New CreamWare products in Frankfurt

wavelength · Post by **wavelength** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:31 pm

On 2005-04-11 21:26, astroman wrote:
I remember this case. It was even worse, as he had reduced all his devices to $30 with no demo limits or nags and total freedom when to pay.
The download versus payment ratio was said to be horrible - and that among planetZ members...

cheers, Tom

it quickly became apparent that people generally won't pay for something that they can obtain for free... seems kinda logical in retrospect.

the whole P2P thing has done wonders for the devaluing of software everywhere, not to mention music. i was sincerely stupid to expect people to pay money for devices i distributed without restrictions.

live and learn...

it's interesting, when Pulsar first came out and i was developing my first instruments for the platform, i sold *literally* thousands of dollars in plug-ins a month - after the emergence of native plug-ins and the P2P crack networks very few people were interested in paying for these kinda things any more... and the irony is that the quality of my work was getting better and better as things sold less and less.

the quality of the software that people can obtain for free these days in insane! a person can produce a professional-sounding record, in every way, for free (with certain hardware necessities). people are expecting more and more and wanting to pay less and less... this isn't a balanced equation for a healthy industry.

on the other hand, hardware will always have a market if the product fills a certain niche. like some have suggested in this thread, many musicians are still relative luddites and not interested in computers at all (at least where they apply to making music)... + it's still way more fun to have hardware on stage than a laptop... trust me!

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 6:26 pm

It's very true that the existence of good quality freeware makes it extremely hard for people to make money out of audio software these days (as if the warez problem wasn't bad enough). I'm not at all opposed to the concept of freeware, but as Stephen pointed out, it creates a really weird climate in the industry.

In theory it should force commercial ventures to really raise the bar as far as quality and ergonomics go. Unfortunately, in reality it's hard to throw R+D money at something if there's little guarantee of a return on the investment.

I think this is reflected in the current state of the market. Not a lot of innovation (did anyone else notice the relative lack of cool new stuff at Musikmesse?) and not a lot of people wanting to take huge risks. On the other hand, smaller companies are being bought out quite regularly by the larger players.

Personally I do think that hardware will come back into fashion again. Eventually enough people will want to produce something that doesn't sound like every other software-driven production. And I think the natural human craving for a realtime tactile interface with music will win through over the evil rodent.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:15 pm

I think a large part of the problem is the demographic. I have sold products online which could have been very easily copied and redistributed, but because of the market (both sexes and ages 30+) that didn't happen (so far as I could tell).

The music market demographic appears to contain a large number of young males with all the usual aggression, selfishness and arrogance that often comes with that group. In broad terms I think 16 - 30 year old males are the most dishonest.

Many musicians also seem to be poor.

Many also seem to have an anti-corporate, anti-capitalist mentality which instantly provides justification for avoiding payment (as dArKr3zIn said).

And of course a large number are used to not paying anything for finished music via P2P networks.

All these things together means that this is an extremely bad target market for producers. They must battle against hormones, poverty, P2P, warped philosophy and politics.

Even so I think software will dominate the market even more in the future.

The challenge is to beat the warez without alienating the legitimate users. It's a shame that personal ethics is not enough.

Hopefully this situation is just a 'blip' before some better system is invented.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:21 pm

Well.. the only effective methods I've seen so far are the Logic XS-key (with all features enabled on Logic 6 and above) and the CubaseSX3/Nuendo3 dongle. These haven't been cracked yet.

It's still useless for the small independent companies who offer really cheap good quality stuff (Voxengo, Kjaerhus, and others). The dongles are expensive to develop, and expensive if you pay another company to do it for you, like Synchrosoft. Pace is the most laughable of all.. expensive to use, intrusive for the user and absolutely useless (most widely cracked protection of all).

It's just a protection racket unfortunately

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:27 pm

You are probably right about the demographic, Spirit.. education could really help a lot here. The hard part is avoiding looking like those dodgy anti-piracy ads before the trailers kick in on videos

I think the only truly effective way is to provide exceptional value. By this I mean great support, bonus content for registered users, frequent updates, discounts on future products, or a subscription package like the NI stuff.

Or hardware.

(there's always Behringer for that though...)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2005-04-12 22:28 ]</font>

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 2:15 am

The weird thing about the proliferation of free software is that it could actually make it easier for hardware manufacturers to sell stuff. Back in the distant gloom of the olden days, if you wanted to make music you had to acquire certain things in order to do it. The high costs involved basically meant that each purchase had to provide the maximum sound creating potential for the minimum outlay, so it meant that people tended to purchase the bread n butter first and the esoteric later (funds permitting, if ever).

Nowadays, the vast majority of b&b stuff is available for free (legitimately or not). So that leaves money over for more niche/esoteric/interesting pieces. But even if these, too, are available in software, I don't think it's an outrageous or unsustainable proposition to suggest that a lot of people like buying things that they can hold in their hands. Software just does not have that 'retail therapy' kick that hardware does

As one example, I don't think it's an accident that there are so many manufacturers of modular synthesizers around these days. And also for this reason, if their pricing and marketing is right, CW could do very well out of these units...