Please share your thoughts. The ultimate objective of Black Friday for me is....

[Zargg]

I got 2 Drum MIDI packs for SD3 at a tenner each, minus some best coin and extra discount at Best Service, and that is all I'm gonna get this time.

I kinda got my GAS under control after the IK GB.

Unless it is very cheap, and I can use it with my Console 1, I'm not that interested anymore.

I know I should be ashamed...

[user 905133]

21 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Please share your suggestions for dealing with not going for broke on the Black Friday weekend. 

My current strategy:

1. Looking at my bills (current and upcoming, including credit card charges not yet billed and anticipated housing costs) and checking account balance ?.
2. Looking at my monthly income. ? ? 
3. Reminding myself how I made a very bad decision in October to join a popular marketing scheme discussed heavily in the forum instead of waiting until I could get far more with about the same amount of money. ? ? ? ? 
4.  Deleting tons of e-mails that have proliferated since I started purchasing music stuff. ? 
5.  Deleting tons of e-mails that have proliferated since I started signing up for so-called "free" plug-ins. ? ? 
6. Trying demos over the span of a few days ? instead of getting caught up in impulsive consumerism and asking myself if I need it or just want it  
7. Taking a new look/playing around with soft synths and other music tools I have in my inventory.  ? ? ? ? 
8. With bundles, asking myself if this developer gives me substantially reduced prices for products I already purchased.  ? ? ?
9. Spending time to make a spreadsheet of possible purchasing options.  ?
10. Then, limiting impulsive purchases to a very small percentage of what I think I might ultimately spend.  ?

Any or all of these might or might not work for others, but I think its a good question to reflect on especially given all the hyper-commercialized marketing that seems to be all over the place. 

Caveat emptor!!!

[PavlovsCat]

8 minutes ago, Zargg said:

I got 2 Drum MIDI packs for SD3 at a tenner each, minus some best coin and extra discount at Best Service, and that is all I'm gonna get this time.

I kinda got my GAS under control after the IK GB.

Unless it is very cheap, and I can use it with my Console 1, I'm not that interested anymore.

I know I should be ashamed...

Kudos. I think the prize should go to those who've learned not to get sucked into all of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales promotions. 

[kitekrazy1]

2 hours ago, cclarry said:

the two major issues with Social Security are.

1.  First and foremost, our Crooked Congress has stolen (and spent) the money
2.  The boomers are coming of age to collect, and that's HUGE, so they will try to do everything
       that they can to discourage us from collecting.  If the CROOKS in Congress had their way,
       SS would be eliminated...because they've already stolen the money!  That's why they have
      started calling it an "Entitlement", which it's NOT!  WE PAID FOR IT!  And if they had RIGHTLY
      paid us INTEREST on the money in our accounts, we'd be LOADED for retirement!  Instead,
      Creepy Joe, when he was a Senator, decided to back the TAXING of Social Security, and THEN
      he backed the INCREASE of taxes on Social Security, even though SS was supposed to be "Tax free"!

CROOKS AND CHARLATANS...one and all!

You know this violates the forum rules.

I think ever since it was created there were hopes most people would die before they collected it.

[kitekrazy1]

It use to be a toss up between games and DAW stuff.  

Modern games pretty much suck these days and are bloated.

Sample developers are going in the same direction with bloat.

Developers are trying to push the sub model.

Some get acquired by investors who are clueless about the DAW market and piss all over things.  I'd be surprised if Reason is aound 10 years from now.

Many of these negatives will start to eliminate our choices and that's probably a good thing.

I think Badlab has gotten much better than when it was Cakewalk.  I still promote it to people looking to switch DAWs.

 

[InstrEd]

I was hoping Modarrt would have a better sale on OrganTeq but only 20% off.  So I'm still debating on it as it was really the one I wanted to add to my collection.
 

[abacab]

Oh, wait!!!

There's still Cyber Monday??? ?

[InstrEd]

1 minute ago, abacab said:

Oh, wait!!!

There's still Cyber Monday??? ?

I'm not in the market for a Cyborg

[Byron Dickens]

54 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

I'm not in the market for a Cyborg

But think how much money you could save!

[InstrEd]

3 minutes ago, bdickens said:

But think how much money you could save!

My own personal assassin.  Maybe you are on to something.   now if it only came with a built-in MP3 player I might actually go for it  

[Doug Rintoul]

Hmmm. I am surprised this thread hasn't been locked by now. Might be a good idea to delete the political posts before the moderators get wind.

[InstrEd]

You're right Doug and I shall leave this thread.

Peace

[paulo]

9 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Might be a good idea to delete the political posts before the moderators get wind.

I thought that was one of the qualifications.....

[Jesse Screed]

1 hour ago, InstrEd said:

I'm not in the market for a Cyborg

Do, or will Cyborgs be eligible for Social Security??

2 hours ago, Zargg said:

I got 2 Drum MIDI packs for SD3 at a tenner each, minus some best coin and extra discount at Best Service, and that is all I'm gonna get this time.

I kinda got my GAS under control after the IK GB.

Unless it is very cheap, and I can use it with my Console 1, I'm not that interested anymore.

I know I should be ashamed...

I did upgrade to FF Volcano 3, finally upgraded to FF L2 and Q3, but I was eligible for the Education Discount, so it was a pretty good price IMHO.  FF plugs are very good, and play nice on my syste.

 

I also got a cross grade for Kontakt at $119, not sure if that is a good price, but I wanted to be able to get some licensed libraries if there are any good sale down the road.

[InstrEd]

12 minutes ago, Jesse Screed said:

I also got a cross grade for Kontakt at $119, not sure if that is a good price

It is a good price! 

 

[PavlovsCat]

15 minutes ago, Jesse Screed said:

Do, or will Cyborgs be eligible for Social Security??

I did upgrade to FF Volcano 3, finally upgraded to FF L2 and Q3, but I was eligible for the Education Discount, so it was a pretty good price IMHO.  FF plugs are very good, and play nice on my syste.

 

I also got a cross grade for Kontakt at $119, not sure if that is a good price, but I wanted to be able to get some licensed libraries if there are any good sale down the road.

That's a great price for KONTAKT! There are tons of really good free libraries for KONTAKT too -- if you search the forum, you'll find a bunch of them. 

[Batwaffel]

Here's my hot take on sales and Black Friday.

In general, I don't like sales. I believe that they do nothing but anger existing customers and devalue the product itself which can become it's own rabbit hole to jump down. On the customer end, many people feel slighted when they buy something then a week later it's discounted. There were a lot of complaints about that this year as many sales were pretty steep.

Then we come to the devaluing of products. When you put something on sale, you're essentially lowering the price people will be willing to pay for it. Very few people will ever again pay the full price for the product if it's been on sale and will wait it out for another sale to come by before giving you their money. Then it becomes a game of "do we set it at the same price or do we lower it even more to get more people in". Most companies will take it lower which means you now have a crowd of people who will wait for that percentage or better again before making the decision to buy. I've seen people scoff at a whole 5% saying they will wait till it reaches what it was again before buying.

I do see the other side of it though. Companies need to sell products to make money and sales are a good way to do that. Companies like Plugin Alliance and Waves sell on volume. They don't care that people don't buy at full price because another sale is right around the corner and they will sell tens of thousands of dollars or more worth in one go.

There are a lot of new companies each year as well and trying to get the attention of people is very difficult; especially if your product doesn't compare with existing companies so many get stuck in this constant sale routine or in the case of many, giving product away for free to get attention. It's a bad place to be in because you can't dig yourself out of it easily.

[Esteban Villanova]

I bought a used Mexican Fender Strat with a Floyd Rose that I'm still paying so I couldn't get anything. To curve my itch I installed some free plugins from the KVR Developer Challenge. There's some great stuff in there. I also reinstalled some Kontakt libraries that I didn't remember where I'd  bought them. Tronsonic libraries are amazing!

[PavlovsCat]

It is ironic that people who come to a deal forum could be averse to sales.

Consider that what drives people to this forum is primarily sales. That's what motivates people to make purchases and that's why it's so common. Some companies, like Waves, in this field really abuse them -- to the point that they absolutely violate FTC regulations -- but the FTC rarely files suits, they keep going. But the impact of Waves doing it is that they've significantly reduced the impact a sales promotion of theirs has over a company that does sales more rarely (and sales more rarely than Waves, I suppose means, only 364 days or less of the year). But consider things from a business owner or CEO's perspective, you need to drive revenue for the month to cover your employee costs, the space you lease or own, etc. A lot of companies in the software industry are trying for the subscription model because it makes revenue more predictable and consistent. But sales motivate consumers to make a purchase, so they're always going to be an effective tool for business. I do find it interesting that Troel's -- who I spoke with years ago and really like -- is such a hardcore promoter (I'd say he has a tendency to over hype / oversell products) has created a new product line where he's not doing promotions or sales. I predict that won't last, knowing how he operates 8Dio over the years. I think it's a bit of a gimmick to be trendy, but I wouldn't give it more than a year before he changes it.

Now, I wrote all of that as a marketing and branding strategist. As a consumer, I absolutely appreciate sales and do my best to make purchases of non-essentials like music stuff (I played professionally many years ago, today it's a hobby) around sales. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are where I tend to make a lot of my big purchases. As far as consumers with buyer's remorse -- that's habitual for certain personality types, I would never suggest building a strategy around it. It's not a wise idea. The vast majority of consumers are driven to purchase by time-limited sales. That's an undeniable fact of business. 

 

[abacab]

1 hour ago, Jesse Screed said:

I also got a cross grade for Kontakt at $119, not sure if that is a good price

Yes, $119 is as excellent price for a Kontakt crossgrade! I think that I paid $124 earlier this year during a 50% off sale at NI. Well worth it!