Music Software Deals

Two new updates:

1. We've updated the Spitfire scraper and its working correctly now (it was missing some deals because of "pagination" on their site). Working perfectly now with their new website design

2. Based on a lot of requests and feedback, we've now added the "Table" view button which lets you see the results / latest deals in one single table. For example, view all of the Plugin Boutique latest deals in a table like this (attached)

We've improved the search on our website now too. Once you start typing, it will give you suggested terms based on your text - see attached image

Perfect thanks for letting me know

On 7/11/2023 at 11:44 AM, filo said:

@Music Software Deals Not sure but I think the sorting algorithm doesn't work as it should.

At least in case "Sort by price: low to high":

Thanks for letting us know. We were tweaking how th e search box works. It should be working perfectly now?

8 hours ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

Finally know what TPS reports are 

haha brilliant

1 hour ago, mibby said:

 

I just got some emails.

Looks great! Thanks @Music Software Deals guy!  👍

 

Glad to hear it! We've updated the layout on the front page a little again too just to improve it - just placed the featured deals and all deals in the one section (they were previously separate) and also those featured deals are auto removed when you add any filtering and sorting

50 minutes ago, mibby said:

It would still be nice to see the name of the plugin on sale in the emails.

-- OR --

Maybe better, a summarized email with ALL of your plugins you're watching that are on sale at the moment.

 

This is what my email client looks like currently...

Apologies, we had it on the list but it was forgotten because we were working on other email stuff too. I've just re-added it now thanks so hopefully we can update it soon, shouldn't be too much work!

2 minutes ago, mibby said:

Another great idea!  But definitely give users the CLEAR option to opt out of getting the emails.

Thanks. Yes of course all email signups will be double optin (you have to confirm you want the emails before signup completes) and has an easy unsubscribe option at the bottom.

We've updated the site with a new "Featured Deals" section at the top. These aren't sponsored or paid for, just deals we want to feature that we think are (subjectively) good. We'll update them every few days. The idea is simply to have something to draw your eyes to immediately without having to start searching for ideas. The section disappears when you start a cstom search.

Also, we're currently working on creating an automated newsletter that will go out each week with all of the latest deals in it. It will have a link to all of the deals of that particular time period in a table format then too. Question for everyone - if you were interested in this, would you find it useful to be able to select to signup to only deals from specific manufacturers (eg. only send me deals from uJam + Baby Audio each week), or specific categories (eg. only send me deals on compressors) or is that overkill?

12 minutes ago, abacab said:

Did you try sending a note to "Uncle E" to see if there is any way JRR could standardize their product naming? I'm sure that they would likely prefer to remain on a tool that drives traffic to their website, if it's not too major of a hoop for them to jump thru...

No never tried contacting him but I'm assuming its unlikely they would consider changing their entire website naming schemes just because of our website. I'm guessing they continue to rename their products with SEO type product names because it has always worked well for them.

2 hours ago, mibby said:

Looking good and too bad about JRR.  That's a good store.  Thanks for the transparency on the commissions info. That's disappointing for all the work that goes into the site, but I've been very curious.  Hopefully you're heading in the right direction. 

Also, the email reminders continue to work, but only with "Price alert" in the subject... 

Thanks for reminding me, will see if we can update the Price Alert subject!

17 minutes ago, BullHorn said:

Being able to see historic sale prices for plugins like IsThereAnyDeal does for videogames would be an amazing feature, at least for the purpose of giving a general idea if a plugin ever goes on sale and how steep the % is.

-EDIT: Nevermind looks like it already does that!

That the whole point of the website haha

Two quick updates:

1. We've removed JRR from the site

2. We've added easy links to the Popular stores

Removing JRR: Unfortunately we've had to remove JRR from our price tracking, not because of a lack of financial incentive (they don't have an affiliate program) but because the way they name products on their website makes it impossible to continue tracking accurately. For example, every other store would name a product something like "Granulate by Company" but JRR renames every product with lots of keywords (probably for SEO) so "Granulate by Company" becomes "Granulate Granular AU/VST Synth Plugin  by Company". This creates two versions of the same product on our website and while we do have a process for merging duplicate products (when a deal is merged with another, our site remembers the previous name and will auto merge it in future based on that name) its impossible to do it for the multiple thousands of products they have on their store and as our aim is to be as automated as possible, we had to just give up trying to continually fix their product names 😔

Adding links to Popular stores: See attachment - we added easy access to the popular stores in the quick search section. Clicking a store icon will display the deals from that store

Side note, we also removed 8Dio from the site for various reasons...

Also, if anyone is curious how much a site like this makes, last month we made $400 in affiliate commissions with a monthly running cost of $55. We may eventually add a banner or two at some point in the future as traffic increases

We've been tracking the most popular products and have now added "Sort by Popularity" to our default sorting options

On 2/24/2023 at 12:25 PM, mibby said:

@Music Software Deals I had some "Price Alert" emails this morning - thanks!

FR - can you put the name of the plugin in the subject of the email? Right now each email says "Price Alert" in the subject. How about "Price Alert - Softube Tape" instead?

Thanks!

Thanks. Yep we'll definitely try to do that

Thanks all, unfortunately there are issues with 8Dio's website so we'll just have to remove it from our pricing as its quite difficult to pull the most up to date prices. I think its probably safe to just say everything is generally 70% off at some point in time there anyway

Thanks for letting us know the email alerts aren't working, checking now!

This seems to be the lowest it's hit

Woah. Enjoy! 

Seems to hit $49 now and again:

There's a coupon VST10OFF to get an extra 10% off too so its more like 26 euros.

Plus an extra 10% off using VST10OFF (VSTBuzz 10 year birthday coupon)

Just a quick note - we've updated our database to improve how we handle all of the information. This in turn should have removed all of the minor issues you've seen like a few products having a very high price as well as some products showing as "Deal" or "On Sale" when not on sale. Everything should be a lot more accurate overall now instead

Black Friday was absolute madness with hundreds of deals being published each day so we're working our way through any duplicates and re-categorising everything (eg. Plugin > Compressor) .

You'll also notice that the product URLs make a bit more sense now - no more numbers at the end of them, just standard URLs as our database doesn't need the numbers anymore

7 hours ago, Jan Schmitz said:

Think I caught two more bugs/errors:

1) this seems to be some database relic: https://musicsoftwaredeals.com/price-history/Resonate-by-Spitfire-Audio-36959/ It isn't on sale.

2) the setting "new historical low" for price alerts seems to default to <$0.

Thanks for reporting!

1. This is basically an issue with how the backend of our system works. We're changing it all at the moment which is why you may seem some small things like this but eventually this will be fixed

2. That setting means anything from $0 upwards to the current lowest price

Figured out the issue, thanks for reporting - fixed now

On 11/18/2022 at 3:35 PM, mibby said:

Awesome MSD guy! Thanks!

BTW, I am not getting email alerts.  I have one set up for a Kuassa Amp that is on sale and didn't receive an alert. 

Hmm, double checking that now so, sorry!