PavlovsCat

Fleer, how many SSDs are you up to right now? I want a count! Total amount of storage, come on. I'm imagining you have a giant room full of servers with nothing but sample libraries and plugins.

I just love your thread title! My background is marketing/branding and I realize most people think that means soulless promotion person, but that's definitely not me. I love when bad, unethical practices are exposed. Anyhoo, Kudos to you, @Kirean. A brief explanation of marketing and ethical marketing I'm a believer that ethical marketing is developing products around what people want or what you believe they want. That businesses should overdeliver on promises, not just meet expectations or engage in trickery (like inflating list prices to claim you're giving huge discounts) -- and it's in the long term interests of the business to do so. When you over-deliver on expectations, you make customers happy and happy customers tell their friends about a great experience and become loyal customers that bond with your brand and buy again. That, in a nutshell, is ethical marketing. Marketing itself encompasses marketing research, product development, pricing, distribution and promotion, but most people mistakenly think that advertising and sales promotion are marketing -- and at small companies, marketing people often aren't doing marketing, but sales promotion. And sleazy inflating of prices like this one to claim huge discounts is a common practice, it's actually against FTC regulations (what people sometimes call laws) in the US -- and against stricter regulations in much of the rest of the world. It doesn't stop sleazy little businesses form engaging in those practices, and they're pretty common at some resellers.

My favorite YouTuber, and friend, and only influencer I know who did honest "reviews" of sample libraries just passed. I'm still heartbroken. You have your own style, but you're easily the most honest reviewer of sample libraries I've seen. You don't care if it goes against the grain and that's awesome. We don't always have the same opinion on libraries, but I always know that you're giving your honest opinions and that's significant. Please, don't ever stop. Forums need more people like you who aren't afraid to share their honest opinions.

Everything from Arturia interests me. This dev has figured out my tastes very well. I shouldn't even click. Danger! Danger!

Okay, so no one got the too good to be true deal, but things turned out alight. I have long owned M-Tron, from version one, and totally love it (I'm obsessed with Trons, FTR). I thnk I've bought from this shop once. But this thread makes me want to buy from him again. He seems like a really nice guy.

Thanks for considering my point. I sincerely appreciate it.

I realize I'm going to get hate for this, but I've given free advice to a lot of developers over the years in exchange for them giving free NFRs to low income musicians. My logic is simple, care about others. Developers and e-commerce shop owners are regular people simply trying to make a living. Why be opportunists seizing a chance to profit by taking advantage of someone when they make a mistake? I realize I'm going to be ripped on for preaching, but I'm really only trying to appeal to you guys not to dehumanize shop owners and developers out of greed, but to consider empathy for the person now being taken advantage of. When you see a developer or a store owner makes an obvious mistake, why not contact them to try to help him rather than try to exploit their mistake? This isn't some huge company. This is some little guy trying to make a living; I don't think he's getting rich. Why screw him over and take advantage of him just because you can? Why not take the better option and help him? Just a simple thought.

Interesting point. Toontrack is an excellent example of how a very strong brand in a niche can have pricing that can withstand these market changes, for now. SD3 is my favorite drum plugin and Toontrack makes my favorite acoustic drum libraries, but I would love to see their competitors step it up and bring down pricing to the point Toontrack feels they must lower their prices too. So go XLN! Go BFD! If those developers provide serious competition at a lower price point, Toontrack will likely see their market share decline, their sales decline and end up lowering their prices. Now that there are some of us into strategy and analyzing the market, you can now appreciate why some sample library developers are upset and worried about the disruptive changes in pricing led by NI, Cinesamples, 8Dio and others. That is the foundation of the below attack. Read this except and think about that: "[8Dio's]"race to bottom" pricing strategy is bad for the industry. It makes things difficult for those of us who are trying to invest in producing quality products and need to price them accordingly. In my own case, I'm over $160k in recording costs alone for our upcoming choir library. $160k. And that's before editing or advertising or licenses or paying myself for my time. Yet I guarantee someone will post on my Facebook ad that it's overpriced, because they got Requiem Pro for 35 bucks. Guaranteed. In fact, I got one of those yesterday on my Nightfall ad, as someone said it should be $39, because that's what Product X is. It's not healthy for the industry, and from what I've heard, Troels and Tawnia don't give a flying f*ck. (Before they sic Amanda on me again, they're welcome to correct anything I'm saying. I won't delete anything they post.) They've got a large catalog they can keep drawing from, so it will be a while before that well runs dry. I might add that a year and a half ago, Tawnia told us (here) that 8dio wouldn't be doing sales like this anymore. But ... did anyone really believe her? I didn't, which is why I bookmarked the post. So yes, I get really pissed off seeing that 8dio Flash Sale thread day after day, bumped to page one of Latest Posts, cycling blowouts on the same damn products (you know they're being repeated, right?) with the same damn discussions, over and over and over. Making a mockery of the companies I do respect. F*ck that. " This developer is having a meltdown over major price reductions in the industry; he's furious at a competitor for what he believes is their leading the present price reductions in his industry because it means he's going to no longer get the same big profit margins he's historically enjoyed and will need to increase sales volume and is worrying if he's going to be able to get to that volume of sales. Of course, I have empathy for that situation. I've faced similar challenges as a marketing exec and in running the company I lead today. But this is the nature of business and you must adapt to succeed. You don't seek to destroy your competitors through contrived, defamatory reputation attacks. But that is precisely what's going on in this small industry today. You may not have realized it, but that is what you've been witnessing.

Besides being very talented, the guy is just so darned likable. His warmth really came across in your interview. You did a really good job. I hope he samples a cello at some point.

Another excellent dev! Clicking this may be dangerous!

Precisely! Just consider how much they've learned since planning this out. They started by exploring making their player open to third party developers, but decided to keep it closed. It wouldn't shock me if they're really successful that they may open it up to third-party developers. They originally saw it as an entry into their sample libraries where they upsell to KONTAKT, but what if this thing goes gangbusters and they re-assess that maybe they should bring all of the features into Musio with some premium/pro level tier that doesn't exist today. Okay, yeah, strategy is my living, so I'm sure there's a bunch of people annoyed with my posts. I'll stop here and that will probably get someone chiming in to say, "Thank you!" But I love this forum for how we're a small group and have kind of learned each other's quirks and take stuff off topic in our own ways.

Absolutely and you can bet that those companies' development and level of success for their own sample players impacts how they look at their relationship with NI/KONTAKT. I was focusing in on Cinesamples and 8Dio because those two companies share that they're both long time KONTAKT developers -- which can be said about Orchestra Tools and Spitfire -- and they've both been doing some pretty significant deep discounted that has a lot of developers talking and some concerned about how pricing is changing in the orchestral library space. I think 2023 has been a big year in that regard, pricing. It's very much like when Waves first begin lowering the prices of their effects to the present day always on $29/$39 USD PLUS these developers are really investing in their proprietary players. And yes, I'll share this in advance, I am booked to provide strategy advice to a developer, so I'm in the midst of researching and analyzing the marketplace and the various players. But as a marketing/branding strategist and as a hobbyist musician, I find what's going on right now really exciting and it's also why there is a very public freakout happening that can be heard loudly at this point from a certain developer / forum owner. I've been a huge KONTAKT user for 20 or whatever it's been years, I've given advice to more than 2 dozen KONTAKT developers over the years and I can see that a good deal of KONTAKT developers with large portfolios of libraries that have released their own samplers or players. Cinesamples, Orchestra Tools and Spitfire have all gone the closed route (regarding third-party libraries), but I know that Mike at Cinesamples had explored going the open route, 8Dio/SoundPaint has gone the open route (open to both third party developers and you can actually import and create your own sample libraries in the free player). The trend towards developers (1) lowering prices and (2) introducing samplers/players, have in common, of course, that they're replacing KONTAKT, reflects a maturity of the market that has pricing implications and big implications for NI. A big part of why developers are making these moves is that it's dangerous for their businesses to be tied so closely to the fate and direction of NI/KONTAKT. plus the changing of hands of companies like NI Personally, I'd like to see all of these companies prosper with what they're doing. It's great for sample users because it's great for the market. 2023 also represented the year where NI's own deep discounting hit new levels (+70%). As a strategist, I would never advise a company to discount at that level, because it becomes the perceived value of your product after that point. That is, If your product lists at $100 USD and you discount at 70% so that it's on sale for $30, you've just trained the market that the real value is $30 and a great deal of the market will now wait until the product hits that price again. So, if you see any developer I've advised doing deep discounting like that, you know it wasn't following my advice. The only time I've advise that is if the brand is planning on soon re-adjusting pricing to that $30 regular price point. And I do think that is what the meta message of NI doing that deep discounting is. Prices are adjusting downward.

No disagreement, I thought you were saying that Cinesamples strategy might have changed and I was just trying to explain why that might happen and why it's natural, and even smart, for that to happen (because the business learns as they roll out this new line). And yeah, I forget that this is just a deals section and not a site on strategy! I was just geeking out to be really candid. Also, re-reading my post, I'm guessing you might have inferred something I didn't intend. I wasn't correcting you. I was just agreeing with you, but my phrasing was clumsy enough that it could have been misinterpreted as if I was correcting you, I wasn't. You could modify the first sentence to start, "I absolutely agree that Cinesamples may be doing something today that is different than when they first created their plan, as they should be learning as they go and making adjustments. I can easily see how they could end up completely replacing KONTAKT with Musio in the future and making tiers for their libraries: a basic level with basic features and lighter weight libraries and an advanced/pro level with every feature presently contained in the KONTAKT libraries. "

You know, with how confusing it is, I think it would be pretty reasonable of you used chat or whatever they have at their site before you purchase. Just to play it safe. I'm completely certain they'll be happy to help you and maybe, if you let them know that you posted this in a forum and no one was 100% sure of the right answer, they might modify their naming conventions and product copy to make things easier for other prospective customers. I'd call it a win/win.

Excellent dev. Great stuff (as another forum member would put it, albeit, with a different spelling).

Maybe I didn't highlight it, but I wrote that the reality is, when a KONTAKT sample developer takes the leap to make their own sampler or player, if it takes off, there's no question that they're going to reassess their relationship with KONTAKT/NI and it makes a lot of sense. Right now, two orchestral library devs that have been around a long time, Cinesamples and 8Dio are both doing dramatic price drops and have their own proprietary players out. Cinesamples chose to close their player to third party developers (of course, that could change) and go with the subscription model initially whereas 8Dio chose to open theirs, SoundPaint, to third parties and make the player free with a bunch of free libraries and perpetual licenses on libraries. I'd like to see both developers succeed. Because both developers make excellent libraries. I haven't tried Musio, but if my budget was bigger I might have, I definitely think Cinesamples makes some wonderful libraries. SoundPaint was free to try and hooked me and is actually the first sampler in 20 or so years where I actually am writing my own programs. So it's taken me from being incredibly KONTAKT centric to know using two go to samplers plus SD3. If Musio took a similar approach, I think it'd be a no brainer to install and try that too. Who knows where they might take it. What I'm not a fan of is when really small sample developers who don't have much of a breadth of libraries launch their own proprietary plugin to play their libraries. I own hundreds of sample libraries, I don't want them to require hundreds of different pluguns to work.

This sounds pretty good.

I researched those last year and agree their naming conventions are inconsistent and unclear. Hey, these developers are small business people. I'm guessing "Tina Guo" and "Tina Guo Acoustic Cello Legato" are the same thing, but don't buy until you know for sure, of course. I can say this, every developer I know that talked about that series has praised it as top notch. There's only one reason I didn't buy the Tina Guo library and that is, I want a dry cello libraries; I don’t do orchestral music, but rock, singer / songwriter and solo piano accompanied by strings. If this library was dry, I would have bought it. But if you are good with that wet baked in sound, it's been praised by so many talented developers, I think it's a forgone conclusion, in my book, that it's a superb library or set of libraries to be more precise.

There's been a lot of talk in the library developer community about pricing adjustments. I've posted about it. It is causing some developers concerns that when they've invested say $50k on up in production on a library that the price drops are going to make it take a lot longer for small developers to break even. I knew this developer had changes coming. It's part of the whole freak out and war going on with VI-Control's owner, as he's a small developer with some orchestral libraries and he's afraid that every calculation he's made is soon going to be meaningless as prices drop. That's what "8Dio is leading the race to the bottom" rants he does are all about. Cinesamples is another developer that's doing price drops. As a sample user, all of this is fantastic news. I would recommend anyone looking to buy an orchestral library for a high cost, if you aren't getting a fantastic deal, press the pause button. Pricing is radically dropping. 8Dio and Cinesamples are two of the big disruptors, and it's going to change the entire industry pricing in time. But some small developers who don't sell in large numbers are concerned how they will increase sales volume to maintain the same profits when margins are rapidly getting smaller.

I discovered this dev in his early days and love his work. It's quirky, weird and unique in a very wonderful way. It's totally niche, but I'd urge folks to at least check them out. It's not incredibly detailed libraries, but it's detailed enough for me. I know Trent Reznor-- who's done some really cool movie scores-- is a huge fan. Anyhow, I own maybe a dozen of their libraries and have had zero disappointments and I go back probably 12 years or more as a customer.

BTW, the reason that developers know about this is developers talk to one another, but also that Mike had contemplated opening up Musio to third party developers at one point like 8Dio is doing with SoundPaint.

I've heard from multiple developers that Mike (I actually forget which Mike stayed and which left) from Cinesamples sees Musio as the entry level to Cinesamples products. They're targeting home hobbyists and students and plan to pitch them upgrades to KONTAKT versions. So the idea is that a Musio version will never be as sophisticated as the KONTAKT version, but it's a lot less expensive. As someone who's just a middle-aged hobbyist, I'd probably mostly be happy with the Musio versions unless scripting was a major factor. Piano in Blue in Musio? Absolutely. Tina Guo Legato Cello, I'd opt to upgrade to the KONTAKT version. While I didn't hear this directly, I think it makes a lot of sense strategically and is consistent with Mike's public statements. That said, if Musio were to really do well, I could also see Cinesamples deciding to leave KONTAKT behind and do a pro version of Musio. One thing is certain, a lot of KONTAKT developers are exploring options beyond KONTAKT. I think that's a wise strategy, good for the market and good for sample users like us. It brings down prices, it results in greater innovations, greater choices... Competition is a very good thing.

From my recollection, one of the big differences with the Musio libraries vs the KONTAKT libraries is that the Musio platform doesn't have the sophisticated scripting that is part of their KONTAKT library equivalents. Musio libraries also don't have the detail and mic position options of the KONTAKT libraries. In short, Cinesamples positions the KONTAKT versions as upgrades for Musio users. I think for many home hobbyists, Musio is a very good option. Beyond the question of whether the line will have longevity, the big question for me is whether I can give up the KONTAKT scripting on a library that makes it so realistic and playable. It really wouldn't matter on a piano or vibraphone library, but string libraries are a different story. On that note, I am hoping for a big BF deal from Cinesamples on Piano in Blue. Nothing out there sounds like it. It sounds absolutely beautiful to my ears and I've always been in love with the album that inspired it.

This is the developer that @Simeon Amburgey interviewed that used to be with Orchestra Tools. I thought this library sounds beautiful and the developer is super likable. Anyone considering this library, be sure to check out our own Simeon's video. I've long had two favorite YouTubers in this space and one of them is Simeon.

Posting that video in a thread where we were honoring him is just plain indefensibly wrong and exploitative. Reiid s a retired publicist. He didn't insert a video of Cory attacking 8Dio into this thread by accident. Watch the video, then read my post and you'll understand how sickening it is for Reid to have done that. Cory referred to me as a brother in our conversations. He wrote about me on YouTube. He's still my friend. Reid never knew him and is exploiting him as a favor for Mike Greene as a YouTube wannabe friend.