's probably why their software is such an annoying bloatware. Every install is like 500mb.

[robotmonkey]

The real problem the plug-in industry is suffering is from a bunch of ass-hole pirates and spoiled brats who feel entitled to have everything for free, who have the nerve to be self-righteous and proud about it, as if they were doing the world a favor, rather than realize what hideous and loathsome parasites they are.

Hardly true. I'm not saying piracy is not a problem, but hardly it is such a big problem you might expect from hearing the industry complaining. The so called piracy has always existed. Even in the 90's people where swapping floppies and later cd-s, but the industry has still grown tremendously. Also non-industry sponsored academic studies tend to show that there rarely is a negative correlation between sales and piracy for example.

If anything is a problem these days, it's market saturation. Compared to hardware days there are some key differences. The market has grown a lot. These days everyone makes music. There are a lot more market opportunities. Teenage kids pirating something are actually potentials customers in the future. Nothing like that existed in hardware days. Moreover in hardware days the market was smaller, the equipment much much more expensive, and single person was likely to buy a lot less of it. Average hobbyist did not have 15 synths and fx processors lying around. There also existed a healthy servicing market for hardware.

These days everyone can have hundreds of plugins and synths available for a moderate cost. The problem is there are so many to choose from. This obviously means that even though the market has grown the profits will still be shared among a lot of devs whose numbers have also grown. There are the free ones, the moderately priced, the magware, the expensive stuff and so on. You also can have hardware too. If people are not suffering from incurable GAS
then the point where you have too much stuff comes pretty quickly. After that point it becomes progressively harder to justify buying anything at expensive prices. This is probably why we are seeing these no-brainer sales from Waves for example. They are meant for people who do not have the money to buy at full price, or to people who actually do not need anything, but can't resist grabbing something if it comes down to certain level.

[revo11]

I have to disagree about the timed demos being preferable. I'd always vote for being able to functionally use the demo as long as possible. Often I give up on a plugin because I don't have enough time/incentive to invest energy to get to the point where I realize what I can do with it. Timing out the demo means that I will never try to really dig into the functionality because I know it's going to interrupt me before I can really do some focused work with it.

The most effective demo so far has been zebralette. I have a strong incentive to learn it because I know I can use it forever. Then the more I invest in learning it, the more valuable (and inevitable) a zebra 2 license is for me, since it will utilize the techniques and skill that I've invested in acquiring. As an added benefit, it serves to smooth out the learning curve while providing a demo. The downside is it's probably a big investment to put something like zebralette together.

[pdxindy]

I have to disagree about the timed demos being preferable. I'd always vote for being able to functionally use the demo as long as possible. Often I give up on a plugin because I don't have enough time/incentive to invest energy to get to the point where I realize what I can do with it. Timing out the demo means that I will never try to really dig into the functionality because I know it's going to interrupt me before I can really do some focused work with it.

The most effective demo so far has been zebralette. I have a strong incentive to learn it because I know I can use it forever. Then the more I invest in learning it, the more valuable (and inevitable) a zebra 2 license is for me, since it will utilize the techniques and skill that I've invested in acquiring. As an added benefit, it serves to smooth out the learning curve while providing a demo. The downside is it's probably a big investment to put something like zebralette together.

You will also be able to load any Zebralette presets in Zebra if you ever choose to purchase it.

[Urs]

I don't believe in market saturation per se.

I believe that some companies are too marketing focussed to keep a sustainable growth. These companies try to sell as many copies as possible in the shortest time possible. This is usually achieved by hyperbole and aggressive baits, and those companies are driven by short term greed. One could say, they live in the moment, not in the future. Sometimes they live off their past.

I believe that slow and sustained growth is possible in a design driven company. Those have no overly ambitious marketing department and thus refrain from crap.

(worst though are companies that have no marketing department yet feel urge for hyperbole - those are short lived IMHO, with few exceptions)