Bargain Center: discussion, gossip, etc.

[original flipper]

Hi

75% off Modnetic, Diffuse or Dub Machines

https://www.surrealmachines.com/

£18.62p for these 2 delays was a deal I couldn't resist - I am a delay junkie....

[joe2]

Thanks for asking! You will receive the latest versions.

Thanks for confirming Eric, much appreciated!

[VitaminD]

Anyone not too impressed with many of these Black Friday deals? They're mere rebranding of standard discounts a lot of these developers have throughout the year. Although there's some developers who only have sales once a year, on Black Friday, which at least makes it a bit more special

There are a lot of really good sales scheduled for Cyber Monday. I'm pretty surprised the iZotope Holiday Bundle hasn't taken off more but I guess everybody has already gotten those plugins. We'll be announcing something cool on Wednesday.

They've had iris for 20 or 30 dollars on sales before, trash2 for 25 dollars and (I think) free at one point, the elements packages are bundled with purchases throughout the years. There isn't a lot of meat on the bone since izotope does so many discounts.

I'd only be buying for the reverbs (which have also been on steep discount recently) that frankly I don't think I need. The multi effect is interesting but I find the interface too confusing to bother with. And I already own a ton of effects as is.

Had they offered this a couple years ago or simply not offered the individual parts for cheap in the past, it might have had more sales?

[MasterTuner]

Anyone not too impressed with many of these Black Friday deals? They're mere rebranding of standard discounts a lot of these developers have throughout the year. Although there's some developers who only have sales once a year, on Black Friday, which at least makes it a bit more special

There are a few smoke and mirror deals going on. I had my eye on KeepForrest's Atlantica as I thought it would go down to the price it was a while ago ($69), but its $99.
Izotope's deals don't look that attractive. I'm pleased I picked up Gullfoss for $99 - its BF price is $129. Toontrack's EZKeys full version of Dream machine was $30 last BF. So, there are a few disappointments, but mixed in there are a few genuine good ones.
Sometimes BF is smoke and mirrors. I watched things spike in price on my Amazon wish list just a week ago in preparation for a "price drop"!

[WatchTheGuitar]

Yeah the chords integration mainly. I have v5 Editor already and I had read it opened up new options in Studio One 5. If it doesn’t work any different than in 4 I’ll be a little peeved.

Does that mean Studio One 5 will be required for UJAM's new Striiiings plugin? That looks really great.

In theory Studio One 5's ability to have named keyswitches in your MIDI tracks should make UJAM a lot easier to use in S1. I don't think there'll be anything in there you can't do in v4 either, but probably a little quicker without having to constantly refer back to the on screen keyboard for what note activates what.

If you're asking about a Striiiings specific thing, I don't know because I've purposefully kept away from reading about it as I already have a load of string libraries and don't want the temptation of another. When I sit down and take stock of what I actually use it's pretty much bits of GeForce VSM, AAS String Studio and more recently the BBC Discovery strings. I don't use them much at all in any finished music.

[monomox]

Also, I got the Studio One cross-grade for about $150. I'm sure the upgrade will come down to $75 at some point, cheapskates of the world unite!

Did you get $150 cross-grade price for Studio One 5?! Where was it?

Nope, that was for v 4
I just checked, it was $168 in July 2019

[Uncle E]

This only seems to apply to Melodyne 5 Assistant Upgrade from Essential and Melodyne 5 Essential.

Is there still a chance of a 50% off sale for upgrades from Melodyne Studio 4 to Melodyne Studio 5?

It's a little annoying that the upgrade price is the same €149 for Melodyne Studio 4 or 3. Maybe I should wait for Melodyne Studio 6 and save €149+.

The current Melodyne sale is only for those two products.

[Vleker]

Is assistant much better than essential? I tried essential a few times but I found the workflow kind of frustrating and it added quite some artifacts. Usually autotune got better results on automatic mode for me.

[BeeDog]

Here's my $25 voucher for Plugin Alliance, hope someone finds it useful:
2020-11-25-3UMPV

[Double Tap]

Anyone not too impressed with many of these Black Friday deals? They're mere rebranding of standard discounts a lot of these developers have throughout the year. Although there's some developers who only have sales once a year, on Black Friday, which at least makes it a bit more special

Too early to call really. Some discounts don’t appear until closer to Cyber Monday. I’ve already spent £100 on stuff so appreciate the hypocrisy when I say it’s a good idea to keep your powder dry for the end of the sale period.
Not least because a lot of sellers see the BF period as a notable percentage of their annual income so if they’re not selling enough units they may rejig. Or they’ll save it for a Christmas or New Year deal.

I think maybe the market, including discount options, are at saturation point. How low can they go? And as you say, we've seen lots of discounts throughout the year, which is probably a healthier state of affairs, rather than waiting around all year for one week in November. And it may be the case that you have pretty much everything you need or have ever wanted. At least mostly, as there's always a bit of room for a bit more GAS

I'm totally fascinated by the market. I imagine the discounting is partly about finding ways of communicating with customers - there are so few ways for plugin makers to talk to producers: release a new plugin, update something - both pretty hard. Blog posts and tutorials are good but expensive. Free plugins are great - Supermassive is a brilliant marketing tool for Valhalla. Discounting is a marketing drug - it's news about the brand, gives an excuse to send out an email and it motivates customers. It gets on PluginBoutique's deals page. People post about it in the deals threads here and on Gearslutz and VI Control and the bloggers and MusicRadar might write up some deals. It's a great way to make a noise.

There's another side to it though. If you sell a plugin to 100 customers for $29.99 but only sell it to 5 for $199 then it makes loads of sense to discount. (You also get the reverse - some US drug owners have hiked prices for certain medicines to obscene levels because the insurers of the handful of people who really need the pills will pay more than they get on the mass market). It feels to me like the market for music production has expanded dramatically over the last year or so and if that's true then lower prices could lead to much bigger profit margins if your brand is strong and people want your plugins. And loads of people will take a punt for $10 even if your brand is average.

But discounting is also an arms race and too much of it devalues the brand. Uncle E said something really interesting the other day about Waves - they never used to discount at all. The fact they do now literally all the time must work for them, but it does also means that people like me, new entrants who've only been doing this for a few months, look at their plugins and think they can't be up to much (mostly it doesn't help that I just have no idea what most of them do tbqh - the branding is confusing and they should do something about it).

I'd be really interested to hear some figures from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, like how big the market is and how the different channels work - like, I expect these forums aren't all that important but I don't know if social media is really much more important, looking at the number of followers.

Anyway, essay over.

[fandango]

That f*cking twat from Wusik just sent me another email. Does he really think people will buy his products if he harasses them for years and years and years?

"HEY, HERE'S 90% OFF OF MY CRAPPY PRODUCT!"

"But I don't want your product. It's crappy."

"Maybe this will change your mind..."
*Slides you a 90% off coupon*

Yep. My email has been resurrected for this, despite repeated unsubscribes. Vented in the "Things that pissed you off today" thread. The worst thing is how his "explanation" for the emails being added is yet again another poor excuse for shoddy business practices.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=356429&p=7952225&h ... k#p7952225

[Kalamata Kid]

Is there still a chance of a 50% off sale for upgrades from Melodyne Studio 4 to Melodyne Studio 5?

It's a little annoying that the upgrade price is the same €149 for Melodyne Studio 4 or 3. Maybe I should wait for Melodyne Studio 6 and save €149+.

Wait for V6?
I'll consider it but my impatience will get the better of me.
We have till NAMM in January for a possible Melodyne Studio 4 to Melodyne Studio 5 sale.

[WatchTheGuitar]

That f*cking twat from Wusik just sent me another email. Does he really think people will buy his products if he harasses them for years and years and years?

"HEY, HERE'S 90% OFF OF MY CRAPPY PRODUCT!"

"But I don't want your product. It's crappy."

"Maybe this will change your mind..."
*Slides you a 90% off coupon*

Yep. My email has been resurrected for this, despite repeated unsubscribes. Vented in the "Things that pissed you off today" thread. The worst thing is how his "explanation" for the emails being added is yet again another poor excuse for shoddy business practices.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=356429&p=7952225&h ... k#p7952225

Thanks for reminding me that losing my long time email account 2 years ago had a positive upside.

[monomox]

Yeah the chords integration mainly. I have v5 Editor already and I had read it opened up new options in Studio One 5. If it doesn’t work any different than in 4 I’ll be a little peeved.

I have a question for you.
Melodyne essential was updated to v5 for free for S1 users. What happens when you have Melodyne Editor 4?

[chk071]

I doubt that you get a free upgrade for that, if that's your question. After all, Melodyne Essential is a bonus you get when you buy Studio One. Melodyne Editor isn't.