Zolton

In case anyone else is interested in an extremely nerdy and unofficial look at the numbers:

Using timestamps of posts in this thread (and from a couple other "interested" forums) that mention specific counts, I found ~60 data points from early on the 5th through about noon today, plus a handful of my own this evening. Comparing the gaps of time and counts between pairs of posts, I can work out the approximate signups/hour over various periods of time. Here's the quick rundown:

From the "start" (counting the 8/5 early-morning announcement) to now: 14.2 signups / hour

Since the "race to 10k" announcement, approximately (5pm GMT yesterday, if my calc from EST is right, with the count at 7075) to now: 19.3 signups / hour

Needed from now (04:00 GMT) to the end of the 31st: 24.6 signups / hour

It's a bump in the average, for sure -- and we've already seen a bit of bump since the extension announcement. But the rate has been > 25 / hour for several stretches during the GB, including a full day near the beginning and at least a 10-hour stretch today.

This is my first IKGB rodeo, so I'll defer to others with experience about how high, far, wide and long the numbers might or might not jump, but 10k seems plausible if enthusiasm holds. In the meantime, the numbers are fun for a data nerd to fiddle with.

I think husker's right that buying Syntronik Deluxe (with or without JP) would qualify for a higher level of freebie choice, but there are a couple of things to note about that specific case:
 

1. At least for me, it's listed at $269, rather than $250.

2. As pointed out on the KVR thread, Deluxe might not be a great GB value, because there aren't many (or any?) potential freebies in the range between $199 and $269.

3. If you buy Syntronik (regular), you should be eligible for the "Syntronik Deluxe Upgrade" as a single freebie that bridges the gap between (vanilla) Syntronik and Deluxe. So you lose one freebie, but save some cash. Or JamPoints. Or something. Definitely not sanity at this point, as it all makes our heads spin.

1 hour ago, dee said:

15 days left and only 4 freebies,,,sounds like we need extension period as last time...

I'm still no mathematologist, but it might be interesting to revisit the numbers from ten days ago. Specifically:

On 8/6/2021 at 8:41 PM, dee said:

600 participants in few days, seems like it will hardly reach 4000 with 4 free products....

On 8/6/2021 at 9:01 PM, Charlie Hatton said:

...if the current rate holds of (slightly more than) 600 people joining in (less than) two full days, or 300/day with 25 days remaining, you'd expect to hit the middle of the 7000 tier by the end, without any eleventh-hour (or twenty-fourth-day) bump.

The ~300-and-a-little/day rate has held pretty steady overall, in that the GB hit 4000 right around the end of day 11, and 300 even would have taken 12 days. At the updated rate, with 15 days left, we'd expect to hit 9000 by the end with no extension -- and no bump of people joining later, no one doubling up, etc.

I'm sure there's some day-of-the-week variability, but it's perhaps interesting to note that today the rate looks to be around 500, which is a fair jump above the average. Perhaps the quickening begins?

(Edit: And I'm certainly no mathematologist, because I said 300x12 = 4000, when I was thinking of 333. The rest is probably maybe somewhat reasonable, though.)

I'm no mathematicist, but this thread was started early yesterday morning, which I believe was soon after the buy was announced. 

I'm led to believe -- and it makes intuitive sense -- that a fair proportion of people will jump in at the end, once they've seen how things are shaping up.

Short of that, if the current rate holds of (slightly more than) 600 people joining in (less than) two full days, or 300/day with 25 days remaining, you'd expect to hit the middle of the 7000 tier by the end, without any eleventh-hour (or twenty-fourth-day) bump.

Given the recent... <vague arm-waving motions> all *this* happening in the world, it may be that there are more first- or second-time buyers looking to add to their new-ish music production activities -- or maybe there's generally less disposable income to sling around. A couple of weeks may narrow the trend, but so far it seems consistent with getting at least a 6- or 7-for-1 deal out of it, just from the numbers available.

This site overlaps often with the cheaper/free deals that BPB find, but occasionally unearths something unique:

https://www.producerfeed.com/

35 minutes ago, chris.r said:

If anyone know what is 'next TR holiday' please enlighten me 🙏

My guess would be July 27th, though I'm not up on all the classic drum machine models, so I might be missing one or two.

Samples from Mars has a lot of packs based on the Roland TR-*** series, and after TR-707 but before TR-808 is (at least) the TR-727.

Also, I never knew "TR" stood for "Transistor Rhythm", which I just looked up. Neat.

I think those packs are part of their "20 Designers for 2020" set, all of which appear to still be free, if interested:
 

https://www.adsrsounds.com/vendor/adsr-20-designers-for-2020/

No worries!

Ideally, 2bplayed is just moving over to some new authentication method or being proactive about security -- but you never know. At least we know multiple people got the same emails, for what it's worth.

I got the same message, which seemed a little suspicious. I've only downloaded a couple of freebies from them (including this latest one), but you do have to have an account and be logged in to check out on their site.

Instead of clicking the email link, I went directly to the 2bplayed.com site and tried logging in, and got a message that my password was indeed "expired". I followed a link on the site to reset it, got a second email, followed that to change my password and could log in again. So the original email seems/seemed legit -- but it makes you wonder if 2bplayed may have had a security issue on their end recently.