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Sep.15
2008

Purveyors Of The Banal, Unite!!!

IK Multimedia, everyone's favorite Italian MOTR plug-in makers, in cahoots with Line 6 to ensure that guitar tone becomes as lame as possible, have issued a rebuttal of sorts to Music Radar's Freeware Love-Fest. I have to say that, interestingly, I generally agree with both points of view.

Music Radar was absolutely correct in at least half of their article, although most of it was incredibly obvious and some of it was outright falsehood. I'll leave it to to you to decide which was what; I have my own opinions and for a change I'll keep them to myself. IK's "rebuttal," aside from being poorly written and sounding fairly shrill, was also mostly correct, at least in my experience.

Now, with that out of the way, I'll enumerate my thoughts on the subject, addressed to both Music Radar and IK, and just let 'em float about.

1. You Charge Too Fucking Much. Sorry, IK, but you don't get to bitch about piracy and freebies when your prices enable/encourage both. Why is CSR US$319? How did you arrive at that figure? Your business model can't possibly hope to compete with, oh, let's say, Audio Damage's, because you're buying in to the traditional methods of marketing. Time for a new model.

2. Free != Free. The path from NorthPole to Automaton is absolutely littered with abandonware and broken projects. Search "VST" on SourceForge and look at how recently most of the FOSS projects have been updated. If you Switch from PC to Mac, and you rely on freeware plugs, you are most assuredly fucked. There is, as IK rightly pointed out, a real risk of having projects that won't load in 2 years, because the plugins in them no longer work with whatever iteration Redmond and Cupertino have foisted on you that week. There is a big difference between "free right now" and "always free."

3. The Man Behind The Curtain. When you buy a plugin from Audio Damage, the main thing you're doing is supporting our research and development. That is, aside from advertising, essentially our sole cost. The money that we receive from sales pays our bills so that we can spend all day every day researching delay algorithms. This is looking at what we do from a groupthink mentality, but it is a fact. You're also spending a bit of money so that we can worry about VST and AudioUnit compatibility problems so you don't have to. A freeware developer does this sort of thing in his spare time, and that lends itself to the path of least resistance.

In short, as Peter Kirn pointed out, there are benefits and detriments to both courses of action, and a judicious mix is what's called for. IK came up with a fairly bad rebuttal, frankly (at least they didn't use the word "clearly," the earmark of a frothy interwebs reply), and I think they're just pissed because they spend so much money advertising in Future publications. But they do have a couple points to make.

Comments:

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Spontaneity I'm sure is one of the reasons why IK charge alot...ppl will buy on impulse cause of their cool Jimi logo on of of their fuckin plugs.

posted September 15, 2008 by inteliko

Abandonware..Oh how I wish Steinberg fixed P-delay!

posted September 15, 2008 by inteliko

You're just jealous of IK's UI skillz.

Oh man, I just went to their homepage. I was assaulted by their Flash movie, "Get the sound that makes the hits!" With some guy in a red tie that's supposed to be a pro-DU-sa or something. Damn, that's some marketing.

Step 1: Get da beatz
Step 2: Get tha sound that makes tha hitz
Step 3: Profit
Step 4: Pose with arms crossed wearing sunglasses on lame software company website (optional)

posted September 15, 2008 by synthetic

lots of great points made... i would humbly like to add one of my own, and it actually is one of the points IK used as a negative that i will flip into a positive.

"3. Free software is just that, free. Which means that the developer is under no obligation to support his products, maintain them, upgrade them and owes nothing to his users. He can drop a product if he loses interest without a moment's thought."

one thing i like about freebies is that i know i can't count on them forever... they might not work after my latest system upgrade, which is good so that i don't always depend on the same plugs over and over and over. i like switching up my palette from time to time, and nothing inspires one to do just that as much as necessity.

i buy the plugs i know are deep enough to sustain years of work without sounding like an over-used party trick. i buy the ones i want to count on. but the freebies are nice when i want to add a new spice for a track or two... no strings attached.

posted September 15, 2008 by mad ep

That's an excellent point, right there. Personally, I download most all free plugins that aren't Synthedit or Synthmaker (can't always tell from the maker's site); I'm not ashamed to say that I mine them for ideas. Free plug makers are generally on the bleeding edge. Then you have companies like ourselves, Urs, et al that make "experimental" plugins that aren't necessarily obvious commercial products, but can be monetized. Then you go back a few more yards to the IKs of the world, who have marketing departments.

-CR

posted September 15, 2008 by Chris Randall

I'm kind of scratching my head and wondering why IK felt it necessary to make a response of any sort. I mean, we (AD) got into the biz knowing full well that we had the challenge of convincing people that they should pay for our stuff even though there are many, many free products available. This isn't new news. OTOH IK has been in the market quite a bit longer than we have, so maybe from their perspective the burgeoning freeware scene is a new threat to be reckoned with.

But that aside, I agree with CR that both articles have valid points to make. I'll just shut up, and close by saying that I am very, very thankful that there are enough people out there who find our products worthwhile purchases to make it possible for CR and I to keep making them.

--Adam

posted September 15, 2008 by studio nebula

what's funny... is that in a convoluted way, freeware plugs aren't always as free as the "love 'em & leave 'em" scenario i put forth..

..cos like you chris, i download and test out just about everything under the sun...

(thank god, i am on a mac- so there are 3 billion percent less for me to check. sure- i've missed out some i would have loved, but at least i didn't lose all that extra time sifting through the volume i would have to if i were pc-based)

...but at the end of the day, most of the freebies i end up never using, and the handful i do, either don't work after an upgrade or i no longer want cluttering up my vst folder after a track or two, so i am constantly (but still not often enough) sorting through and deleting unused plugs. that shit takes up time- so while i didn't spend money, it does take away from time.. something that, with my schedule, is equally valuable to me as money.

whereas- the plugs i buy, i have researched enough to know i want them and will continue using them for years (instead of minutes/days).

to be honest- i feel AD has found the happy medium. quality plugs with enormous depth, so i feel completely justified (if not proud) to spend money on them... but not ridiculously over-priced so that i have to scrimp and save just to add a new flavor to a track that is begging for it. that combination of competence & customer-friendly business acumen is the recipe for the tastiest bbq sauce that will always have people clamoring for more.

posted September 15, 2008 by mad ep

I'm thinking I don't really understand the controversy, or maybe some other people don't understand simple things like commerce.

Let's say;
You make a product. I get it. It doesn't work. I say "WTF?". You say "eh, whatever".
In that scenario, if I paid for the product, you are an asshole. If it was free, I am an asshole. It seems pretty straightforward to me.

I think I paid $99 for CSR and love it, and I normally couldn't care less about reverbs. IK's stuff is always on sale.

bb

posted September 15, 2008 by bongo_x

Hmmm. That's an excellent point as well. It might be worth it to give up all the income so that all the customers are assholes instead of me. ;-)

-CR

posted September 15, 2008 by Chris Randall

Being a freeware developer featured in that magazine I dont really give a crap about IK's rebuttal. I make my plugs for me, the polish them as much as I care and release them for free. I myself is on the mac, and I never do any music on the pc anymore. Compiling them for PC is just as much a favor I do for the general population as writing the manual and making graphics that arent totally useless. The point being is that I dont do this totally out of benevolence but rather as a way to keep me on my toes. First of I have to think of the design (both in features and layout) if more ppl then me will be able to use it. Secondly it makes me actually finish some of them (I do have a massive amount of plugins in various stages of "not finished").

I do recieve donations from time to time, but if I divide the downloads from my site (obviosly not calculating the magazine's the plugins have been on etc) with the donations recieved I get less then a hundred of a cent per download.
If I used my self as a model, that is way more then I expected.

What I'm really trying to point out is that there are far more and way more complicated reasons for releasing freeware plugins then the generalisations made by IK and far less glorified then some thinks.

posted September 16, 2008 by larsby

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