Reposting here — artist-developer building personal instruments, looking for advice

[spectraoul]

Hey,

I posted this in DSP and Plugin Development yesterday but I think it was the wrong place — my question is more about the journey of releasing indie audio tools than about DSP code. So trying here instead.

I'm an artist-developer. For years I've been building strange sound tools in Max/MSP, Pure Data, Python — ephemeral instruments that live on my hard drive and never see the light of day.

Recently, using AI coding agents as translators between my ideas and C++, I managed to ship my first real plugin: **Modal Compas**. It's a generative MIDI plugin inspired by Flamenco rhythmic cycles — a physics engine where marbles bounce inside a circle of accented beats and generate modal chord progressions from collisions. No step grid, no pattern sequencer. The music emerges from physics.

Piano solo, no effects, just Modal Compas generating the MIDI:



It runs as VST3/CLAP/LV2 and Jack Standalone on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

I'm also working on something bigger — a node-based spectral audio explorer + polyrhythmic sequencer called k2k. Still in alpha. Here's what it looks like:

K2K_Editor.png

K2K_Player.png

Now my problem: I know how to design and build these things, but I'm completely lost on the business side. How do indie devs actually sustain this kind of work today? Patreon? Gumroad? Just give it away and hope for donations? I'd love to hear from anyone who's been through this — or who just appreciates niche tools that don't try to be everything.

Thanks,
— Spectraoul

*(Originally posted here in the wrong subforum — my bad!)*