Licence cost ?
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I've been thinking I would like to release my own HISE based sample library for free (as in price) with the source code licensed as GPL. However I want the samples to be released under a different free license that permits personal use only or under a commercial license for people wishing to use the library to create music professionally - not for reusing the samples in other virtual instruments.
If I understand correctly to release a HISE library as GPL, without a commercial HISE and JUCE license, means the source code and samples have to be released as GPL. This got me thinking, and I believe it was also suggested on the KVR thread.
HISE has a sample map loading feature so one could release a HISE product as GPL without any samples and then sell the users the samples as an independent product. If this is correct then that is good for my scenario but presents a loop-hole in charging a commercial license for HISE. Since anyone who is willing to release their code as GPL could still sell their samples separately without needing to pay a HISE or JUCE license. Although I suppose the main attraction of a commercial license is that you can release your product as closed source.
Also are the other libraries such as the VST SDK, ASIO SDK, and IPP GPL?
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Lindon, so are you saying HISE should be extremely high priced so that the standalone VST market does not saturate like the Kontakt library market has ?
There are a few problems i have with any of your reasoning.
1 If the Kontakt library market is saturated, there is a reason, because they sell, people do not do things just for fun to saturate a market.
2 Keeping HISE licence cost high while maybe satisfying your need to have an unsaturated standalone market, also stops the HISE developer getting a ton of licencees, which is a cruel circle that will come back to bit those who wanted a high cost entry, either the licence cost will get so high it competes with NI, or the developer cant afford to keep developing, this is false economy.
3 Are you really suggesting that the Kontakt library market is more saturated than the VSTi market in general, because if you are, then you are severely mistaken.Chris has to strike a balance, and to be fair, other than his (Sorry but this is fact) silly idea of a survey, he seems to be willing to strike this centre balance and has my interest again, yes it needs to be fairly costly to keep him developing and eating, but he seems to want to get the independent developers moving too (I am not talking players here but standalones)
Why are surveys utter and complete rubbish, here is an example of simple survey controlling questions to achieve the outcome you want
Which would you prefer, a one off licence for a single version of HISE in the region of $12000 or a per app licence of $200 ?
There is only one answer to that for individuals or companies, surveys are total rubbish (Try an NI survey for great examples) -
HISE has a sample map loading feature so one could release a HISE product as GPL without any samples and then sell the users the samples as an independent product. If this is correct then that is good for my scenario but presents a loop-hole in charging a commercial license for HISE
Well, technically you can't release a non-working version of a GPL licensed software and withhold the samples until someone throws a stuffed bag with a dollar sign in your direction. It is the same as if you release a game that uses a GPL licensed engine, but don't distribute the textures (or whatever) with the binary and charge for this extra.
The other SDKs are not GPL licenced, but there is a ongoing discussion about this and I think the common sense is that as long as you get the other tools for free (which is also the case for IPP), people are not that picky when it comes to GPL and audio plugins (but things are getting messy for more closed platforms like iOS or AAX which require registration and a yearly developer fee). If this would be 100% legally binding, there would be no GPL VST plugins, and we all know that there are some and people don't seem to care.
But please, let's put an end to this GPL discussion. I'll think about a solution that is less restrictive for people who want to release their sample libraries for free.
Why are surveys utter and complete rubbish,
To be fair, I still don't think that surveys are rubbish. Just because the NI surveys might be useless (I don't know them, but I think we all know the typical marketing BS), it doesn't mean that its not a valuable source of information, especially in this case. The current discussion about the licensing is dominated by a few people who seem to have very clear ideas of how things should be, but I am sure that there is a silent majority which is not willing to participate in this heated atmosphere, but might be tempted to share their opinion with a few clicks.
The only thing that I have to take into account is that the outcome will be biased - more small developers will take the time to fill out this stuff, I hardly can imagine the big guys will waste their time with this survey...
But I agree that the questions should be chosen carefully - that's why I'll post them here and we can discuss them before I put up the survey. They are not ordered by any logic or yet complete, but let me know if you miss a question or find something stupid. Obviously I'll publish the results in the spirit of sharing :)
- Would you prefer your own plugin over an existing platform like KONTAKT (or the HISE Player) or is this of no relevance to you as long as the target audience is as big as possible?
- Should the HISE Player be
a) free with a licence fee for developers (dependant on the sale price)
b) free for developers with a retail price for the end user?
c) free for everybody but with a (non-exclusive) content distribution system like the app store
- Are you interested in offering iOS music apps?
- Do you prefer a unlimited licence over a per plugin licence (even if the unlimited licence is 3-4 times more expensive)?
- Are you interested in a subscription model?
- Would you pay some extra bucks for a basic licence key copy protection to keep off casual piracy?
- Are you interested in "paid premium support" (contract work for specific parts of your project)?
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Those questions seem nice and clear, in the actual survey it might be nice if there was a little explanation of the difference between the standalone plugin and the HISE player before the questions so that those filling it in are clear about it.
I have a lot of small Kontakt developers and hobbyists developers on my mailing list so I can send out the survey to them too once it's up.
Question 2a is related to questions 4 and 5 but could cause a conflict without more information. If the license is dependent on sale price how would that affect an unlimited license or a subscription model, does a low sale price mean a low unlimited license or is the unlimited license a fixed fee - if it's a fixed fee then question 2a is no longer relevant. Or does question 4 and 5 only refer to standalone plugins and not to the HISE player?
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I think that whatever licence model I choose in the end, it will come down to an upgrade path from per plugins to a unlimited licence (and the subscription would also mean unlimited licence), so I don't see them as conflicting (but correct me if I am missing something here):
You can start with either paying the subscription fee and release as much products as you want, or pay the licence fees of individual plugins until you have spend the same amount as a unlimited licence, and from then on, you'll have a unlimited licence. You can also buy the unlimited licence from the start, but since there is no extra cost to go the per project way, this might be something for people who have rich uncles...
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But yeah, thanks for the offer of distributing the survey, I'll definitely come back to it!
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That sounds good, I think your definitely closing in now on a workable solution.
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Those questions are very clear, there is still no info on add on sample packs however.
Will compiled plugins have the ability to use add on sample packs
If it is per plugin fee, does that mean that each add on pack will also need a licence fee
The entire add on pack situation is very unclear.
Other than that i would suggest that some idea of pricing would be useful too, i know that you can't be too specific on the custom work part, but a ballpark of rates would be good, otherwise i can't answer yes or no to that question -
Yes, thanks, I'll add some questions regarding add-on packs. The whole idea of add ons came up a lot lately, so I will definitely address this issue. The problem is that currently you embed the mapping data in the plugin while having the samples as monolith audio chunk. This prevents people from just taking your unprotected samples and load them into KONTAKT or whatever sampler, but it also disables the possibility to provide additional content without changing the binary. I am thinking about creating a specialized "add-on" format which is somehow protected (however I need to come up with a secure way of protecting non-executable content).
The ballpark of the custom work will just be ordinary freelance developer rates (something along 50$ per hour). It can be used for code review, custom script stuff, or whatever - of course this doesn't mean I don't give any advice for free anymore. I am just thinking about other ways to create revenue in order to keep the license fees low while allowing me to eat and pay the rent :)
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Can i ask about unprotected samples too ?
I really would like to avoid a custom format and prefer to have the samples as wav on the hard drive, I know most people want protection for their content, however i am of the other ilk, I refuse to punish the paying customer, so i wish the samples to be wav in case they wish to use them on the timeline or in Kontakt as well as the standalone, yes i know i'm rare, but i make music myself and have often pulled samples direct myself in to Maschine or so on.
I am not sure that would be possible in IOS though ? -
You can of course just use wav files in your plugin - the monolithic audio format is not mandatory...
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<quote>Lindon, so are you saying HISE should be extremely high priced so that the standalone VST market does not saturate like the Kontakt library market has ? <unquote>
- I'm not sure how you get this from what i'm saying, can you point at the part where I say a high price is a good thing?
<quote>
There are a few problems i have with any of your reasoning.
1 If the Kontakt library market is saturated, there is a reason, because they sell, people do not do things just for fun to saturate a market.
<unquote>- Again you seem to be mistaken, its not reasoning, its experience. So is the Kontakt market more saturated than the general VSTi market? Yes it is., and to be clear this is what I mean expressed as a non interpret able formula:
(Number of Full Kontakt Owners/number of Full Kontakt instruments) < (Number of Customers who can run a VSTi/ number of VSTi products).
So to plug-in some example numbers:
50,000 Full Kontakt owners / 2,000 kontakt libraries = 25
2 Million customers who can run a VSTi (DAW owners in other words) / 20,000 VSTi products = 100
- You can argue about the numbers if you want, but EXPERIENCE shows me the ratios are about right.
Oh and yes people do development just for fun, all the time.
I repeat I've spent 10+ years doing this. If you release a product as a "Full Kontakt" product you will sell less than if you release the exact same functionality as a VSTi, again this isnt reasoned out its 10 years of doing exactly this. You sell about 25% of a VSTi option when you release a Full Kontakt Library,
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2 Keeping HISE licence cost high while maybe satisfying your need to have an unsaturated standalone market, also stops the HISE developer getting a ton of licencees, which is a cruel circle that will come back to bit those who wanted a high cost entry, either the licence cost will get so high it competes with NI, or the developer cant afford to keep developing, this is false economy.
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Where did I say this was my need? Please stop mis-quoting me.<quote>
3 Are you really suggesting that the Kontakt library market is more saturated than the VSTi market in general, because if you are, then you are severely mistaken.
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Please see the answer above, yes this is exactly the case, based upon my experience of it. Please can outline your experience of shipping Fuill Kontakt instruments vs shipping VSTi instruments and how it differs from mine? -
Meanwhile back at the questions...
These look good Chris, add in something about add-on sample packs if you want but until you have a viable solution I'd caveat any question about them.
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My experience has absolutely nothing to do with you at all, you think this is a pissing contest ?
Your experience is your experience, and while your experience may be what you posed, it could be caused by various things, maybe the standalone VSTs that you have released where better than the Kontakt soundbanks ? Because if you are releasing a kontakt soundbank at the exact same time as a standalone and comparing sales, sorry, but that is flawed.
Oh and thanks for telling the developer to caveat serious questions, very strange behaviour ? -
Ok everybody calm down. It seems that you two have made different experiences regarding sales and arguing about the reasons why is pretty random.
I still add the question about addons - its not rocket science to implement this and I am sure I'll find a way but I am interested in how many people want this feature.
Edit: sorry Lindon just reread your post and it seems like this is exactly the thing you said :)
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Don't worry about it if nobody else wants it
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Any news at all on licence cost yet ?
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Not yet, still thinking about it :)
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OK cheers for the update ;)
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Just found this project due to Computer Music magazine. I am very glad to see this particular conversation happening as I agree with much that is being discussed here. So any news on licence cost or are we still thinking about how to do this? The outcome of this topic will make or break my willingness to develop with this platform.
