Piracy Hurts

[Topcheese]

@sleepcircle, yes you are right. I'm also saying that not all of us look at "hurt" in the same way. I'm not trying to get all weirder on you, but we do sometimes hurt the ones we love. You know some sick people even find pleasure in that, but we won't get into that. I'll just leave it with my best Mellencamp impression. " Come on baby make it hurt so good!"

I know that I keep trying to diverge from the mainstream thought, but don't hate the player, hate the game! I can't disagree with you because clear communication is key, but when confronted with differences ... haters gonna hate!

You've shown me nothing but love of course, and don't think I don't get what you're saying. I still reserve the right to look at it as a golden opportunity and a great resource for potential revenue ... well I wouldn't go so far as to call it great, but I also just wouldn't write it off as a loss. To each his own.
Again I can't thank you enough for correcting me and for hearing me out.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Software is not a first-line commodity, software company should expect a rough ride in incomes, piracy is not always to blame, even if it seemingly correlates. From my estimation, piracy declined due to ransomware viruses, but incomes didn't climb the hill that much.

[FabienTDR]

I agree with Aleksey. I'd even go beyond: Business models must build around the real world, not the other way around!

Sales estimates are silly. Anybody with a pinch of experience in selling short lived software like (most) plugins, sound banks, music and apps, knows that sales ALWAYS decay exponentially. Every announcement, ad campaign or social media event creates another spike which immediately starts decaying again, very quickly. These decay curves rarely turn linear, or ever sustain! Given this banal fact, one can easily see numbers drop for very natural reasons, not piracy. Piracy is rather slow to spread, much slower than the naturally decaying demand.

Repeating this "piracy broke my model" fallacy is an easy excuse. But very bad PR for sure. Don't expect the world to change, just to get an unpractical biz model to work.

We both embrace and demotivate piracy, literally abuse it wherever we can, at minimum to our own advantage. This is delicate social engineering. Primarily making sure to satisfy, and never ever piss off an existing or potential customer. Good vibes sell!

[stratum]

In some parts of the world this 'end user software market' doesn't even exist and most people only pay for microsoft windows (oem version, while buying a new pc). not that the rest is pirated, it's just not used.

[kmonkey]

Software is not a first-line commodity, software company should expect a rough ride in incomes, piracy is not always to blame, even if it seemingly correlates. From my estimation, piracy declined due to ransomware viruses, but incomes didn't climb the hill that much.

Exactly !!!

Beside that what is Project Chaos and why we should care? Who is that Don Johnson crybaby gimme a break - these guys are likely worse then Metallica crybabies..

[Topcheese]

Software is not a first-line commodity, software company should expect a rough ride in incomes, piracy is not always to blame, even if it seemingly correlates. From my estimation, piracy declined due to ransomware viruses, but incomes didn't climb the hill that much.

Exactly !!!

Beside that what is Project Chaos and why we should care? Who is that Don Johnson crybaby gimme a break - these guys are likely worse then Metallica crybabies..

They also fail to mention that in order to use their "instrument" it'll cost you ~$850 because it also requires the "Requires the full version of Kontakt 5.8.1+"
That's one of the things I believe hurts the devs the most, and in the meantime NI releases Komplete Start on them. They say there's a sucker born every minute, and at that price point I doubt that you find many flocking to it.

They are the perfect example of that business model which is built around selling NI proprietary technology, and how it can quickly fall off. At the beginning it was great, but now the market is pretty much saturated with their "plugins." It's quoted because as in the case of Project Chaos it's nothing without the NI player.

I'll also point out again that's there's just too many good free and open-source projects out there to choose from. I think NI needs to learn a thing or two behind what motivates Microsoft to go all in on open-source.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft ... portfolio/

[Topcheese]

I can also understand about being able to afford a boat at them prices ... one for them and two for Native Instruments!

[Tj Shredder]

Are there really people who whip out their wallet when they can't find a crack?

Its the other way round, there are people who close their wallet when they find a crack... That is what hurts. The amount of people who close their wallets is most likely correlated with the price...
And of course as well there are people who would use the software if they find a crack but would not buy it ever if they cannot get hold of a crack. Mostly amateurs who do not make money with the software. I always wonder how many people use Photoshop though they are complete dilletants who could do the same with any freeware... (and for sure didn‘t pay a penny for PS...) That sort of piracy actually helped Adobe to become a market leader and didn‘t hurt them...

[starflakeprj]

Coming from one who around 8 years ago used to download cracked versions of every software "needed", it was actually Studio One (which I could't find cracked at the time) that turned me into paying for every software.

I thought that if I buy one software, I could't go on combining that with using cracked software, because what would the point be? I also put myself in the developer and the small company point of view, and came to the conclusion that most of them are probaly not earning enough money on their stuff to have this as their only profession.

So since then I have most likely purchased software for around 12.000-15.000 EUR (could be more), and add to that subscriptions for various software and streaming services (i.e. Photoshop, Office 365, Netflix, HBO, Viaplay, Spotify, Amazon Prime, Ask Audio and more)

Nowadays I don't buy in when people say they only use cracked software because they don't earn any money from it. I haven't earned a dime, on any of my software, and to be honest, I'm also rather crappy producing and composing music. Still I have decided to buy the software to support the hard work the developers put behind their software.

I also hear people say that they will buy the software later, but they can't afford it at the moment. This is bullshit most of the times! Years later they are still using the cracked version.

My take on it is, don't use the software until you have bought it. Especially in the music software business there are a lot of smaller one, or two, person companies who really suffer from piracy. Only a few companies are like NI, Arturia, Waves Audio and a few more, who have managed to grow to a size where piracy do not hurt as much.

[mladi]

I agree with Aleksey. I'd even go beyond: Business models must build around the real world, not the other way around!

Sales estimates are silly. Anybody with a pinch of experience in selling short lived software like (most) plugins, sound banks, music and apps, knows that sales ALWAYS decay exponentially. Every announcement, ad campaign or social media event creates another spike which immediately starts decaying again, very quickly. These decay curves rarely turn linear, or ever sustain! Given this banal fact, one can easily see numbers drop for very natural reasons, not piracy. Piracy is rather slow to spread, much slower than the naturally decaying demand.

Repeating this "piracy broke my model" fallacy is an easy excuse. But very bad PR for sure. Don't expect the world to change, just to get an unpractical biz model to work.

We both embrace and demotivate piracy, literally abuse it wherever we can, at minimum to our own advantage. This is delicate social engineering. Primarily making sure to satisfy, and never ever piss off an existing or potential customer. Good vibes sell!

Sounds very reasonable to me.