Is plugin market going down?

[sjm]

I honestly don't get it with the hidden prices complains...

Two clicks get you to all products prices:
1. Shopping Cart (above);
2. Price List.

I'd counter that by saying, that at a guess, 99% of people buying something would like to know how much it costs. So why should it be any effort at all? IMO, this is as stupid as restaurants whose websites don't show their opening hours.

Not understanding your customers' needs is a great way to lose potential customers. As well as making things difficult for them, it also communicates that you don't understand or care about your customers' needs even before you have got their money. Which raises the question, why would you suddenly start caring once you have my money?

I don't think this applies to Voxengo btw, Voxengo has always had a good rep. But not everyone knows that.

[ghettosynth]

What I don't understand is how someone like Waves continues to have happy customers who have bought full packages at full prices and they continue to sell individual plugs at bargain basement prices on the weekends.

I bought Vinyl on introduction with a coupon. My price was about what it is on sale for right now without coupon. I knew when I purchased it that if I would just bide my time, I would eventually be able to get it for $30. I wanted it right away.

Waves doesn't put everything on sale all the time. If you want a great price, you have to wait for it. If you're a pro and need it now, you are forced to acknowledge that the value to you is higher than the value to the hobbyist.

[Harry_HH]

What I don't understand is how someone like Waves continues to have happy customers who have bought full packages at full prices and they continue to sell individual plugs at bargain basement prices on the weekends.

I bought Vinyl on introduction with a coupon. My price was about what it is on sale for right now without coupon. I knew when I purchased it that if I just bide my time, I would eventually be able to get it for $30. I wanted it right away.

Waves doesn't put everything on sale all the time. If you want a great price, you have to wait for it. If you're a pro and need it now, you are forced to acknowledge that the value to you is higher than the value to the hobbyist.

Yes, I think every a bit older Waves customer are aware of Waves "juice squeezer" pricing system, its scientically calculated way to squeeze maximum amount money of one product, in several rotations, the price decrease over time depends on the demand curve.
This new strategy was launched about 2008.
This strategy is possible only with a large product portfolio, it takes time when markets are fully saturated, i.e. every potential customer owns every a bit atteactive Waves plugin, and Waves produces those every year.

[Urs]

I don't know if the market is going down or not, but to me it doesn't look like it.

What's more frightening is the prospect of anti-globilisation which might put a big dent in our ecosystem, e.g. when people from the US can't buy software made in the EU over the internet anymore. Now, that would be a big blow, and I don't think it's gonna happen that way. However even a 20% tax or something could cause mayhem with a few winners and possibly a lot of victims. I'm usually not a conservative guy, but in that respect I hope things stay as they are, free internet, open markets and all that.

Other than that, I believe that market stagnation, market saturation whatsoever are factors below the noise floor of individual decisions. Be it design decisions, pricing, appearance, algorithm, dunno. Sometimes you do the right plug at the right time, sometimes you don't.

Nobody said it would be easy.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I don't know if the market is going down or not, but to me it doesn't look like it.

What is your opinion on conversion rates, in other words "income per visitor" in the last 4 years?

[aciddose]

From the limited information I have available the market is headed upward slightly the past year across multiple product types, not downward. No significant change in conversion rates although you might see clearer numbers if you filter out mobile phones and tablets or other platforms for which you don't provide products. I'd assume you already have and so am quite curious what you're referring to.

In the past decade however customers have certainly become far more selective and hobbyists are possibly on the decline in the next decade due to reduced income and free time (stagnation of salaries combined with more uses for their time.)

This makes up the difference between the huge growth we saw back in the 2ks vs. fairly stable conditions free of exponential growth today. People attribute that to "market saturation" although my opinion is that the market has changed and "saturation" is making the assumption too much product is pushed in rather than acknowledging the opposite; a decline in growth of demand. There are certainly new customers entering the market almost continuously just at a significantly reduced rate. These customers can't be "saturated" and their purchases should be normally distributed given equivalent product quality.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

From the limited information I have available the market is headed upward slightly the past year across multiple product types, not downward. No significant change in conversion rates although you might see clearer numbers if you filter out mobile phones and tablets or other platforms for which you don't provide products. I'd assume you already have and so am quite curious what you're referring to.

The mobile device users are minority among visitors. Decreasing conversion rates can be counter-acted by the increasing number of visitors. So, for relatively new players things may look fine if the pageviews are on the rise. But to more established players raising the number of visitors may be a problem. With decreasing conversion rates it's a loss of market share. This situation can be compared to shopping centers in crisis times: the number of visitors does not change (they go there for the sake of spending time), but the number of buyers decrease.

[fluffy_little_something]

I think the effects market is more saturated as they are more like utilities, not as interesting as synths. When you got one good compressor plugin, you hardly need another one. But with synths people are more curious and interested in new stuff.

What might be a good indicator of people's happiness is the demo downloads : sales ratio for a given plugin.

[ghettosynth]

I think the effects market is more saturated as they are more like utilities, not as interesting as synths. When you got one good compressor plugin, you hardly need another one. But with synths people are more curious and interested in new stuff.

I think that you meant to say "When you get ten good compressor plugins...," No? I know that I don't need any more at the moment since I have about twenty or so with about half of those purchased in the last six months. Ok, I did buy one a couple of days ago, but, it only cost a half a pizza!

[fluffy_little_something]

I think the effects market is more saturated as they are more like utilities, not as interesting as synths. When you got one good compressor plugin, you hardly need another one. But with synths people are more curious and interested in new stuff.

I think that you meant to say "When you get ten good compressor plugins...," No? I know that I don't need any more at the moment since I have about twenty or so with about half of those purchased in the last six months. Ok, I did buy one a couple of days ago, but, it only cost a half a pizza!

I don't think you are typical of the majority of people making computer music.

[FabienTDR]

I don't know if the market is going down or not, but to me it doesn't look like it.

What is your opinion on conversion rates, in other words "income per visitor" in the last 4 years?

IMHO, given the super low costs of web hosting, I think that this relation is somewhat irrelevant. The absolute sales matter, presentation/hosting/e-commerce isn't expensive at all on the long run.

The googleanalyticitis is brutally distracting, and imho literally worthless.

For a plugin dev, there are two simple goals:

1. Make it as easy as possible for the visitor to fall in love with our products
2. Make it as easy as possible for the visitor to show back his love

Why complicate things for such an irrelevant ratio? sometimes, falling in love takes time, more than one date

[ghettosynth]

I don't think you are typical of the majority of people making computer music.

Of course I jest a bit, but, I don't think that most people who get past a certain point use just one compressor, no? That is, I'm not sure that I'm so atypical of the consumer who's decided to spend money on plugins outside of what comes with his DAW.

I should also add, that I deliberately chose to upgrade almost all of my mixing and mastering tools this past sale season, hence, the six month comment shouldn't be taken out of context. The last time that I paid money for a compressor before that, not counting DAW upgrades, was when I upgraded to whichever version of Komplete came with Solid Bus.

[aciddose]

Actually I assumed "conversion ratio" meant downloads. + Installs! Tracking this can be important as a lot of people download a billion things and never actually install them. It doesn't matter if your installer can't communicate with the server during install because you can just display the standard stuff and install as usual. That statistic is just lost. When you can get the statistic though you have much clearer numbers of demo installed users vs. sales and how much latency is involved.

I don't see the purpose of tracking page views. You can't reliably even determine page views on their own so any further numbers based upon them are already wrong.

[stratum]

Looks like being disconnected from actual customers is a problem. There are musicians in this website, http://www.tokyodawn.net/ they are not hobbyists. They are visiting a plugin developers studio, too. They aren't there to buy plugins obviously, but that's a good opportunity learn about what they really like.

[bmanic]

I do not have opinions about conversion rates from other plugin makers, but considering many of them regularly run 50-75% sales their actions look desperate.

You are so wrong. Making a couple of million.. when did that become "desperate"? No, it's the age-old "sales light the wallet" thing that has been the pinnacle of every modern success story in retail.

The shops that are still trying to desperately cling to old ways of selling things are going the way of the dodo.

It's not at all a coincidence that online stores that have constant sales (be it clothes, computer parts, music equipment etc) are the ones that have become giants.

Your way of thinking is very outdated and definitely not at all based on facts.

Having said that..

I do not have opinions about conversion rates from other plugin makers, but considering many of them regularly run 50-75% sales their actions look desperate.

Agreed wholeheartedly. In general, most developers (and the music industry at large) are racing to the bottom, rather than spending more thought on improving the value (perceived or real) of their services.

.. I do agree that this is indeed a race to the bottom. The ones that "cashed out" or are doing it right now are the ones that will survive (aka make enough for living in moderate luxury for the foreseeable future). It may be right at the edge of "too late" now.

This probably means the swing will go the other way. To counter this race to the bottom market you need a very solid product that becomes "must have" and then price it accordingly, never having any sales at all (ala U-He) thus dramatically increasing the perceived value of the product. The problem is creating such a product as it needs to be top of the line, in every category (this means very good graphics). It also needs serious celebrity endorsement and of course it means being a truly exceptional product.

I still very much believe in that good products will sell if given enough exposure. Sound quality is still a very big factor. There are still seemingly simple plugins released in this day and age that just take your breath away because they immediately just "sound better" than the alternative.