A Fine Example of IK Stupidity

[InstrEd]

I agree with you and I found I got almost all my IK stuff on a sale.   I just wait it out and I'm usually rewarded. It is IK's model of operation and as a hobbyist mainly I can wait.    For me I like their products but scratch my head on their pricing. 

[fitzroy]

1 hour ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

95% of other developers don't allow resales. 

Come'on now ? 

Off the top of my head, based on things I bought/sold recently through resales: Toontrack, Arturia, Izotope, Acustica, Plugin Alliance, Eventide, Ujam, PSP, U-he, Fuse Audio, Tokyo Dawn, Crave DSP.  

I suspect that if we'd put together a list of the 100 best known developers/companies on this forum, around 90% or more allow resales. 

[PavlovsCat]

On 2/17/2021 at 4:36 PM, InstrEd said:

I agree with you and I found I got almost all my IK stuff on a sale.   I just wait it out and I'm usually rewarded. It is IK's model of operation and as a hobbyist mainly I can wait.    For me I like their products but scratch my head on their pricing. 

That's how it works for everything, if you have the time, you can save money, but some brands in this industry do such deep discounting it devalues their products at regular prices. As a marketing pro, I would never advise discounting a currently active product line as deeply (at 75% or more) like IK, Waves and Izotope often do. It can greatly alienate loyal customers who paid full price and it trains the market to wait for deep discounts. I mean, most of us hobbyists and semiprofessional musicians aren't going to pay full price for Waves plugins anymore. They've trained us not to. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by PavlovsCat

[Promidi]

10 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

 It can greatly alienate loyal customers who paid full price and it trains the market to wait for deep discounts

I have yet to pay full price on any music related product, ever.....  ok, it has been a case of “patience grasshopper” on most occasions.

[Cristian]

Hey, at least IK finally lets you manually deactivate (some) licenses now... ?

Edited February 17, 2021 by Cristian

[Fret Flintstone]

Regardless of what company it is, if it's something I want, something that interests me, I always buy on release, now days there is usually a pre order price, some kind of loyalty price, or lower price on release for a time, and that's good enough for me. Waiting would drive me nuts (even more so than waiting for a pre order to be released)

[Byron Dickens]

17 minutes ago, Promidi said:

I have yet to pay full price on any music related product, ever.....  ok, it has been a case of “patience grasshopper” on most occasions.

Me neither. I do not have to have anything RIGHT NOW,  and I only buy it on sale.

[kitekrazy]

 There's always this love/hate relationship with IK.  I somehow end up having a lot of their stuff and rarely use it because I forget it's there.  I can't stand Waves or Steinberg because they have the worst user friendly agreements.  

[abacab]

I got about $1,000 of IK software for around $300 last year. Don't understand what ya'll are whining about... ?

[Reid Rosefelt]

2 hours ago, fitzroy said:

Come'on now ? 

Off the top of my head, based on things I bought/sold recently through resales: Toontrack, Arturia, Izotope, Acustica, Plugin Alliance, Eventide, Ujam, PSP, U-he, Fuse Audio, Tokyo Dawn, Crave DSP.  

I suspect that if we'd put together a list of the 100 best known developers/companies on this forum, around 90% or more allow resales. 

Whatever.  Maybe I exaggerated, but it's impossible to know what the percentage is, as nobody has done an exhaustive study. 

But the issue really is about the companies we like to buy stuff from.  Do they allow it? 

For starters, these companies do NOT allow resales: 

8dio
- ArtVista
- Auddict
- Audio Bro
- Audio Imperia
- Bela D Media (stated in EULA)
- Big Fish Audio (source: EULA)
- Cinematic Strings
- Cinesamples
- EastWest
- Fable Sounds
- Garritan
- Ilya Efimov (source: EULA)
- In Session Audio (source: EULA)
- Light and Sound (source: EULA)
- Loops de la Crème (source: EULA)
- Musical Sampling
- Orchestral Tools
- Performance Samples (source: EULA)
- Realitone (but has 30 day refund policy)
- Red Room Audio (source: EULA, this thread itself)
- Sample Logic (stated in EULA)
- Sonokinetic
- Spitfire Audio
- Strezov Sampling (source: VIControl thread, EULA)
- Vir2
- Virharmonic
- Wallander Instruments
- Zero-G (stated in EULA)
 

Also, there are companies that do allow resale but charge a LOT more money than IK--like VSL.   Or they only allow it on a case-by-case basis, like Soundiron, Spectrasonics, etc.

I think that it is unusual to find companies that make transfers painless, like NI and Orange Tree Samples and IK do.  In many cases, a lot of emails are required. 

[User 905133]

7 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

But the issue really is about the companies we like to buy stuff from.  Do they allow it? 

For starters, these companies do NOT allow resales . . . .

I know we can leave real gear to heirs; does anyone know if these virtual gear companies also disallow transfers to heirs?

[Topcheese]

I wish we were all perfect, but even more so for perfect companies.  It is this kind of feedback that helps a business to help realize those goals.  Pardon my expression, but IK didn't reach it's position in the world by just whistling Dixie.  I like their stuff and I feel it's pretty solid.  I'll take that any day over some glitzy marketing campaign mistakes, because like others have said it is on the consumer to seek and find the best deal.

I'm not trying to take anything away from your concerns, but I think they pale in comparison to what you actually get.  I was also able to get in on the Max studio deal, but I am at loss to how I would ever upgrade it.

[Magic Russ]

30 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

I know we can leave real gear to heirs; does anyone know if these virtual gear companies also disallow transfers to heirs?

You can leave a spreadsheet with license keys to your heirs.  I can see my grandkids getting emails "Russ, congratulations on having been a NI user for 75 years.  Check out these great savings on Komplete 37".  Or whatever they use to send messages in the future.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Magic Russ

[PavlovsCat]

Thanks for that list, @Reid Rosefelt I own libraries from a number of devs you listed as not allowing resale and didn't realize it. 

[Luc]

It's really too bad because probably about 90% of the complaints people have about IK could be fixed in an instant... Yes, the pricing doesn't adjust much based on what is already owned, but there really seem to be two main complaints... 1) The charge to re-download sounds after 6 months, and 2) the fact that their installer installs everything instead of having a custom install option.

I have almost all of the T-Racks and find myself skipping using a lot of their plugins because I don't want to sort through the list trying to remember what I have. And yes, you can move the unused ones but it's an extra step and hassle that really shouldn't be necessary. It does make using new plugins you buy quicker but I'd rather just install what I need. And from the hundreds (thousands) of mentions I've seen about it over the years, I'm not alone.

But their plugins sound SO GOOD! They've helped get me some great tv placements over the years so I really love the plugins themselves. And I wish they'd fix those two issues. It would help them so much because any IK related thread inevitably ends up with complaints about these things. It's gotten their deals banned from at least one deals forum. Nothing is perfect and there will always be people unhappy. But I love their plugins and would love to see them change those two things so mentions of IK deals are followed with conversation about their plugins instead of the negative conversations that tend to follow.

[Reid Rosefelt]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Thanks for that list, @Reid Rosefelt I own libraries from a number of devs you listed as not allowing resale and didn't realize it. 

There's a good post on VI:Control.

It's a good start, but somebody needs to do something that is accurate and comprehensive.

 

[Grem]

Love IK plugins for the PC. I bought almost all IK plugins (90%) at a discount. In the majority of those cases that I bought at a discount, I was allowed to use JamPoints (they are not useless) to discount even further. 

I wanted the Larsen plugin, but was not gonna pay that price. Took a while to go on a good sale, but I finally got it. And it's really nice. Worth every penny I paid for it. 

I want that Organ too!! And it will go on sale. And I will get it. (Waited to get the Leslie on sale too, and it's also really nice!)

The only thing I can remember paying full price for is the Mesa Collection. And I have used it since day one. Love it. The mk lV with the open back cab is my go to. 

But I got say... sometimes IK just got me wondering "WTF are they doing in that marketing dept!!?"

 

[Edit] forgot to say the only reason IK survives is that their plugins are just that good!!

Edited February 18, 2021 by Grem

[Maestro]

The only issue I've had with IK Multimedia is that the shipping for a physical SampleTank 4 MAX took 9 days to leave them and then 3 days to get here despite me doing 2 Day Shipping (and paying extra for it).

Then, the USB Thumb Drive was defective and it took 3 days of back and forth for them to finally agree to ship me a new one, but they forgot to send me the shipping label so that add another day to that.

I ended up just having a friend download it all onto a 2.5" HDD and mailing it to me.  But I still wasted money paying for the physical package and the shipping.

That being said, it was on Sale as a $119 (Download) Crossgrade off of Total Studio 2 MAX - so, I wasn't completely miffed.

IK is usually pretty good about discounting you if you contact them and tell them you own multiple products.  There seems to be a very clear pattern where users run to forums and complain about this company, even before they contact IK Multimedia.  In 98.6% of cases, contacting support gets them a suitable resolution, but they run to forums to skip the queue because Peter is pretty consistent about noticing these threads and jumping on the case.

They get a lot more flack than they deserve.

Also, the installers are fine.  Just download everything and then extract the zip files to a common root drive.  Run one installer and everything installs in one go.

Sometimes, the problem is between the computer and the chair.  The installation issues mostly fall in this category.

The new product manager is pretty good at handling the application installations and Authorization/Deauthorization.

[Maestro]

1 hour ago, Luc said:

the fact that their installer installs everything instead of having a custom install option.

T-RackS 5 MAX installs like 7 plug-ins that aren't included in the MAX package (Leslie, Sunset Reverb, Space Delay, Tape Machine x 4).  Those are trivial to Hide or Disable in your DAWs or NLEs.

You can set AmpliTube to show only the stuff you own.

Those are really nitpicky "issues."  Multiple vendors do this.  The Harrison Consoles Ava installer does this, as do plug-in installers from MAGIX and scores of other developers.

1 hour ago, Luc said:

1) The charge to re-download sounds after 6 months

If you buy 370GB worth of aAplications and Sample Libraries from a company (like I have) and don't immediately back these up to a HDD, then I don't think you can really complain about having to pay to redownload them after 6 months.  Again, IK Multimedia is not alone in doing this.  Many companies do, because not every company is super huge and can afford to hemorrhage money away in the form of server bandwidth costs.

27 minutes ago, Grem said:

forgot to say the only reason IK survives is that their plugins are just that good!!

That's kind of the point, given that's the core of their business.

They survive because the exaggerations of a few forum posters actually do not dictate the experience of the other millions of their users.

And why are people abusing the DEALS forums with threads that have nothing to do with Deals?  There is another forum area for this minutiae.  Don't post here just to farm views and replies.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Maestro

[Hatstand]

Out of interest are there any IK products you guys would say are must haves that can't be found or bettered elsewhere?

I originally got into them for Sampletank but no longer use it preferring Kontakt libraries

Amplitude I no longer use because I have Guitar Rig

T-racks stuff annoyed me for installing everything which meant having to disable the ones I wasn't licenced for and tbh I now only use Stealth Limiter, having equivalent or better compressors, gates, eq's, channel strips etc. elsewhere.

Each time there is a sale, I look at my Jam Points and my Gear Credits and still can't find anything worth buying that I don't already have. Even ARC I have yet to bite on as I have Sonarworks.