2009
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there...
-David Bowie, "Five Years"
Last week was Audio Damage's fifth anniversary. In that time we've released 21 plugins (counting three different versions of Discord), dealt with the abject stupidity of Digidesign, the flighty schizophrenia of Apple, and the bovine stalwartness of Microsoft. We've made plugins for XP, Vista, OS9, OSX 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, and soon 10.6. We've made VST2.3 and VST2.4 plugins with VSTGUI 2.3, 2.4, 3.0, and 3.5, along with RTAS for OS9 (briefly), AU for 10.2, AU for 10.3, and AU for 10.4 and onwards, in three distinctly different versions of Xcode, CodeWarrior, and two more-or-less the same versions of Visual Studio. Some time in the immediate future, we'll have to man up and make VST3 plugins, too.
To make those 21 products, I've personally made about 100 nearly complete user interfaces, and spent a sum total of what has to be many months, if not years, staring at Photoshop CS and 3D Studio Max. Adam has coded well over 200 individual DSP blocks, along with a couple dozen user interface objects and a complete parameter management system, among many other important things you don't see, but make plugins work. We've put up with documentation (or the lack thereof) that is truly awful, from companies that should know better. We've seen at least three plug-in formats that we know of either come and go, or never get out of the starting gates. I assume there are more that we don't know about.
We've thrown a few elbows in the industry, made a lot of friends, bought a bunch of ads, faced some fairly intense competition, bitched and moaned about inconsequential shit, and dealt with shit that isn't inconsequential at all. We've moved the corporation from one state to another and moved my actual ass to a different state entirely. We've put up with rampant idiocy from people that style themselves members of the creative community but are actually members of some kind of bullshit that doesn't have a name.
We've also met a metric shitload of extremely cool people, made what we think are some pretty good plug-ins, and had a lot of laughs. This business fucking rocks, no doubt about it, and you'd have a hard time getting me to go hunting for a new job. Adam and I would like to thank each and every person that has supported our little company through its birthing pains. The road is wide open from here, and here's to hoping for a 10 year anniversary post in 2014.
PS: I'm a musician (of sorts) and I actually my music. Try it sometime.
posted January 23, 2009 by jay_dubya
I am an artist and I still buy music! I OWN all my tools including software; Editing suites and all, including graphic, video, and sound. This is included in the cost of doing business and creating my art.
If you truly want to use tools that are created as tools of liberation than go open source. Help develop them as such. To steal commercial developers work is not liberation. It's just laziness.
I actually like some of the yacht catalog. I sometimes like that 8bit lo-fi. Never heard Yacht until now, and i would have purchased it off itunes like I do with all my non-vinyl music purchases. But, if you feel that digital piracy is liberation, you cannot personally expect anyone to reward you for your own work
posted January 23, 2009 by gashoagie
For the record, I spend upwards of $300 a year on music, though, to be fair, most of what I listen to probably wouldn't make it on to the torrent sites anyway. That said, I don't have a problem with burning a mix cd for a friend of stuff that they would otherwise never listen to, to turn them on to it, but I think that's quite different from going and downloading something you already know about and are looking for. Likewise, I don't have a problem getting a cd like that from a friend, but if there's something on it that's insanely brilliant that I find myself listening to all the time, I get the whole album from Amazon or itunes.
In other words, if you USE it, you should pay for it.
To put this in perspective, a lot of us work day jobs of varying degrees of shittiness and save money to be able to afford the gear we use. Back when I made my living playing music, I had to struggle to come up with money for new strings and maintenance on the instruments I needed.
All that talk about leveling the playing field is great, but he only way you can avoid being completely hypocrytical about it is to use free software. There's plenty of free plugins out there, and Garageband is perfectly good for a lot of stuff, and you can make the rest in something free like PD or Supercollider. (or something cheap like Plogue) Presto: playing field leveled.
One other thing about said level playing field: It's not the gear, it's the musician. A great musician can make far better music with a pile of trash, an old 57, and a Tascam 4-track than most people could make with all the gear in the world. This kind of puts lie to that whole "liberation" bit, because we're all alredy free to make great music if we have the potential to.
If you don't believe me, check out Konono No.1. They make crazy-ass music with nothing but stuff they made themselves from junkyards in west Africa. As in, they made the mics and pickups and mixers with magnets and wire from old car stereos and carved the rest of the parts of wood. Having just checked out your stuff on itunes, I think I can say with confidence that they make far better music with that stuff than you could even if you had a million bucks to spend on gear.
Once again, I should reiterate that I don't think you are necessarily a bad person, I just wanted to clarify some stuff.
- a spaced monkey
posted January 23, 2009 by space_monkey
I take issue with so many of your viva-la-revolucion asshole precepts that I don't even know where to begin.
I almost feel like you are some fictional "composite character" invented by a NYTimes reporter for shock value in some corny article about "digital culture."
Is "post-ethical" a word?
If not, can I claim coining?
Jesus Christ.
Disgusting.
Goodnight.
- c
posted January 23, 2009 by beauty pill
Congratulations, Chris and Adam! Thanks for the great software. Expect an anniversary present in the form of the purchase of another couple of plug-ins this week...
posted January 23, 2009 by Michael Moncur
It's a really, really bad idea to use pirated software for business purposes. Quoting from the SPA's website (link [spa.org]):
"What are the penalties for pirating software?
The Copyright Act allows a copyright owner to recover monetary damages measured either by: (1) actual damages plus any additional profits of the infringer attributable to the infringement, or (2) statutory damages, of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted work infringed. The copyright owner also has the right to permanently enjoin an infringer from engaging in further infringing activities and may be awarded costs and attorneys' fees. The law also permits destruction or other reasonable disposition of all infringing copies and devices by which infringing copies have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner's exclusive rights. In cases of willful infringement, criminal penalties may also be assessed against the infringer."
Note the bit about "additional profits." That means, basically, if you write a hit song using a pirated plug-in, the publisher of that plug-in can scoop up _all_ of the money from that hit. There's also those bits near the end about "destruction or other reasonable disposition of all infringing copies and devices by which infringing copies have been made or used". That means that the publisher can seize and destroy the computer(s) you used to write that song, and all of the CDs you pressed with that song on it. Then, finally, note the closing statement about "[I]n cases of willful infringement, criminal penalties..." I don't think I need to spell that one out.
Yacht has publicly admitted--bragged, even--that he has willfully infringed upon the rights of Audio Damage, Inc. and several other software publishers. He has stated that he is using pirated software in for-profit activities. This is enough for the SPA (to put it prosaically) to take him down so hard that he won't get up again for a long, long time.
Now, is Audio Damage going to pursue legal action against Yacht? Of course not. We have better things to do with our time and our resources--namely making plug-ins for our honest customers. But other publishers of software may not share our opinion.
Pirating software is illegal. Bragging about your illegal activities in public is laughably stupid.
--Adam
posted January 23, 2009 by studio nebula
posted January 23, 2009 by nousrnm
oh yeah, Yacht? words aint enough to express my contempt.
posted January 24, 2009 by Downpressor
Oh and Yacht is one huge Douchebag. Cry me a river. The minute you start pulling a profit is the minute you get right with your software. Buy educational copies if you're so broke. Or grow up and get a day job like the rest of the world.