Next HISE Developer Hang
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Hi,
There are many technical topics I’d like you guys to cover. However, as a musician who got into HISE primarily to develop tools for personal use—and someone still on the fence about releasing anything commercially—I’d like to propose dedicating some time to discussing the state of the audio tools business.
I understand that the main goal of these meetings is to focus on HISE’s technical aspects, and the amazing folks in the forum have been great at answering any questions I’ve had so far. But I’d be very interested in hearing you discuss the business side of things.
Looking at today’s audio tool ads, you’ll often see absurd discounts (70%-80%), even for top brands. This raises the question: is it profitable at all?
Perhaps the more experienced among us could share insights about what it’s really like. Here are some of the questions I’d ask:
- What kind of tools do you release?
- Which ones have sold well, and which haven’t?
- How many units has your top-selling product sold?
- What pitfalls would you warn against?
- I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
- What other tools (besides HISE) do you rely on in your workflow to release a product?
- Which services and fees do you pay monthly or yearly to keep things running?
- What kind of copy protection do you use, if any?
- Do you release for mobile platforms?
- What DAWs do you prioritize or release for?
- What back-end servers do you use?
- What is your pricing model: one-time purchase, subscription, or something else?
- How do you advertise? Do you create your own ads or pay "content creators"?
- Which platforms have yielded the best results, and which ones have been a waste of money?
I'm looking forward to the meet.
Cheers! -
@CyberGen These all sound like important and helpful questions. I'm not a vendor myself, but can share what I generally tell clients.
What pitfalls would you warn against?
Plan ahead.
Don't create a plugin, and then figure out how to market it.
Start with product idea, and then determine if and how you can sell and promote it. Ask yourself if you have the infrastructure to support customers and provide development. What are the possible technical problems (e.g. relying on OpenGL, and then macOS drops it), and how agile can you be in dealing with them?
Only after you have solid answers there should you consider development. Don't be afraid to kill an amazing plugin idea if it turns out not to be an amazing business one.
People use plugins, but they buy products. The hard truth is that the industry is full of incredible plugins that no one has, and ever will, hear of. And many leading products have poor quality over multiple domains.
Acknowledge your competition.
Know them. Foresee what's coming. But don't necessarily be dissuaded or intimidated. Being first, and being best, are often not the most important factors for success.
Have a plan.
As with musical groups, failure ends them—but so does success.
Be effective.
Focus on the areas of development that are critical for your product. Don't get bogged down in details that only you will care about. That's a hobby, not a business.
Focus.
Avoid casting too wide a net—as an independent developer, it's often better to serve a small segment of the market well. Likewise, if there's something that a small part of your customer base clamours for, don't be afraid to let it (and them) go.
Support Your customers, not your plugin.
I often recount to clients the story of a technical support rep I used to work with. He knew nothing about the product, and was incapable of diagnosing even simple issues. But he was consistently rated highly by customers. One reason was because he was essentially handing off the problem to a more knowledgeable rep. But the other was that he understood his goal was to make customers feel better about problems, not solve them. Listening—acknowledging the customer's frustration—is often the most important effective thing.
Contextualise bugs as a constant to be managed, not problems to be fixed.
As developers, we often have a strong motivation for our code to be elegant, clean, efficient, and bug-free. But none of these things are necessarily important, in and of themselves—only what their tangible results imply. Prioritise. There's a wonderful scene in a Microsoft/Apple biopic where Jobs laments to Gates, "But we're better!" And Gates correctly replies, "Nobody cares."
Keep your eyes on the prize.
At the end of the day, your goal isn't making cool plugins. It's building a sustainable business with the security and work/life balance you need to feel safe, secure and satisfied.
You can be competitive without having the coolest interface, the best features or superior sound.
Nobody can have the best plugin—but you can have the best product.
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@clevername27 Yes! Exactly. This is the kind of guidance I believe so many of us are hoping to hear during the group call. Posts like this are not often seen in the forum itself, even though these issues affect all of us who are releasing or considering releasing products. Thank you—more of this, please!
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@CyberGen said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
What kind of tools do you release?
Sample libraries, and one effect so far.
Which ones have sold well, and which haven’t?
People seem to like my Celtic instruments.
How many units has your top-selling product sold?
Of my HISE based instruments, Emerald Flute is my top seller with 1419 sold. I think my best seller overall is my Kontakt based uilleann pipes library, but that's over 10 years old so it's got a good run on my HISE stuff.
Worst seller is El Mariachi, but I just released that. I'm always thinking of sale numbers over the long term.
My most downloaded instrument is Bell & Bone (10535) but that's a freebie.
What pitfalls would you warn against?
Don't expect people who download your free stuff will want your paid products, some people just like free stuff.
I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
I hire musicians, studios and graphic designers. I have occasionally hired audio editors but I much prefer to do it myself. I do all my own scripting so have never hired a scripter but I do sometimes hire developers to write little applications for me, or I pay them to enhance existing applications with features I want - usually these are tools for audio editing.
What other tools (besides HISE) do you rely on in your workflow to release a product?
Ardour, Audacity, Musescore, Signet, Loris, SoX, ffmpeg, Proxmox, shell scripts, Inkscape, GIMP, and the usual compilers and packaging tools.
Which services and fees do you pay monthly or yearly to keep things running?
Webhosting, I was using Vultr but switched to Cloudways a few weeks ago - it's similar to the control I get with Vultr but they handle the server admin.
Domains: I use Namecheap.
I use Bunny for CDN and for file hosting - much cheaper than S3.
Private email, I just switched to FastMail.
Marketing/Transactional emails, I was using Mautic + Amazon SES but I switched recently to FluentCRM + Amazon SES
Various WordPress plugins.
What kind of copy protection do you use, if any?
I don't restrict copies or use DRM but I use a license system to restrict who can download what from my server.
Do you release for mobile platforms?
Nope
What DAWs do you prioritize or release for?
Reaper, Cubase, FL Studio, Pro-Tools, Logic, Ableton
What back-end servers do you use?
If you mean for my website then I'm running Apache, previously I was using Open Lite Speed.
What is your pricing model: one-time purchase, subscription, or something else?
One time purchase. If I had a lot of products with regular updates I might consider subscription, but I would be having to supply new content every month for me to consider it a good idea for users.
How do you advertise? Do you create your own ads or pay "content creators"?
Facebook, email marketing, VI Control banners, YouTube:
Which platforms have yielded the best results, and which ones have been a waste of money?
In my experience FB is good for growing a mailing list but not great for making money.
VI Control banners don't bring in a lot either but you get some exposure. Posting in the commercial announcements forum is much better I think.
Email marketing is by far the most cost effective way to bring in money but you don't really get new customers from it. My last email brought in directly 140 Euros, not a lot but it cost me pennies so the ROI is great. I also get a lot of follow up sales from each email, especially if it's for a sale or includes a coupon.
YouTube is a good way to reach a target audience for free, either you need to grow your channel or get someone else to promote your stuff, I try to do both.
If you have a referral program for customers that can also be good, but most customers won't use it.
I also post on other sites like Reddit, KVR, and audiopluginguy
Libre Wave - Freedom respecting instruments and effects
My Patreon - HISE tutorials
YouTube Channel - Public HISE tutorials -
@d-healey This is really helpful info David. Much appreciated. Thanks.
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@clevername27 said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
@CyberGen Few developers would disclose this information.
True, though I believe it benefits us all. Tho more we share the better. If there is enough interest, maybe we could conduct it using an anonymous form—a developer-sourced audio tool market study? Just a thought.
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@CyberGen said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
- What kind of tools do you release?
Currently Sample Libraries and effects, tho I have a couple of developers licensing functionality from me, and Im thinking about expanding that into a "proper" product set - examples: an in-plugin download/install system (that @clevername27 has kindly mentioned here before), a file based authorisation system, a macro system, a tag based preset system etc.
- Which ones have sold well, and which haven’t?
Well like David I started out in the kontakt world and some of those products are 10+ years old so they have the highest numbers. Generally I cant see much difference between sample libraries and effects in terms of sales numbers - but it all price dependent
- How many units has your top-selling product sold?
Grief I have no ide maybe a coupe of thousand over a looong period, like David the free stuff gets down loaded a LOT
- What pitfalls would you warn against?
Know your market/customers. I would say its a bad bad bad idea to think you will sell nearly anything if its just from your own web presence - so get as many distribution deals as you can, and get your pricing right.
- I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
VERY occasionally - I used to hire a graphic designer - but now its all vector based so I do everything in-house.
- What other tools (besides HISE) do you rely on in your workflow to release a product?
Gimp, Inkscape, Sublime Text, Bulk Rename Utility, Audient, Python, NI Kontakt, NI Creator Tools, auval, pluginval
- Which services and fees do you pay monthly or yearly to keep things running?
Just the web presence and online download/storage
- What kind of copy protection do you use, if any?
I use every type - none, file/number based and call-home it depends on who the distributor is and the type of product
- Do you release for mobile platforms?
No.
- What DAWs do you prioritize or release for?
Well first it HAS to work on Reaper, then I look at the problem children FL Studio and Logic then everything else Cubase, Live etc.
- What back-end servers do you use?
I use pCloud for storage
- What is your pricing model: one-time purchase, subscription, or something else?
One time purchase.
- How do you advertise? Do you create your own ads or pay "content creators"?
I dont. I leave that to the distributors, however the email list is a must.
- Which platforms have yielded the best results, and which ones have been a waste of money?
cant say
I'm looking forward to the meet.
Sorry I wont be there...
HISE Development for hire.
www.channelrobot.com -
@Lindon said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
VERY occasionally - I used to hire a graphic designer - but now its all vector based so I do everything in-house.What about that time you hired me and I had to wear that clown suit? You said I'd be entertaining children. Not entertaining TO children.
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@Lindon said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
VERY occasionally - I used to hire a graphic designer - but now its all vector based so I do everything in-house.Also, I forgot to ask for any money.
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@clevername27 said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
@Lindon said in Next HISE Developer Hang:
I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
VERY occasionally - I used to hire a graphic designer - but now its all vector based so I do everything in-house.What about that time you hired me and I had to wear that clown suit? You said I'd be entertaining children. Not entertaining TO children.
well that didnt really work out did it? - esp. as you insisted to coming on stage to THAT song by Sufjan Stevens.....
HISE Development for hire.
www.channelrobot.com -
@clevername27 can you repost the link and time for the meeting here?
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@HISEnberg 2 hours from now
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Will there be any interest in something related to Faust integration ? I can possibly participate next meeting if you guys have some questions I can prepare answers for.
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@sletz
Sounds great! :-)
