Goals for 2026?

[dannytaurus]

Anyone care to share their overall plans and goals for the coming year?

My main goal is to start releasing HISE plugins. I've been learning HISE for a while and it's time to start exporting my efforts!

1. A series of 4 free synth plugins, first one Sublime posted here for design feedback, and another 3, each based around one simple preset concept. Sublime is all about bass.

2. Then I have 2 collaborations I want to work on, both with UK house music producers. One is a multi-output drum plugin based on a series of expansions, the other is a chord synth with some interesting features.

3. I also have a lot of vintage reverb impulses recorded and processed, which I'd like to turn into a suite of free reverbs.

My user base is mostly house music producers & related genres - rave, techno, classic house, etc. I've built a decent brand and I think my customers will love the move from Maize-based ROMpler plugins to way more fully-featured HISE-based plugins.

What are your goals?

[dannytaurus]

Oh, and bonus goal for me is to move away from Gumroad to my own custom e-commerce site!

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus Nice!

I want to release some more courses.

And I'm moving my ecommerce site over to moonbase.

I'll be releasing a new version of Rhapsody and a bunch of libraries.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey More course - yeah!

Moonbase does look interesting, but I'm not using any protection on my plugins for now so I don't think it would be worth it for me. Plus, some of my products are only $5 so the 1€ per sale would hit me pretty hard

I've been reading your Rhapsody codebase to get some general code organisation tips. Very cool stuff! Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

[Oli Ullmann]

@dannytaurus
That sounds great! Good luck with your projects!

I want to learn a bit about C++ this year.

I'm also releasing my first plug-in, QUADRIUM, a comprehensive synth with 4 Layers, 6 synthesis forms, 10 GB of samples, and lots of effects...

Two or three more plug-ins are set to follow this year. So—there's a lot to do!

[iamsteinco]

@dannytaurus Release my first hise series with guitar pedals then explore more options and learn script node

[ustk]

@dannytaurus Nice!
On my side I have several products to release this year. But my marketing is very poor so for now I am barely selling anything... So after the first release (very soon) my goal is to improve my understanding of the market and find ways to sell effectively so I can quit that feeling I am doing this for nothing...
Ideally, working with someone on this part would help a lot.

Wishing the best to you all!

[David Healey]

@ustk said in Goals for 2026? :

my marketing is very poor

Marketing course is on my to do list but might not be until next year

[cassettedeath]

Planning to launch three VST instruments next month… Pretty much at the last user testing/website final touches and marketing content phase.

After that I’m really keen to explore easy to use/accessible plug in concepts. I think HISE provides heaps of potential for that.

Then expansions and a drum loop plug in which is in the experimental phase. (Esp with time stretching)

Excited!

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey @ustk Building an email list was key for me. I don't post my new products on social media anymore. Just send out to my 35k email list. I built my list with free products and a lot of social media interaction. I don't do any of that anymore either.

Also started Instagram ads. The latent revenue from 'old' products went up 5-10x, even with the daily ad spend accounted for.

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus said in Goals for 2026? :

Also started Instagram ads.

I've not tried this specifically, although my generic meta ads are pushed to Instagram too. What kind of ads perform the best for you?

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey I just made square videos for all my launch videos. My launch videos are all simple animations of the plugin sliding in and out with different presets playing audio in the background.

No human face, no talking, no sales, no discounts, no sensationalism. Just basic product demos.

Some are way too long (4 minutes) and I don't think Meta pushes those ones very much, but the others seem to do well. And when folks land on my site they tend to buy extra related products too.

To be honest I haven't looked at my Meta ads dashboard for about 4 months. I really should do that! But I know the ads are showing because Meta charges me every other day, and the uptick in revenue is consistent.

Some people would live in that dashboard, tweaking ads and launching more campaigns, but my goal is to just put my plugins in front of the right people and let them discover the rest for themselves.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey Example ad video here: https://wmd.d.pr/v/qVq1KN

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus I like the sync between the audio and the video. It's simple but effective. I might give this technique a try.

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey Yeah, a few people commented on that. I used Screenflow to do that video. Easy to do that effect.

I use Motion for demo videos now, so I can get a bit more into audio-reactivity. Screenflow doesn't have that at all.

To be clear - the audio waveform animation in the background was created with VideoBolt, not in Screenflow itself. That's why I'm moving to Motion, because it can do those sorts of audio animations natively.

[griffinboy]

@dannytaurus

My first plugin will be released at the end of this year
It's been a few years since I started development on my largest synth which was before pivoting to Hise (It's been 6 years already!? geez), and I think I'm only halfway through developing it still. So it's time to put together a smaller mvp and get something released already! It's been long enough.

Good luck to everyone

[ustk]

@dannytaurus I'm using Filmora, it's light yet powerful, not expensive, has audio driven effects and much more...

[dannytaurus]

@ustk Nice! I'll take a look. Any links to videos you've made with it?

[David Healey]

@ustk said in Goals for 2026? :

I'm using Filmora

I use Kdenlive, I've used loads of different editors in the past.

[ustk]

@dannytaurus Only a pretty basic and very dull one for now without audio-driven effect, but I've just tested for the next one and it seems very promising! It has audio-driven filters and a lot of audio visualisers too

https://youtu.be/vGjSlHKLIFY
https://youtube.com/shorts/7YJ67qTD2D4