Cinesamples Musio Lifetime Access 499$ (50% off) - Extended sale

[Yan Filiatrault]

Cinesamples is selling lifetime access to Musio for half-price with only 100 licenses available

https://musio.com/pricing/

Edited April 10, 2023 by Yan Filiatrault

[Yan Filiatrault]

https://musio.com/coming-soon/

[husker]

Shades of "Sonar For Life".  I bought that and six months later came the end.   I was so pissed. 

After thinking long and hard about this, I blew my whole summer budget and went for this deal.   I mean, it can't happen to me twice, right? 

Musio is clearly on the newish side, but so far so good. 

 

[Yan Filiatrault]

20 minutes ago, husker said:

Shades of "Sonar For Life".  I bought that and six months later came the end.   I was so pissed. 

After thinking long and hard about this, I blew my whole summer budget and went for this deal.   I mean, it can't happen to me twice, right? 

Musio is clearly on the newish side, but so far so good. 

 

I went for it too. Cinesamples had some reassuring words on VI Control, so I'm pretty sure they are serious about it in the long run.

[PavlovsCat]

Always keep in mind that the lifetime you're getting is the lifetime of that business,  which may be substantially shorter than your lifetime.  That, of course, may be a good thing in some ways (you would like to not die) and not so good in other ways (this new operation could potentially close up in less than two years). Cinesamples makes superb sample libraries, but this is a new division and new format that may or may not be successful. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[antler]

11 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Always keep in mind that the lifetime you're getting is the lifetime of that business,  which may be substantially shorter than your lifetime.  That may be a good thing in some ways and not so good on other ways. 

Well, if a user's lifetime is shorter than the business' the user probably won't be complaining about the deal ?(an attempt at humour)

Bear in mind that this is a new subscription service for a new software product, and Cinesamples is probably trying out a few ways to sell: try different options; see what sticks. This actually seems like a good deal, and Cinesamples certainly have a great back catalogue that they say will be ported over in addition to new instruments too. The deal (which may or may not be available in future) is similar to the Melda and Voxengo 'all' bundles: buy now, get everything, and all new products too.

It's possible this deal is to get early adopters into their userbase. They can help iron out initial bugs and improve the product. It can also help them with organic marketing via word of mouth, which will be seen as more trustworthy than big-name reviewers that could potentially be 'persuaded' to give good reviews.

[PavlovsCat]

On 4/9/2023 at 11:29 AM, antler said:

Well, if a user's lifetime is shorter than the business' the user probably won't be complaining about the deal ?(an attempt at humour)

Bear in mind that this is a new subscription service for a new software product, and Cinesamples is probably trying out a few ways to sell: try different options; see what sticks. This actually seems like a good deal, and Cinesamples certainly have a great back catalogue that they say will be ported over in addition to new instruments too. The deal (which may or may not be available in future) is similar to the Melda and Voxengo 'all' bundles: buy now, get everything, and all new products too.

It's possible this deal is to get early adopters into their userbase. They can help iron out initial bugs and improve the product. It can also help them with organic marketing via word of mouth, which will be seen as more trustworthy than big-name reviewers that could potentially be 'persuaded' to give good reviews.

A secondary benefit is to get early adopters in their user base to iron out bugs, but as a new venture, you can be absolutely certain that the primary reason for the discounting is to get this new venture off the ground. And it's more than a half year after launch and I don't see serious investment in promoting the new venture and considering one of the Cinesamples two partners has recently left the business,  so there are some very big reasons for proceeding with caution.  Personally, their lack of followers or engagement in social media for this new venture in social media would give me pause. 

If the service does well, they likely won't continue with lifetime deals, of course, as lifetime deals tend to be associated with small SaaS startups short on cash and these ventures have no small rate of failure, so there is definitely a high degree of risk in the new venture -- as a great deal of these do not have a long life. Of course, those who make the investment will be rewarded if the business succeeds (or even goes three years, as the lifetime deal is cheaper than 3 years of the annual rate). As far as reviewers -- which are primarily influencers -- the reality is, the most successful tier of influencers are compensated these days (even the moderately popular ones on this industry are affiliates of the products they "review") and Cinesamples has clearly worked with at least a couple of big influencers to date,  but I haven't seen much buzz around this new venture.  

On a related note, as far  as influencers, to give you an idea of how significant they are to brands in promoting products these days, here's a recent chart showing top ways brands compensate them for their "reviews." 

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Brian Lawler]

I bit too. I don't own any Cinesamples libraries, so I will be happy with the value even if they only port most the existing Kontakt stuff. I was a bit tempted by the "glitch" last week, but am glad I held off.  So far the Musio player is working well for me on Windows.  I can't believe they are holding to 100 sales though.  FOMO works too well.

[husker]

34 minutes ago, Brian Lawler said:

  I can't believe they are holding to 100 sales though.  FOMO works too well.

Yeah, that kind of stuff irritates me.  Shoot, there are probably 100 just on VI that went for it.  

I was in the same boat - I only had one of their Kontakt libraries.  If I had more, I probably wouldn't have gone for it.

[Yan Filiatrault]

The sale is extended until Monday April 17th.

[antler]

The 100-limit appears to be gone too. It's worth checking out their 2023 roadmap video - their vision/plan is certainly cool

https://musio.com/coming-soon/

[Brian Lawler]

There is a hot thread over on VI (500+ posts in four days ?) if you want to read a few opinions.  I admit that I fell for the FOMO as far as my concern that they might actually limit the deal to 100 sales.  Now that you know it is good at least for another week, you can make a more informed decision by running the free Musio demo (full featured 14 days).  I did run the demo and am pretty happy with what they have so far, but I did base my buy decision on their promise to include all of their current sample content ,  and implement keyswitch articulation.  The company rep in the megathread did warn that some functionality that relies on extensive Kontakt scripting, like the phrase builder in Voxos Choir might never make it to Musio.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Brian Lawler

[arznable]

Wondering if Musio changes its subscription model or the company stopped operating later, are the lifetime subscription members still able to continue using all the Musio instruments?  Is lifetime subscription exactly the same as owning all the Musio instruments for life?

[Yan Filiatrault]

6 hours ago, arznable said:

Wondering if Musio changes its subscription model or the company stopped operating later, are the lifetime subscription members still able to continue using all the Musio instruments?  Is lifetime subscription exactly the same as owning all the Musio instruments for life?

They answered on another forum that if it would happen, they would unlock the engine to allow users to download instruments and make them usable after that.

[BTP]

This deal is back.

$499 until May 24th.

[Barrie]

2 hours ago, BTP said:

This deal is back.

$499 until May 24th.

And the cut the subscription prices in half. A slap in the face to those who got the "limited" lifetime deal earlier.

[PavlovsCat]

7 minutes ago, Barrie said:

And the cut the subscription prices in half. A slap in the face to those who got the "limited" lifetime deal earlier.

Okay, I'm not writing this with a musician hat on, but as a business and marketing strategist, largely in the hopes it will make you feel less regret. So those who are uninterested in such topics will want to skip this!

It was rather obvious from the lifetime deal that Cinesamples was looking to bring quick cash into this business. Of course, that can be read as a sign of desperation -- it's not exactly a sign of a healthy business (or new venture), Lifetime deals are a sales tactic to raise cash fast that are  primarily employed (with some very rare exceptions) by cash strapped businesses -- often SaaS startups) looking to generate revenue quickly. That strategy is rarely sustainable. Consequently, I wouldn't see the lower subscription prices as a "slap in the face." Instead, I would see it more pragmatically as reflecting that the business's former pricing wasn't bringing in enough revenue, so they made adjustments. Is it a sign of desperation? Perhaps. But as a lifetime subscriber, you bet on this new venture surviving, at least for a couple of years, and this is the company trying to survive. It doesn't harm those who bought the lifetime deals. If Musio stays around for a few years -- assuming you're satisfied with the service --  you have a very good deal, but if they stick around for a decade or more, you have a tremendous deal. I really like the fact that they addressed the concerns prospective customers are likely to have about the business's health -- that is, what happens if Musio/Cinesamples closes its doors -- by letting you know that they will ensure that your software and sample libraries will continue to function (of course, that would mean the end of software updates, so for a proprietary format, the libraries will be of little use once the software no longer works on your system; of course, if the libraries were, say, formatted for KONTAKT, that would be far less of a problem as we ASSUME the company is more stable).

To those with strategy backgrounds, these are very elementary points, BTW -- none of what I just wrote is controversial or going to get quoted in HBR, but I wanted to share the insights for someone feeling remorseful over new subscription prices. If I were a lifetime subscriber and happy with the product, I'd be letting people know and hoping the new pricing was successful. The alternative, that the new pricing is not successful, is the result a lifetime subscriber should least desire.