Larry Shelby Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 SInce Christian is gone they must have stopped the Monthly LABS instrument. It's now been 4 months since the last release. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, cclarry said: SInce Christian is gone they must have stopped the Monthly LABS instrument. It's now been 4 months since the last release. Yep. The other day I accidentally popped upon Labs instead of another plugin and I was thinking it has been a long time since their last release -- and thought to myself, I wonder what's going on. Pianobook hasn't had the more significant releases from major players in quite a few months either and Christian was the driving force behind that activity too. He inspired a lot of people to start making sample libraries and some of them are quite good. Clearly, his absence is reflected in greatly reduced activity for both Labs and Pianobook. Fortunately some of the other orchestral sample developers have done a good job with freebies. Hopefully, they'll get things moving on both ends soon. I wish that whole situation would have resolved differently, with dialogue and greater understanding the result, instead of the way it went down. Edited October 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audioschmaudio Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 They're just giving people time to buy new hard drives. 1 1 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esteban Villanova Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 NEVER GIVE IN TO MOBS. Stand firm, give 'em the finger. You don't need to be liked by everyone. But you do need to like yourself, since you live with yourself. Stand your ground, speak your truth and face the consequences. The world of free sample libraries is now worse off because a company couldn't stand the heat. The whole world becomes a worst place if you wuss out. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jngnz Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 3 minutes ago, Esteban Villanova said: NEVER GIVE IN TO MOBS. Stand firm, give 'em the finger. You don't need to be liked by everyone. But you do need to like yourself, since you live with yourself. Stand your ground, speak your truth and face the consequences. The world of free sample libraries is now worse off because a company couldn't stand the heat. The whole world becomes a worst place if you wuss out. What did I miss? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Rintoul Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 15 minutes ago, jngnz said: What did I miss? Ya, I am in the dark too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yan Filiatrault Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 1 hour ago, jngnz said: What did I miss? I guess he refers to Spitfire Audio and Christian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jngnz Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 33 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said: I guess he refers to Spitfire Audio and Christian Yeah, but why „couldn’t stand the heat“? And what mobs? And why is Christian gone? I am very confused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mettelus Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 Google Christian Henson, that incident is pretty high on the list of hits Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleer Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 2 minutes ago, jngnz said: Yeah, but why „couldn’t stand the heat“? And what mobs? And why is Christian gone? I am very confused. He purportedly made some TERF-remarks about trans-treatment for adolescents in the UK and got the JK Rowling treatment. Much ado about nothing IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tansetter Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 (edited) To be accurate, Christian, who has long seen himself as a strong liberal, started to embrace myths about transgender children getting surgeries that have been spread by anti-trans people. He became outspoken and tweeted about standing with a very hateful, anti trans comedian and JK Rowling, who maintains a similar stance. Because of Christian's standing as a well known composer and owning a successful business, his tweet immediately got media coverage in the UK, then other countries. Interestingly, far-right media immediately embraced him as a hero for their cause, wrongly believing he shares their ideological worldview, not realizing that he is otherwise liberal, but simply holds prejudices and has embraced some hateful myths (conspiracies) about trans people espoused by the extreme fringes of anti-LGBTQ folks (I'm sure that even most anti-LGBTQ folks don't embrace these conspiracies of young children getting surgeries, which, is illegal and not happening, BTW, but you'll never convince the kind of unstable folks that embrace conspiracies by using facts). Because he's a business owner and has LGBTQ employees and customers, it especially put his company in a bad situation to have its co-founder embracing hate, intolerance and bigoted myths. There were some outspoken composers who sought a dialogue, urging Christian not to silently resign, but engage in conversation, which being a strong believer in the "love one another" school of thought and a believer in second chances and hope that people are capable of change and learning, I really hoped to see. But Christian decided to resign and fade out. Christian has been public about mental health struggles and I believe that was no small factor in all of this. Edited October 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esteban Villanova Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 33 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said: To be accurate, Christian, who has long seen himself as a strong liberal, started to embrace myths about transgender children getting surgeries that have been spread by anti-trans people. He became outspoken and tweeted about standing with a very hateful, anti trans comedian and JK Rowling, who maintains a similar stance. Because of Christian's standing as a well known composer and owning a successful business, his tweet immediately got media coverage in the UK, then other countries. Interestingly, far-right media embraced him as if he shared their ideological perspective, not realizing that he is otherwise liberal, but simply holds prejudices and has embraced some hateful myths about trans people. Because he's a business owner and has LGBTQ employees and customers, it especially put his company in a bad situation to have its co-founder embracing hate, intolerance and bigoted myths. There were some outspoken composers who sought a dialogue, urging Christian not to silently resign, but engage in conversation, which being a strong believer in the "love one another" school of thought and a believer in second chances and hope that people are capable of change and learning, I really hoped to see. But Christian decided to resign and fade out. Christian has been public about mental health struggles and I believe that was no small factor in all of this. This is not s political forum but your first statement about surgeries not taking place is false. I'll say no more about it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, Esteban Villanova said: This is not s political forum but your first statement about surgeries not taking place is false. I'll say no more about it. I didn't make any political comments. I just reported what occured. I am a writer and aware of the policies. Your earlier post was clearly a political post. I kept it factual. I've linked a story on what happened below (it's from a music magazine) that does a pretty good job of reporting what occurred, @jngnz you might want to check it out. Personally, I know a good deal of developers and more details about this and then the related attack at VI-Control on 8DIO, after they tried to urge Mike Greene to allow discussion of this matter on VI-Control and not censor, pulled their ad money from the site and faced a really ugly attack Greene aggressively participated in (interestingly or oddly enough, using a transgender woman to lead the attack). It's a story people outside the developer community don't know and would be very surprised about, regardless of their stance on LGBTQ people. Mike deleted many voices of reason in that attack who didn't think what he was doing was right, including me and a developer I know (not well, but he seems a pretty decent guy). Mike acknowledged deleting dozens of posts, basically of anyone who didn't make an attack on 8Dio-- and I'm friends with the influencer that they used to attack 8Dio -- who deliberately chose to not participate in the attack. It's a very odd and ethically problematic event that ruined VI-Control completely to me and it's really not what it appeared to be, but a different agenda that if you understand will result in your seeing the whole ugly event very differently. https://mixmag.net/read/spitfire-audio-co-founder-christian-henson-departs-company-transphobia-row-jk-rowling-linehan-news/ Edited October 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSteven Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 8 hours ago, cclarry said: SInce Christian is gone they must have stopped the Monthly LABS instrument. It's now been 4 months since the last release. or it may have nothing to do with it... Labs currently has 62 instruments - that's a lot of time/money spent on a freebie. Could be that the cost of developing new freebies is no longer viewer as an effective use of capital or maybe they're running out of good ideas for new ones and don't want to start throwing crap into the pond. or they're just diverting talent into upcoming projects that'll generate $. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleer Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 Here’s hoping they put them all together in one LABS orchestra to rule them all. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavlovsCat Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, TheSteven said: or it may have nothing to do with it... Labs currently has 62 instruments - that's a lot of time/money spent on a freebie. Could be that the cost of developing new freebies is no longer viewer as an effective use of capital or maybe they're running out of good ideas for new ones and don't want to start throwing crap into the pond. or they're just diverting talent into upcoming projects that'll generate $. Good points. Considering that these were both Christian's pet projects and both Labs and Pianobook were part of a related strategy of furthering awareness and one generated no revenue (and had costs) and the other, Pianobook, generates a small amount of revenue but probably costs more to operate than it directly produces in revenue, it's only natural that the company would reassess these efforts following Christian's departure. Pianobook is easily the most complex of the two to justify financially because I'm sure the operation isn't directly yielding positive ROI (through sales of libraries from community members; my guess is based upon public comments made regarding sales revenue from their paid releases) plus it's less connected to the Spitfire brand. Spitfire likely looks at how Labs and Pianobook users convert to paid users and whether it justifies the cost of funding. I think it is a wise business strategy to keep both efforts alive, at least to some degree, especially when competitors are also giving away free product, allowing budding composers to get to experience their brand early on. It's really smart business strategy. I have done some paid consulting in the orchestral library sample space and these companies have long made a good deal of their revenue from students, so hooking them early -- as well as targeting home hobbyists starting out with cinematic and orchestral music composition -- early on, when they have no or little budget means a lot. It's like being the brand new bakery in town and giving away free cookies the first weekend you open. You'll likely lose a lot of money that weekend, but assuming you chose the right location, a bunch of people just got to experience your product that might otherwise never have tried it. And if your product delivers or exceeds expectations, some of those people will be back with money to spend. Edited October 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wookiee Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 @cclarry sorry but this has achieve the rabbit hole very quickly. Read rules people no politics, no religion, no nastiness, no stupidity thank you. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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