How Many Units Does A Hit Synth Sell?

[highkoo]

Zebra, less than 3000.

I did the math, that's nothing to cry about.

for a product first released in 2003? its nothing to cry about, but for one of the major 'hit synths', it aint exactly amounting to a fortune.

yep.
havent finished the thread yet, but that shocks me, if true...

saaaaaad.
ffs, that one wasnt even cracked right, right?


dayum.

edit:

That IMHO was remarkable evidence that an insane number of people are freeloaders, and not because they can't afford it but because of sheer convenience. Hence abusing piracy as a marketing technique is a great turn of paradigm.

Urs

genius sir. pure n' simple.
i hope you know that those same scenesters stealing from you love you for it...

[sonkeysankey]

I hate it that people can pirate this stuff so easily. Especially when they laugh at you because you actually paid for the product. Such a foul attitude to have especially for small companies. I've had one bad experience with a certain small company which some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, but I could never pirate the software. I code in html, js, php and just recently Flex (for the company I work for) and I would be mighty pissed if someone stole my hard work - and my stuff wouldn't be even close to the effort and knowledge required for vst development...

But we have to live with the fact that there are LOADS of people illegally downloading warez. We have to look at what the market can sustain, and the market will prevail. People who download warez wouldn't necessarily have bought the software. They just do it because they can't resist 'having' something that they think is really good - even though they may never use it.
Put it this way - if somebody copies a Blu Ray disc with all the current most expensive VST warez on it, then gives it to his granny, who hasn't even got a computer, has anything been lost by the developers?

I'm actually pro-software key protection... I got what I think is a synchrosoft dongle with my KLCDE software, and given that I can't remember what it's called, nor can I even see it since it's plugged in the back of my mac, it's pretty much a seamless thing that provides a reasonable level of protection for developers. I know not everyone agrees to this, but hey at least developers know that they've got an option...

+1

If everyone steals music_software_film etc then we are on a slippery slope to nowhere... We live in a capitalist society where buying and selling product is how our economic system functions. If companies don't make money then they can't employ people who pay taxes and the whole house of cards collapses. What seems like innocent internet kleptomania is having a drastic effect/impact on peoples lives. Short term thinking leading us to a deadend with no way back. Cue scary film music.

We've heard this argument for the past thirty years, first it was "Home taping is killing music" - but it didn't. Then it was - don't copy videos, it's 'killing the film industry', but it didn't. Just because warez are available, doesn't mean they are detracting from sales by a large amount - though none of us really know, I suppose.

[whyterabbyt]

Just because warez are available, doesn't mean they are detracting from sales by a large amount

It depends on how you define 'large' when we already know that a major synth has only sold about an average of 35-36 copies a month over 7 years. What's a 'large' number of lost sales against that?

Or put it another way, how many people a month do you think didnt buy that because they had a pirated copy?
If you'd say 'only ten percent', that's a guess that less than 4 people a month who could have bought it didnt? I think that's unrealistically low, TBH.
Maybe ten people a month would be more realistic? That's getting kind of 'large' in terms of sales, though, actually. A third.

What if its 'only' twenty people a month on the entire planet? Or 'only' fifty?


Wasnt someone wondering that there arent millions of people using softsynths? And if, say, only fifty people a month dont pay for it, thats not 'large', but that'd be getting close to 150% of the actual sales figures.

That sounds like even a small number of people could quickly add up to a lot of 'lost' revenue, even if there were a hundred thousand grannies with blu-ray discs out there.

[ckatrun411]

I think free ware has a lot to do with it, not just piracy. Obviously, there are people steeling synths, but there are also people using twenty free n legal reverbs, compressors, eq's.

Now I know, that I get slack for this shit on KVR, but come on people, "sound quality is a myth, human beings are not mice, you can not begin to tell me, Air Eq has a more professional sound than 2 eQ."

AIr is SyncroSoft, who owns it? 200 people?

There are less expensive alternatives, than your, "hit synths."


Sometimes these alternatives actually sound cooler.


But...

To what quality?





Edit = and I know, ddmf is not freeware, pardon the emple.

[firepile]

3,000 x $200 = $600,000

Nothing to cry about, even it was released twenty years ago...

You'd seriously suggest that a western-european business making only $30,000 a year before costs is 'nothing to cry about'?
You'd have made more working in a shop. As a running business, that would be an abject failure.

For one person's wage over 7 years, it aint too bad. Not Porsche-owning good, though, unlike the picture of developers that people like yourself love to imply. Absolutely shite compared to some numpty driving spreadsheets for a bank, or even for someone who spent 7 years in a semi-successful games company, let alone places like GTA, where the couple of guys Ive known did get Porsches.
As a company's before-costs income, though? Still less than a decent pub turns over in a year.
And that's one of the major players.

edit : and now we have more accurate figures: 3000 copies at $120, with costs of 50% and tax of 40%. i bet you'd sodding cry if that was your sole wage from running your own company for most of a decade.

Well then, perhaps what we can glean from this is that the VST market is too small to make a good living from. Market forces will prevail. If too few people are buying VSTs at price 'x', then some developers will turn it in and do something more profitable, meaning there are less new VSTs coming out. I often wonder if we NEED any new VSTs - all I am interested in are new presets for the ones that already exist.
If no new VSTs were EVER created, wouldn't we all have enough to be going on with forever? As long as people keep producing new presets, it would never get boring.

$30,000 for writing ONE piece of software, twenty years ago, which sold at $30,000 every year for twenty years, would be a fantastic income for me. Write one piece of software - say it takes me two years (I'm nowhere near intelligent enough to do what VST developers have done, by the way), and it sells for twenty years, at a turnover of $30,000 a year? What would I need to do once I'd finished creating the software, apart from bugfixes, minor updates, and support? Sounds like a good wage for doing that.

Obviously it wasn't like that for Zebra, it's only been out for, what, five years? (I don't know). My point being, once the program has been written, it's been written. Updates and bugfixes presumably take a LOT less coding hours, than actually producing the original program from scratch.

Do you work in software developement yourself? I doubt it, because you clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about

[Lotuzia]

Agreed 100%, certainly downloads != lost sales.. all we can compare is similarly featured, priced and marketed plugins where there is no crack, a good crack or a bad crack. Even if your product is uncracked though, the cracks for others' products are still competition.. am sure if there was no crack for Synth Squad, a fair lot of people would use a cracked copy of Largo instead, or vice versa.

There are certainly some crackusers who would buy if there was no other option though, and I think it's reasonable to count those ones as lost sales. We've had much the same experience as Urs in relation to sales spiking when timebombs get triggered in the cracks, so it's a real phenomenon.

That's very interesting, I didn't realise that.
I see it like this - people who actually have musical talent, and publish their music to a buying public, or client, would be unlikely to use cracked software - at least, that's what I imagine. I just think it would be strange for somebody 'famous' to have some cracked software, which they use on their music, in case somebody asks them "Isn't that 'synth x' on your last single?" and they say "Yes" and know that they're using an illegal copy.

But then I've heard that even big companies have been found to be using 30% cracked software, which is incredible, since they could be checked at any time by some government department which I can't remember the name of right now.


I agree with everything William K said.

I'm a bit tired to add my 2 cents in this kind of threads but so that everyone knows and just faces facts, here's a little story/information :

Around 6/8 years ago I made some programming for a composer who mainly works for French TV, like TV games music aso. Let me say that the man IS rich : He lives in a manoir -inbetween house and castle and big house- near Paris, and changed his 4x4 every 6 months ........ He has his own private studio.

And in his magnificent studio; wich I helped to build, at least regarding PC and network, you can find ......... s..tloads of cracked software, mainly all big samples libraries, and well ........ everybody with EYES can see this in the control room, so customers do. Do you think he cares ? Not a single second. His philosophy is quite simple : All I can rob, I will, and those who pay are just idiots.

This is not a single case. All those who believe that users of w..z softs are just poor kids who dont use the software and would have never bought it just live in a fairytale world, where worlds and concepts, or guesses, are more important than real life and experience.

One day I dare make some remarks about his lifestyle. He fired me instantaneously. The best thing that can occur in fact, as I was growing more and more uncomfortable working for him.

I saw the same things with a bunch of my students. Who intend to make a living of music or postprod btw. These ones are not uberRich, though many are not poor as well. There just prefer to buy Nike shoes than their software.

I totally understand that very poor people have NO other choice than stealing. This is by far not the case of all w...zers.

In case people didnt get any intention on Mr Madoff's case : Stealing is not always a matter of poor or rich. It would be too simple. More often, its a simple question of lifestyle. Imho I would also call this simple dignity or awareness.

Whenever I can, I try to "educate" people (dont like this term) or at least make them see what their decisions (like w..z) imply for other people. I prefer to believe in terms of education than in terms of repression to lower the burden of piracy.

Like you see, to each his own fairytale world ...

Fwiw ........

LtZ

[Rock Hardbuns]

Re: Piracy. It's a part of the terrain at this point. While it's understandable that it angers some devs, they knew about it going in.

And I don't think piracy reduces the sales numbers in proportion to it's scale so to speak. The pirate "market" seems to follow it's own rules in a way so what is being pirated a lot does not necessarily correlate with what is actually popular or what would be a good seller.

I did a kind of survey of download numbers fort hosts on a popular piracy site. And cheaper hosts like ext2 or tracktion where barley even on there, while the most expensive editions of Cubase, Live and Sonar were the most frequently downloaded. It's hard to see how that would be reflected in actual sales. Chances are that if all those wannabes sprang for a host it wouldn't be the most expensive one.

---

But generally, this market is over-saturated. (There are a lot of amateur developer like my self.) It puts the buyer in a position where unless he absolutely positively needs a certain instrument, there is always the chance that he can achieve the same results with something free.
This in turn makes everyone think twice before they hit that buy button. It throws the market dynamics out of whack. Especially since most amateurs work without very clear objectives.

[kevvvvv]

sonkey sankey ...we're all bored stiff with your "I know best" thread hogs

lotuzia ... you're justifying software theft in KVR. Please don't.

Everybody else - great thread - one of the best this year

[whyterabbyt]

$30,000 for writing ONE piece of software, twenty years ago, which sold at $30,000 every year for twenty years, would be a fantastic income for me. Write one piece of software - say it takes me two years (I'm nowhere near intelligent enough to do what VST developers have done, by the way), and it sells for twenty years, at a turnover of $30,000 a year?

So, it'd be a 'fantastic opportunity' for you to move up to a 'fantastic' take-home salary of $9000 a year?
Wow.
More of a pushbike than a Porsche, eh?

[koalaboy]

lotuzia ... you're justifying software theft in KVR. Please don't.

Ermm. He wasn't.

[whyterabbyt]

lotuzia ... you're justifying software theft in KVR. Please don't.

I really dont think he is, to be fair. I think he's pointing out that the standard 'defence' that its only those who cant afford software that pirate it is nonsense.

[Lotuzia]

sonkey sankey ...we're all bored stiff with your "I know best" thread hogs

lotuzia ... you're justifying software theft in KVR. Please don't.

Everybody else - great thread - one of the best this year

Well I reread my post and I dont think so. I you refer to the part when I say that I understand very poor people to steal, read it this way : If you have a family, need to feed your babies and have no other way to do it than stealing, I understand you will.Thats all. Maybe its more clear like this ?

Anyway I had the impression what I wrote was merely a charge against piracy, but sorry if I offended you. If some other people feel the same than you I'll just edit and remove my post

LtZ

[taoyoyo]

sonkey sankey ...we're all bored stiff with your "I know best" thread hogs

lotuzia ... you're justifying software theft in KVR. Please don't.

Everybody else - great thread - one of the best this year

Well I reread my post and I dont think so. I you refer to the part when I say that I understand very poor people to steal, read it this way : If you have a family, need to feed your babies and have no other way to do it than stealing, I understand you will.Thats all. Maybe its more clear like this ?

Anyway I had the impression what I wrote was merely a charge against piracy, but sorry if I offended you. If some other people feel the same than you I'll just edit and remove my post

LtZ

... don't edit it... i think most folk got what you were saying.

i thought it was an interesting story personally.

[ariston]

Anyway I had the impression what I wrote was merely a charge against piracy, but sorry if I offensed you. If some other people feel the same than you I'll just edit and remove my post

LtZ

No way, you made your point quite clear. No need to edit.

I must confess, I'm a little shocked to hear your story. I still believe, however, that paying for what I use will make a difference, even if I were the last person on earth to do so.

[taoyoyo]

Anyway I had the impression what I wrote was merely a charge against piracy, but sorry if I offensed you. If some other people feel the same than you I'll just edit and remove my post

LtZ

No way, you made your point quite clear. No need to edit.

I must confess, I'm a little shocked to hear your story. I still believe, however, that paying for what I use will make a difference, even if I were the last person on earth to do so.

Indeed, It all comes down to a question of morals in the end, not money?