# Will there be a 'Cinematic Strings 3' ?



## muziksculp (May 3, 2013)

Hi,

Any clues/announcements from _Cinematic Strings_ if they are working on *Cinematic Strings 3* ? That would offer new, and complementing content to their wonderful, and very popular *Cinematic Strings 2* Library ?

http://www.cinematicstrings.com


Thanks,
Muziksculp


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## Jimbo 88 (May 3, 2013)

yea, divisi, con sordino, Col Legno.

and I'm done! I'm sure others could offer a couple of others.

Thanks!


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## BenG (May 3, 2013)

Smaller sections, portamento and FX would be great too!


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## JPQ (May 3, 2013)

BenG @ Sat 04 May said:


> Smaller sections, portamento and FX would be great too!



+1 and solo strings if timbre is same. btw i hope they focus also some other things based this porduct timbre based their audiodemos. and i hope if Cinematic Strings 3 is new stuff cinematic strings 2 not going discontinued soon. if happens makes me very hard think what strings are best for my style.


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## muziksculp (May 3, 2013)

Would be nice to hear a few words from Alex, or David at Cinematic Strings, regarding their next Cinematic Strings product, with some general info. / details, expected release date, ..etc. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## DaddyO (May 3, 2013)

Jimbo 88 @ Fri May 03 said:


> divisi, con sordino, Col Legno.
> Thanks!



Put me down for all those.


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## mk282 (May 4, 2013)

Since CS2 was pirated, I sense Alex and David are pretty much discouraged regarding producing any new libraries.


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

mk282 @ Sat May 04 said:


> Since CS2 was pirated, I sense Alex and David are pretty much discouraged regarding producing any new libraries.



Oh.. That's not good news. But... How do you know about this ? did they announce something about their library being pirated ? 

Hopefully they will re-consider if what you wrote is true. It would be sad, and quite a loss for us, if they choose not to continue their sample development business, they surely have a bright future. 

Piracy sucks ! 

Maybe Cinematic Strings should consider the _watermarking_ option for their Kontakt based libraries, 8dio seems to be doing fine with it, and they have been one of the most productive developers on the market.


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## TomMartin (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> mk282 @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Since CS2 was pirated, I sense Alex and David are pretty much discouraged regarding producing any new libraries.
> ...



A quick google search for "cinematic strings torrent" brings up plenty of hits, short of trying to download one of them that's about as close to confirming that you can get.

A quick search shows there are are several 8dio libraries out there pirated as well, I'm not sure what the watermarking system does exactly, but people are still pirating...


Anyway, I'm a paying user of Cinematic Strings 2, and I would also be looking forward to an update if there was one


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

TomMartin @ Sat May 04 said:


> muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > mk282 @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



+1, and I have to say, it's pretty discouraging to hear that they're discouraged. I hope they will pop in and comment.


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:


> TomMartin @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



Interesting, but.. Isn't it the responsibility of the licensing party (Native Instruments) to ensure that a developer's product is safe, and sound ? even if some libraries are showing up on torrent sites, wouldn't they still need to be officially authorized via NI-Service Center (via serial number) ? 

Well... I hope they are developing their next library, hopefully (Cinematic Strings 3) ! and are not letting some software thieves discourage them from their careers. 

Surely there needs to be better ways to protect sample library developer's products that are using licensed sampling engines, such as Kontakt, since they put their trust in their secure system of authorization. Hopefully NI will improve their authorization system to protect their clients products from being pirated. Didn't East-West decide to develop their own Sample Engine (PLAY) because of the pirating they had encountered when they were using Kontakt ? 

It would be nice to hear from Alex, and/or David at Cinematic Strings to get some more feedback on their future plans, and maybe they can enlighten us that they have some great new product/s coming our way. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## TomMartin (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > TomMartin @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



I wondered the same thing. However, there are also piratted versions of Kontakt, which advertise themselves as being cracked so as to not require library registration. There's some very clever people out there ruining developers' hard work.

The only thing that seems to be withstanding hackers attempts at cracking, is iLok 2, I know the first iLok was cracked, but so far I've not heard anything about iLok 2 being cracked.


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## mark812 (May 4, 2013)

I certainly hope so. Maybe Alex can drop by and shed some light.


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## Wes Antczak (May 4, 2013)

Oh, that really sucks about CS being pirated. It's a fantastic library and I was looking forward to seeing more products from Alex @ co. It sucks when some wiseguy 'jerk' out there ruins it for everyone by creating a situation where a great developer is discouraged and perhaps forced out of business because it no longer makes sense to continue. Didn't this also happen with BeldaD? :(


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## TomMartin (May 4, 2013)

Wes Antczak @ Sat May 04 said:


> Oh, that really sucks about CS being pirated. It's a fantastic library and I was looking forward to seeing more products from Alex @ co. It sucks when some wiseguy 'jerk' out there ruins it for everyone by creating a situation where a great developer is discouraged and perhaps forced out of business because it no longer makes sense to continue. Didn't this also happen with BeldaD? :(



I think Kontakt might be a lost cause now. All that needs to be done to pirate a Kontakt library is simply upload it. Fixing the problem needs some cooperation from Native Instruments, the sample developers can't do anything about it unfortunately.


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## Rob Elliott (May 4, 2013)

Disappointing for sure. It would be like getting an ASCAP statement with pages of 'play' and a payable balance at the bottom of the statement = $0.


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## BenG (May 4, 2013)

I was wondering about the how it would be pirated as well. 

So I did some research and I found d out it is not the libraries themselves that are pirates but rather Kontakt itself. People are torrenting this "cracked" version of Kontakt and any lib will work on it without any authorization needed. 

Pretty depressing:/ +1for iLok


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

it is a real shame, i rely on cinematic strings 2 a lot and would love a 3rd with extra artics.



BenG said:


> People are torrenting this "cracked" version


it is indeed a cracked kontakt that loads without auth. the problem has no real solution because anyone smart like the pirate groups that profit from piracy can take a program and change it to however they want. ilok is also not a good solution bcause it just punishes the legit customer (i have had 3 died on me and even their ZDT thing is not zero downtime and is a pain...) and as soon as most popular libs would move to an ilok platform it would be "cracked" the same as kontakt (for ex. PT with ilok has been long cracked.. cubase.. cracked.. etc.)


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

BenG @ Sat May 04 said:


> I was wondering about the how it would be pirated as well.
> 
> So I did some research and I found d out it is not the libraries themselves that are pirates but rather Kontakt itself. People are torrenting this "cracked" version of Kontakt and any lib will work on it without any authorization needed.
> 
> Pretty depressing:/ +1for iLok



It's about time Native Instruments got this part of their business fixed. Otherwise, I see them going into Gigasampler Territory. 

Looks like they have some cracks in their securing/authorizing system, they better do something to fix this Kontakt theft issue, and make sure developers are well protected. Yes, iLok or anything that will fix their current securing/authorizing system will have to be a high-priority for them as a business, and for many sample developers that have put their trust, and business in NI's Kontakt system. Maybe a fast solution would be for NI to switch to iLok2 auth. system. But, that might create a lot of chaos during the transition, especially if any errors occur in transferring their customer registered products database info. to iLok2 or any other more secure (dongle) based system.


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> Looks like they have some cracks in their securing/authorizing system, they better do something to fix this Kontakt theft issue, and make sure developers are well protected.


i dont think you understand. the average pirate are not the ones cracking. the ones cracking it are good programmers that make hundreds of thousands of $ through distirbuting piracy. they have good incentive to sit there for hours days or weeks hacking away at an app. they will literally go in and rewrite the part of the program that auths online and make it think it has authed online. there is no way to prevent this... a computer needs to be able to read the code and if a computer can, a smart hacker can.

as i said big popular tools like CB/PT/Waves/etc are all cracked, regardless of having ilok 1/2 or an online auth system. the same would happen if an ilok sampler platform became popular (or if ilok was implemented into kontakt) a hacker who will profit will do their best to go in and turn off that auth check. as much as it sucks to see work taken and given out for free, fighting it is imho a waste of time and money that could be spent making good products for the legit crowd that will buy it


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## TomMartin (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > fighting it is imho a waste of time and money that could be spent making good products for the legit crowd that wll buy it



I agree with this. It's a futile and no doubt expensive effort to prevent piracy. Perhaps without this expense libraries could be sold a little cheaper and encourage more legitimate sales, I doubt there would be any more piracy just because there was no effort made to stop it.


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

So, is this pirating issue affecting all Kontakt based sample developers ? 

If Yes, then how are sample developers, and NI dealing with it ? 

If Cinematic Strings is just one company, in a much larger pool of sample developers that have been hit by piracy, then should they just ignore it, and keep on developing their next line of product ? or is there a better option for both NI and their Kontakt based sample developers ? 

If piracy is a big business, that is making a good chunk of $$$ by victimizing/stealing software products, that have a lot of work, money, and time invested into. , in this case, sample libraries, then what do you feel is the solution ? 

Are there any SW companies that have a rock-solid system that has not been pirated ? 

Just curious to know. 

Thanks,
Muziksculp


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## Chriss Ons (May 4, 2013)

I'm not so sure whether in the short term these current events will have such a tremendous impact on development for the Kontakt platform, and I don't see it going the way of the dodo just yet, either - it seems to me that the majority of the libraries nowadays are "Kontakt full retail"-only, anyway, and thus rely on watermarking as a deterrent against unauthorized use - despite the obvious weaknesses of such a system. (Seems to me the Service Center wasn't exactly bullet proof, either.)

Entire tomes have been written about this. Noone has a solution. Nevertheless, this is all very disturbing, indeed - especially for the developers who relied on the _Kontakt Player_ license model to protect their investment.


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> So, is this pirating issue affecting all Kontakt based sample developers ?
> 
> If Yes, then how are sample developers, and NI dealing with it ?
> 
> ...



iLok has a pretty good track record.


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.


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## Pzy-Clone (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.



I read somewhere some time ago, either here or on the official site forum, not sure which...that they were dropping all sample library plans for the future, since they had not had one single new sale of CS 2 after it was cracked or distributed on the web or something to that extent. Evidently.

They kept seeing great reviews from "paying users" everywhere...yet no one had bought it.
I guess that falls pretty well into the "not bother with it " category ?


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.



+1. In alot of cases now I think piracy is something (particularly on Kontakt libraries) that is a matter of when it will be pirated instead of if. And I imagine alot of developers work around that concept. The smartest thing developers can do is think of ways to encourage legitimate sales while rewarding actual customers instead of victimizing them....things like ilok are great for preventing piracy, but its at the expense of having the physical USB slot taken, if that thing breaks you have to both buy a new one and have your licenses ported over for a quite large fee. Of course dongles are no big deal for everyone, they have free slots, plenty of back cash to cover the cost of getting a new ilok then its no problem at all, the problem is there are customers out there who exclusively work on laptops, perhaps they saved up to buy a library they need and in the event of a breakage the library becomes unusable. Nothing will drive a customer to piracy quicker than being unable to use something they paid for while the pirates pay nothing and have nothing blocking them.

If buying your own copy of a product has more value than pirating it then piracy numbers will drop drastically. Alot of piracy comes from peoples perception that what they want is not worth what they are being asked to pay for it. The obvious way to counter this is to drop the price, doing so however is giving off the complete wrong impression..you instantly devalue the market, people expect whatever your library is to be around that price. HOWEVER adding value to a product that in the eyes of the customer makes it worth the price you are asking, either upfront or via constant support and content you give them a reason to invest in your product.

Being a developer who had a successful product which was also pirated into oblivion, I still feel its worth trying again sometime in the future, while at the same time learning from what people liked and didn't like from how we did things the last time round. 

I really hope Cinematic Strings gets a version 3, I love CS2 and would love to hear Alex try some more aggressive short notes as well as some ppp stuff 

-DJ


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## mark812 (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.



Well said.


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## antoniopandrade (May 4, 2013)

+1 show of support for Alex and crew. I just did a presentation on producing orchestral mock-ups at Berklee and showed them *HEAVY* support. Encouraged every single person in the room (about 80 or so) to go out and buy those strings, since they're so generous to students as well. I said this once before, but with CS2, Alex and crew did basically everything right in releasing a new library. Good price, good sound, a joy to use. I really hope they follow up, because in my opinion CS2 was a smashing success.


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.



It's not just about making money, Ed. Most sample library developers, like most composers, do not go into it solely for the money (although they certainly wan to make money) but because the love to do it. So it is easy for me to understand how someone who invests a great deal of time and energy to create something only to see it stolen with impunity, could feel discouraged from wanting to do so again.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Ed @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.
> ...



If you _actually_ love to do it, you wont be discouraged by people pirating it. It doesn't stop you getting to do it. 

Which means the only reason not to do it is financial.

-DJ


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> Alot of piracy comes from peoples perception that what they want is not worth what they are being asked to pay for it.



Baloney IMHO. People pirate because they feel _entitled_ to have it, regardless of the price and relative value.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Alot of piracy comes from peoples perception that what they want is not worth what they are being asked to pay for it.
> ...



I disagree. Netflix recently released some numbers which show that piracy of tv shows and films on the service dropped drastically once they were streamable. People wanted to watch those shows, maybe they didn't want to spend the £100 for the completed 24 box set but are more than happy to spend £7.99 a month to stream it, alongside other great content. Without that streaming option the only other options are either not getting it or pirating it. Nothing to do with entitlement.

We havn't quite worked out a great 'other option' yet in our industry. And again its totally value related. Imagine you could get streamable access to Hollywood Strings/Brass WW, the Cinebrass collection, all the 8dio libs and anything you find on try-sound for something like £10 a month. You telling me that wouldn't rope in some of those who decide to pirate? a legitimate way to access the content that doesn't force a decision for some people that can be the difference between paying the rent or having that new sound. Why do you think the piracy of music dropped significantly once it was easy to access at good value for money on itunes or more recently with subscription/advertising models like Spotify or Pandora. Its all about perceived value. Just to class all pirates as self entitled criminal scum from a business perspective is the complete wrong thing to do, they are customers you havn't proven your value to yet.

-DJ

p.s of course there will always be a percentage that will never pay for anything, thinking that is 100% of them is naive.


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.

The problem is that people no longer stigmatize pirating by calling it what it is, stealing and rationalizing it.

Your attitude, respectfully, is part of the problem, not the solution.


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## TomMartin (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.
> .



It certainly is everything you said, but it is also still $500. That's a lot of money, in fact it is far too much money for the vast majority of people that aren't really into spending all their money on sample libraries.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.
> 
> The problem is that people no longer stigmatize pirating by calling it what it is, stealing and rationalizing it.
> 
> Your attitude, respectfully, is part of the problem, not the solution.



Of course its great bang for the buck for those of us who make a living out of what we do, and can afford to buy the library. The 19 year old producer sitting in his bedroom of his parents apartment trying to make music for a hobby but doesnt earn enough to pay for the bigger libraries but still wants to use them. He will never see the value of paying a huge upfront fee, sure its easy to bury your head in the sand and just say "WELL THEN HE SHOULDN'T HAVE IT, CRIMINAL SCUM" but the reality of it is, he *will* get it, the perceived value isnt there for him, he will hold what little money he has because he has the OPTION to get it for free. Is it breaking the law yes, is it wrong yes, will that stop it no. SO our only option as developers is to find a way to make the _perceived _ value of what we are selling worth more than them getting it for free. I dont pretend to have the answer of how to do this but not even trying will not help. If you want to lower the piracy of your product, just making it and expecting people to buy it will not work anymore...you will never completely get rid of piracy but there are ways to reduce it given the examples I gave.

---

My attitude is not the problem, its the attitude that suggests that the market, not just for samples but for digital products, has changed and they days charging a large upfront fee for all customers is perhaps out dated. Its an attitude that is trying to help push the idea that pirates can be turned into legitimate customers if you can show them why paying for a product is better than downloading it for free. Again its very easy to just dismiss pirates but doing so without considering the reasons why they do it and thinking what you can do to show your value is the real attitude that damages the industry.

Like I say its about time developers come to the realization it is a matter of *if* rather than *when* right now and the way the industry market works means that wont change anytime soon. So actually keeping this fact in mind when releasing a library and thinking of ways to make your product more appealing than getting it for free, will help shift the way the industry works and reduce piracy..just like netflix, itunes, spotify have done for the tv,film,music industries. They havn't completly eradicated piracy but the numbers are much lower than the day when you had either Physical CD's or Napster.

-DJ


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## antoniopandrade (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.
> 
> The problem is that people no longer stigmatize pirating by calling it what it is, stealing and rationalizing it.
> 
> Your attitude, respectfully, is part of the problem, not the solution.



Daniel has some good points Jay. Where they stray from sample libraries is that our segment is much much more specific and resource heavy. It is a heavy commitment for someone to drop 400 bucks on a sample library vs buying a movie for 20 bucks or a record for 12.

But I do believe it's a transitional thing, since the internet is a new development and regulations for it are still very awkward and fraught with dangerous generalizations. But you're also right about that Jay, people need to realize that piracy is and has always been stealing. There's really no sugarcoating it. However, just crossing your arms and cursing at the sky won't do much about the problem. The Netflix example is great because availability is most definitely a part of the problem. And this is one thing that I don't think is generational. People have always bootlegged products that were difficult to attain through conventional means.

A model that sample library developers could consider is staggering their releases, by releasing separate instruments instead of whole section libraries, because it allows people to purchase incrementally, the "iTunes" way. Think about it, the _single_ these days is much more important than the _album_ in relation to 10 years ago, because someone can just go to iTunes and buy a track for 99 bucks rather than commit to the whole album. 

People see a great sounding instrument, available for say, 30 - 50 bucks. They think, "wow, no brainer!". We should ask Embertone how their sales have been since their products have been pirated, or how the pirating of smaller modular libraries from 8Dio have affected sales. Adagio is also modular and staggered, I'm sure that's helped people make their decisions in purchasing it. I wonder what would happen to sales of PSAM's Lumina had they staggered it and released it in 3 volumes. With the internet allowing you to be very choosey about what content you consume, I think it would be in the developer's interests to allow the customers to make more choices, within the acceptable range of their vision for the product. I do believe staggering releases makes the product line suffer from inconsistencies and a less unified sound, for better or worse. 

Anyway, sorry about my ramblings, I've been studying a lot of digital piracy in classes in college these days, and have always tried to tie in sample libraries piracy to understand how developers can get around it by making things easier for customers, not harder.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

antoniopandrade @ Sat May 04 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.
> ...



Your staggered or "single" release idea would be perfect for our industry. Right now the way things are set up in the sample library industry is like my previous example of "The complete 24 box set" if Netflix didn't exist right now your only options to be able to watch all of that content would be to buy the £100 box set...which is much like buying a full library OR to pirate it for free. However as you have the option to stream that content for a monthly subscription for £8 you get a true feeling of perceived value, and many are willing to commit to that sort of financial investment over spending a large upfront fee or worse pirating it. Like I say not all pirates do it because they feel entitled to do so, its that to them the perceived value isnt great enough for them to warrant those high prices.

-DJ


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## germancomponist (May 4, 2013)

Pzy-Clone @ Sat May 04 said:


> I read somewhere some time ago, either here or on the official site forum, not sure which...that they were dropping all sample library plans for the future, since they had not had one single new sale of CS 2 after it was cracked or distributed on the web or something to that extent. Evidently.
> 
> They kept seeing great reviews from "paying users" everywhere...yet no one had bought it.
> I guess that falls pretty well into the "not bother with it " category ?



Boah.. :( 

All developer and manufacturer of samplers should establish an organization that tracks such thieves on the internet!


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## antoniopandrade (May 4, 2013)

Perceived value is a part of it, but I think the grand poobah reason for piracy is availability. Or rather, ease of availability. People will tend to walk the path of least resistance. If the easiest / most hassle-free way of acquiring and using a product is pirating, that's what people will jump to.

That's also why great support and a human presence helps prevent piracy. How many times have I e-mailed and chatted with developers about their products, or gotten A-quality support? That's very important, and I'm not sure some devs realize just how important it is. Releasing constant free updates, like Cinesamples and Spitfire do is also a great way to encourage people to buy your products, and keeps them buying more products, because it rewards you for your purchase in a way that pirating the same product would not. It also helps with your image as a dev. 

There will always be that percentage of people that will pirate no matter what, just because they can, but I believe if you're truly serious about producing music, and granted that the devs provide enough of the previously mentioned incentives, purchasing will always trump pirating in long-term value.


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

Pzy-Clone @ Sat May 04 said:


> Ed @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I dont see why piracy of CS2 is a barrier to releasing another library, its not like this is some kind of anomaly. I mean come on in recent years companies like SoundIron, 8dio and Spitfire and also new companies like Dan's Alpha are flourishing like never before. You would have to believe that these companies dont make any money, yet keep producing more and more libraries where many of which require even greater investment than their previous products. Are they all just crazy or something? Evidently despite piracy there is still a great deal of money to be made, or else no one would bother with it, and certainly not invest even more money into it than before.
> ...


 

I cant speak for Alex and I dont know any of those details. What my point is, is that if its true that a cracked product will receive next to no sales, or none at all, then why do we keep seeing new products coming out, and coming out from companies that have been around for many years now that presumably already know the consequences of piracy on their sales figures? And not just new products, we're seeing probably more money being funnelled into recording and producing these products than ever before. The suggestion that companies like SoundIron, 8dio, Spitfire and CineSamples are operating at such *staggering *losses purely for the "love" of it like Jay has said, strains credulity to breaking point as far as Im concerned.


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## Anonymous (May 4, 2013)

Seems to me that Money is indeed the root of all evil...


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## RasmusFors (May 4, 2013)

On the note of piracy

I think that most of the pirates are amateurs who only use their pirated samples/loop for "bedroom mockups", with the only purpose of showing it to family/friends. All proffesionals buy their stuff because they earn money from making their music. If you were a 15 year old boy who only wanted to make a cool beat to show to your friends, would you then buy a 399 sample library ? Most amateurs don't have that amount of money. I'm not defending the pirates, but people need to understand that by pirating a library you give it a an audience which never would have bought it anyways. It's still stealing and still wrong, but if 100 people downloaded "sample library x", "devolper x" haven't lost 100 customers.


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## kb123 (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> I cant speak for Alex and I dont know any of those details. What my point is, is that if its true that a cracked product will receive next to no sales, or none at all, then why do we keep seeing new products coming out



It is very true that a cracked product receives next to no sales while it is available for download from a pirate site. Countless devs have stated it here on VI now. We keep seeing new products coming out because many of the affected dev's choose to continue in spite of the lost sales incurred. 

Really, I wish people would stop trying to trivialize the piracy problem. It is real, and it has a very real effect. When you see a series of products you have been working on hit the pirate sites it is soul destroying, and it takes a lot to push on from that.


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

....and we're back.

Would like to hear directly from Alex, I'm a little sceptical of "I'm sure I read somewhere something a bit like" comments on others' behalf.


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

RasmusFors @ Sat May 04 said:


> All proffesionals buy their stuff because they earn money from making their music..


as said many times before, incorrect. there are professionals and their studios that are also pirates - it has been said by many professionals who have witnessed this (or been part of it at some point) in other threads about piracy...


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## RasmusFors (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> RasmusFors @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > All proffesionals buy their stuff because they earn money from making their music..
> ...



Really ? Had no idea. What a bunch of douchebags. Very unrespectfull and just plain wrong. Is it puplicly known which "proffesionals" pirates, or are they just nameless phantoms ?


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## Pzy-Clone (May 4, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:


> ....and we're back.
> 
> Would like to hear directly from Alex, I'm a little sceptical of "I'm sure I read somewhere something a bit like" comments on others' behalf.



Pft :roll: 

I would quote and link, but it seems their forum has since been disabled.
Anyway he is free to post here if he wants to clear things up, right ?


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## Rob (May 4, 2013)

radec @ 4th May 2013 said:


> RasmusFors @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > All proffesionals buy their stuff because they earn money from making their music..
> ...



I can confirm this, and I'm doing an educational job with every musician I know to convince them of the need to pay for the software they use...with some success I must say


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:


> Ed @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I cant speak for Alex and I dont know any of those details. What my point is, is that if its true that a cracked product will receive next to no sales, or none at all, then why do we keep seeing new products coming out
> ...



I think underestimating or even ignoring piracy is more damaging! That 15 year old rasmus mentioned might not be willing to pay the 399 up front and so will pirate the libraries so he can show his friends his compositional abilities. This kind of thing happens all the time, and its not a lost sale in the way the industry is set up now...there is no realistic way that kid was going to pay that money. HOWEVER if there was a different system in place...ie cloud sample streaming, cheaper split libraries, subscription models etc where all of a sudden that 15 year old can become a potential customer, there would be less 'expected' piracy.

I know it sucks (people are pirating my lib as we speak) but we have to all understand that as things are right now, piracy is an expected occurrence. The sooner we as developers and an industry start thinking of ways to encourage people to pay for the libraries and less about how we can punish everyone (including paying customers in some cases) the quicker things will get improve.

-DJ


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:


> It is very true that a cracked product receives next to no sales while it is available for download from a pirate site. Countless devs have stated it here on VI now. We keep seeing new products coming out because many of the affected dev's choose to continue in spite of the lost sales incurred.
> 
> Really, I wish people would stop trying to trivialize the piracy problem. It is real, and it has a very real effect. When you see a series of products you have been working on hit the pirate sites it is soul destroying, and it takes a lot to push on from that.


 
My point was however that...

_"we're seeing probably more money being funnelled into recording and producing these products than ever before. The suggestion that companies like SoundIron, 8dio, Spitfire and CineSamples are operating at such *staggering *losses purely for the "love" of it like Jay has said, strains credulity to breaking point as far as Im concerned."_


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> Pzy-Clone @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Ed @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



My guess (and seeing it a little bit from the developer side too) is that when your product is pirated you are losing sales yes, but that isnt making you lose any money from your actual sales. 

As long as you have a a product people will buy, you still make money (overheads aside) That is why you see investment in new products. Sample library companies are still making money, just not as much as they could have.

-DJ


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> that 15 year old can become a potential customer, there would be less 'expected' piracy.


that 15 year old was never really a potential customer of a company like cinesamples, 8dio or spitfire. it is this kind of customer that is an extra benefit. you are living in a dream world if you think that a sample dev that spends hundreds of thousands of $ developing high end orch libraries can adjust their pricing for a bedroom hobbyist teenager - its like expecting andretti to adjust the price of their indycars so that some really good teenage racing kids can race them around their backyards... sure they may be some exceptional drivers, but it costs money to make race cars same way it costs money to make orch libraries. the developers plan their pricing so that they can cover their costs in this niche industry.

the problem in my opinion are the pirate groups and sites that target this kind of audience. they are the ones profiting from the piracy and they are the ones that suddenly mean the 30+ year old who does have a bit of money do a web search for a company or library and find all these instant download pirate links. path of least resistance and no risk means a lot of these ppl will end up clicking that link, making the pirate some money and end up being a possibly lost sale


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > that 15 year old can become a potential customer, there would be less 'expected' piracy.
> ...



This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. Sure that 15 year old might not be Cinesamples or Spitfires target audience however that wont stop him getting a pirated copy. So therefor if he wants the library but as you say isnt a realistic customer right now that means there is a potential customer there, you just need to find a way. Again I don't know what would work, maybe subscription model, maybe advertising model. But developers have 2 options either work out a way to make that non target audince person who will just pirate you library, an actual customer. Or do nothing, then act surprised and complain when he does infact pirate it.

Lets face it, Piracy isn't going away anytime soon. Just ignoring it and saying, well thats not my audience is a terrible way to look at it. If they are pirating it, they are your audience you just need to find a way to get it to them so that you profit from their interest instead of the pirate sites you speak of.

-DJ


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. Sure that 15 year old might not be Cinesamples or Spitfires target audience however that wont stop him getting a pirated copy.


i think you missed my point. my point was that you shouldnt worry about the 15 year old because an affordable subscription model for ppl like him is never going to make back your costs. if you pander to a non customer with such a subscription model you actually LOSE money from the ppl that would have bought it normally in the first place. youd be better to take the piracy hit while at least making back costs.

it is the pirate groups that focus on ppl like him that cause the side effect of legitimate customers not purchasing. for these i do not know what solution there is other than making it easy for him to buy and hard for him to pirate. we are talking about ppl that can afford it but dont because they would rather spend their money on something else when there is no risk pirating.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. Sure that 15 year old might not be Cinesamples or Spitfires target audience however that wont stop him getting a pirated copy.
> ...



I understand your point perfectly and I disagree with it. The fact that the 15 year old will pirate the library shouldn't be ignored. That means he wants what you make....which leaves two options, the developer gets the money or the pirate sites do. Just ignoring it wont help the situation. Perhaps developers on subscription models can offer incentive to pay more upfront sort of like a pre-order incentive on video games where you get a little more content or more priority in support. Perhaps the full priced version hits a week before subscription. Maybe you release different versions, one with a license for commercial use on for non profit which is cheaper. 

Keep in mind that 15 year old boy who wants the library is not just one boy, there are many like him, if you find a model that works for him it will undoubtedly work for others like him. 

Also keep this in mind, alot of developers keep prices high in favor of keeping the libraries aimed at professional users only, which makes sense in theory. HOWEVER the fact the libraries end up being pirated, at large numbers, kind of makes this approach pointless. All you are doing is making the professionals pay to have the same sounds as a kid who gets it for free. So if you can find a way to appeals to pros and mass market you will make money from both, which isnt quite as niche as just the pro market. Sure mass market may be your target audience...but that doesnt change the fact that both pro and mass market will still use the product thanks to the ability to get it free.

-DJ


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> The fact that the 15 year old will pirate the library shouldn't be ignored.


so if the kid wants a 60" tv should we start making those rentable/affordable for 15 year olds? no, because then you lose money from the people that actually spent money on 60" tvs. just because the kid goes out and steals/gets a knockoff one doesn't mean we should lower the price so he would have bought it in the first place - answer is to ignore the non customer

i noticed your library is on sale for $200 even after it is pirated. if you believe a subscription model is the best solution why havent you implemented such an option to your product?


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## MaestroRage (May 4, 2013)

100% with James on this one. That 15 year old COULD become a customer. At the risk of being scolded/yelled at or whatever, I will admit that I pirated nearly everything when I was young. 16'ish I believe. Playing with the big boy toys even though I didn't even really know wtf I was doing it was never meant to be anything beyond something cool to impress friends.

But then I started to make some money with these tools. The very first thing I did, and spent years doing because I was charging peanuts (pandering to the indie flash game crowd) was purchase the libraries I had used pirated for years. I can proudly say now I am a legal owner of everything I have.

Daniel is right. There is a HUGE base of youth here who, if not now, could potentially grow older to be customers. They are interested obviously because they seek to pirate the libraries, making it accessible to them is far from a bad idea imo. If I could pay $20 a month to use CS2 i'd jump on it. It would take 25 months before I technically would fill the $500 bill of the original price, but Alex and Co would have a reliable and steady income base which they can then in turn use to fund expansions/new products. Repeat cycle. 

It's also a great way for people to try a product legally without fear of getting really burned. How glorious it would be if I could pay a small fee to try a library for a month, heck even a week. If I don't like it, fine, stop payments, library is disabled or automagically deleted from my drive. I do like it? Great, keep that flow running for that awesome dev.

Adobe is doing this now with great success I might add. You can either outright buy their products, or subscribe for a flat fee to use all of their products legally on a monthly basis. Considering that you are -always- up to date with the latest software, it's super easy to use, and it makes even beginner/newbie professionals comfortable in price point it's a win/win for everybody.

This analogy of the cars also doesn't make sense because making a car for any audience costs money. Physical raw materials needed to create it. Creating copies of software costs nothing and so -thats- why the subscription model would work so well for it imo. 

sorry for the long rant, a fascinating topic.

tl;dr, subscription model would be fantastic to fight piracy imo.


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

MaestroRage @ Sat May 04 said:


> I don't quite agree with that at all radec. That 15 year old COULD become a customer.


key word being BECOME. this 15 year old is not a customer, regardless if they will become one, so should not be pandered to. i don't know why you feel it is acceptable to trivialize your actions as a 16 year old. you have just told a professional community where a lot of us have scrimped and saved to afford this software for our hobbies and our jobs that you were able to undercut other composers and make money because you were a pirate. why would it matter if you could then afford them after the fact?

the car analogy is very valid. developers take into consideration how many copies they must sell when budgetting their product. a missing sale is a cost that is not covered... these sample libraries dont just pop up for free, they cost hundreds of times more than is being charged for them. the difference is that with a car the cost is relative to the production of a single car. with a piece of software it is relative to the shared cost between targeted customers. i wish people would stop saying 'nothing is lost when something is pirated' and i wont even go on to how exclusivity is completely damaged by piracy. if everyone could print their own copy of a bmw you can bet the demand for original bmws would considerably drop.

look at the prices of adobe. they are not quite the '$8 a month' netflix style prices that would be affordable to the kind of audience being described. these subscription prices are still out of the range that the average pirate would deem acceptable (which is why adobe is still massively pirated). not to mention this is just adobe products. if every dev did it, that would be the >$50 per dev, per month and again people would pirate the devs they could not afford


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

Pzy-Clone @ Sat May 04 said:


> Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > ....and we're back.
> ...



Indeed, sorry if I was a little brusque. It seems odd to me that the library would be selling great, torrent and then suddenly have literally no sales whatsoever for three reasons:

1. If pirating libraries is as easy as folks say, then I'd expect every major library to be up within a week. I've no idea if they are, I haven't looked. So I'm quite surprised if it took a year or so to appear. But regardless of this:

2. While undoubtedly and lamentably true that there are some professionals who use pirated libraries, I'd like to think I'm not the only one who doesn't. It personally has no effect on me if the library is pirated or not - I don't use pirated libraries, end of story. So my logic is - what goes for me, must go for many others, thousands of them, (while accepting that it doesn't go for absolutely everyone).

3. I'd have expected sales of CS2 to have dwindled by natural means anyway.

Daniel has - as ever - made some good points. I think libraries have do something to keep the sales going. Either they can discount (and run the risk of becoming devalued) or they can enhance in some way. In the case of CS, I must have looked and listened to that library 50 times, and each time concluding that a) it sounds superb; b) customers really love it; c) it's reasonably priced and d) I really don't need it. Heck, Sable is clearly a work of genius, but I'm not using that all that much either - LASS presses my buttons, it works in my template, and it remains the first call (though Sable is a gorgeous alternative that I'm very lucky to have).

CS1 was out quite a long time ago, CS2 must be over a year (nearly two? not sure). In the absence of any promotions or new tricks, I'd expect that most of the professional industry would have bought it by now if they were going to.

Now, I could be wrong about all this, maybe literally everyone else out there is that easily swayed by crime... but I doubt it's quite that simple.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > The fact that the 15 year old will pirate the library shouldn't be ignored.
> ...



Firstly...you can rent 60" tv's for exactly this reason. But we are not talking about physical goods, we are talking about digital ones. Which, because of the nature of the way things are set up right now, will most likely be pirated.

With regards to how I am approaching my own library. Firstly a subscription model would be great but we don't have the infrastructure to implement it yet, we are a new company so dont have the funds for the R&D and technical systems to set that up. Secondly I'm not sure how well a subscription would be for a single library, I think I might have to look into the numbers.... A subscription would most certainly pay off better for a company with a large catalouge like 8dio, Cinesamples or EW as they can easily include extra added value (ie bundle rates). I think something like my library might work being separated into smaller libraries and sold individually, again I would have to research how to do that. An advertising model isn't realistic for us yet as we dont have the install base to attract enough advertisers. So I appreciate you calling me out on my own library (lol felt more like you used that to try to win an argument rather than help forward the discussion) and yes it most certainly shines a light on the fact that some models will work for some companies but not others. HOWEVER simply ignoring the 15 year old all together is not the way to go about it. 
Like I said I don't have all the best answers right now, if it was easy someone would have done it by now. BUT ignoring it and thinking "it doesnt matter" is a huge problem.

-DJ


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> My guess (and seeing it a little bit from the developer side too) is that when your product is pirated you are losing sales yes, but that isnt making you lose any money from your actual sales.
> 
> As long as you have a a product people will buy, you still make money (overheads aside) That is why you see investment in new products. Sample library companies are still making money, just not as much as they could have.



Exactly. Clearly there is still good profits to be earned from this business, in spite of piracy. The things people were saying earlier in the thread suggested that once a product is pirated its game over, just seems to have no bearing on reality of the situation.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > My guess (and seeing it a little bit from the developer side too) is that when your product is pirated you are losing sales yes, but that isnt making you lose any money from your actual sales.
> ...



Nope. I can verify that when my library was pirated the sun still shone, birds still sang, chavs still set fire to ford escorts....Business as usual.

PA still does just fine in sales. It could do even better if I could think of a good way to show the value of my work to those who chose to pirate instead. I just need to think of a good way that isnt a kick in the teeth to the people who already supported me 

-DJ


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> Firstly...you can rent 60" tv's for exactly this reason. But we are not talking about physical goods, we are talking about digital ones.


digital or physicals, there are costs with both. when you buy a 60" tv you cover the cost of that tvs production. when you buy a sample lib you dont - cinesamples didnt make your copy of cinebrass for $400, they made it for hundreds of times more and factored in selling x copies at $400 to make back costs.



Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> BUT ignoring it and thinking "it doesnt matter" is a huge problem.


again, i didn't say ignore it, i said 'ignore the 15 year old'. it is the 40 year old that gets it via the same means as the 15 year old because it's easier and they can spend that $500 they 'saved' on a keyboard or pair of monitors that you should worry about, and i dont think there is a solution for that.



Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> So I appreciate you calling me out on my own library


if you're going to make generalized sweeping statements like 'subscription model is the answer' then you should be expected to get called out if youre not doing this. as you said, this method would not work with your library, and you are in the same boat as many companies that get pirated.


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## MaestroRage (May 4, 2013)

yes i'm very well aware I just told the professionals here that I was a pirate radec. I would also bet good money there are a great many pirates here on these forums, admitting it or not.

I'm not trying to trivialize my actions. Being young, no money etc does not justify stealing. Yes it was wrong. However I have scrimped and sacrificed just as much to be where I am now, I would claim even more so then the usual since I started completely blind in this industry and have made many many expensive mistakes in both monetary and time terms. But i'm not here to harp on this. If you want to take issue with it feel free to pm me, we can discuss it.

I'm also not saying nothing is lost when something is pirated, you're putting words in my mouth here. I'm saying your analogy that making things affordable software wise, vs hardware wise is flawed. 

If Alex wanted to, IN THEORY, he could make CS2 $20. It's not a smart move of course even with the hordes of new buyers he probably wouldn't be able to make it profitable.

But if I was making a car, I could never make it $20 from raw material costs alone. In this way no matter what I could never make it accessible to everybody.

And again, you are lumping all pirates together. Yes some pirates, even with the $20-$30 a month subscription plan would pass and pirate things. We've already established some pirates will just pirate forever regardless of how accessible a product is. The point here is there are ways and options we should discuss and try to come up with to win over those who can be.


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## kb123 (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > My guess (and seeing it a little bit from the developer side too) is that when your product is pirated you are losing sales yes, but that isnt making you lose any money from your actual sales.
> ...



All I will say is if that were the case then Dev's wouldn't see a sales drop, because the "legit" sales would continue. This is not the case, sales do drop to zero, so "legit" people clearly search for torrents first, and only purchase when its not available for free. Sad, but true I'm sorry to say.


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## radec (May 4, 2013)

MaestroRage @ Sat May 04 said:


> I'm also not saying nothing is lost when something is pirated, you're putting words in my mouth here. I'm saying your analogy that making things affordable software wise, vs hardware wise is flawed.


my apologies, i simply feel the analogy is valid. both have costs that need to be covered. they handle it a different way.



MaestroRage @ Sat May 04 said:


> The point here is there are ways and options we should discuss and try to come up with to win over those who can be.


i do agree there are things to be done. i just disagree that making an affordable subscription option for the low, low end non customer is a good idea


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:


> All I will say is if that were the case then Dev's wouldn't see a sales drop, because the "legit" sales would continue..



For some reason you think i am saying there are no legitimate lost sales from piracy. But some lost sales doesnt mean all sales and doesnt mean you cant make a profit and it be a worthwhile venture. When I worked in retail they work into their business model breakages and stock that goes bad or gets stolen, as long as the profit still goes up they are a successful business.



> .his is not the case, sales do drop to zero, so "legit" people clearly search for torrents first, and only purchase when its not available for free. Sad, but true I'm sorry to say



Its amazing how you can say this especially when a developer in this thread (Dan) is telling you that he does just fine in sales despite piracy. Does his experience not count or is it just inconvenient so you have to ignore it?

Pretty much all libraries get pirated, if sales dropped to zero there would be no reason to keep making them and yet more money is being spent to produce even more expensive libraries than ever before, from companies with a long history of sampling that really would know better if it was so impossible to make money. You really think it makes sense to think they operate on losses that would add up to the hundreds of thousands, for the love of it?


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

radec @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Firstly...you can rent 60" tv's for exactly this reason. But we are not talking about physical goods, we are talking about digital ones.
> ...



Paying a few thousand dollars for a tv is out of reach for most people 15 or 40 years old..if there was a way to get one for free with little consequence, people would do it. I think we agree on that. HOWEVER that is the exact reason the rental market exisits. It costs a shit load of money to make a tv and the company has 2 options they leave it sitting in a warehouse until someone pays for it OR they rent it out for $8 a week making a little bit of money where there was originally none. 

I AGREE that companies need to cover their costs. However when your software is being pirated it becomes like the tv in the warehouse, you can choose to let your library sit on these pirate sites getting downloaded for free ...or you can find a way to make it appealing to those who want your stuff but cant afford it...ie subscription/rentals



Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> BUT ignoring it and thinking "it doesnt matter" is a huge problem.


again, i didn't say ignore it, i said 'ignore the 15 year old'. it is the 40 year old that gets it via the same means as the 15 year old because it's easier and they can spend that $500 they 'saved' on a keyboard or pair of monitors that you should worry about, and i dont think there is a solution for that..[/quote]

Exactly, its in the companies interest to make the customer want to split with their money. Making something and expecting someone to buy it, unfortunately, is a pretty outdated concept. Like I mentioned before, you have to show them why it is worth it. (lol yes I'm going there) Look at the porn industry. Perhaps the single most pirated business in the world yet they are still in business and making plenty of money, why? Becuase they found a way to show the customer added value, be it better quality or exclusive benefits. They made it work. (disclaimer a 15 year old is NOT a suitable porn customer)



Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> So I appreciate you calling me out on my own library


if you're going to make generalized sweeping statements like 'subscription model is the answer' then you should be expected to get called out if youre not doing this. as you said, this method would not work with your library, and you are in the same boat as many companies that get pirated.[/quote].[/quote]

I justified why I am personally not, mainly I havn't figured it out for myself yet. I am not saying subscription model is the only way about this whole thing, I am merely offering examples and suggestions, it worked for tv film and music so it was a good foundation to build my point on. Again if this was a simple thing to figure out, companies would have done it already....thats what I am doing right now, having a discussion about it, brainstorming, gauging opinion! I don't mind you calling me out on it at all other than it seemed like an attempt to try and discredit what I am saying. Which doesn't help the situation much.

-DJ


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

FWIW, personally I'm not a big fan of subscription as a model or a solution.

It would be interesting to see a library like Cornucopia have really bold pricing - say, $49. This would produce howls of protest from "race to the bottom" folks. Be canny about it - go for the near-constant promotion of EWQL - 75% for a limited time! Group Buy specials! Etc etc. Give the bedroom guys and teenagers the chance to purchase a great library for a price they can actually afford - give 'em a taste of legitimacy and you never know, they might like it. (Kirk Hunter did a very successful rock-bottom price group buy a while ago, seemed like a good idea to me).

Libraries of Cornucopia's quality at that price still wouldn't affect the pro market too much, imo. It's an ensemble library, no legato (I'm not dissing it - I think it sounds terrific - just pointing out where it lies in the grand scheme of things). I may be guilty of being teenagerist, but I'd expect many would be more into Cornucopia than Sable Vol 2 anyway.

The basic maths is kindergaten stuff. As Maestro says, with no physical costs, 10 sales @ $10 = 1 sale @ $100 (probably a small additional overhead). If you get 10 times the volume of sales @10, you end up with the same amount of money in the end. Thing is - every library will be different, depending on the exact market they're going for.

kb - I'm extremely dubious that things are anything like as black and white as you suggest.


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## kb123 (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > All I will say is if that were the case then Dev's wouldn't see a sales drop, because the "legit" sales would continue..
> ...



But Ed. so many devs have come on to VI and said their sales have dropped to *ZERO *the moment they have gone on to a pirate site. So, how much clearer does it need to be?


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:


> But Ed. so many devs have come on to VI and said their sales have dropped to *ZERO *the moment they have gone on to a pirate site. So, how much clearer does it need to be?



OK, link please. I've never personally read one who has said that.


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

This kind of posturing (and/or simply making shit up) is just not helpful, from either side.

Of course sales drop. But they certainly don't drop to zero. That just doesn't make any sense given that (most of) these companies are still in business, and still spending money to advertise these products (just look up). If you don't buy that argument, at the VERY least I can confirm that CS2 has sold at least one copy recently -- to me. 

But anyway...

I think the subscription idea is fantastic.

As a student just discovering VIs, I took the plunge and bought the VSL Special Edition. That was around 500 frickin' dollars. At the time, it was a BIG DEAL. It was stressful.

If I'd had the option to "subscribe" to the library instead, for say $15 a month, I'd have taken it in a heartbeat. At this point I'd have given them almost a grand... :lol: And I would have brought some friends along too.


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## Pzy-Clone (May 4, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:


> Pzy-Clone @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



No prob, and hey.... i never said anything towards anything in general, just this very one library..where i read a comment from the dev in regards to why they would not release any new libraries. Why people assume this has to be applied to ALL developers as a matter of fact, either as right or wrong, is beyond me.

Case by case scenario, i suspect some make money, some don`t, some break even and some do it for the hell of it. Why do people need to make a principle debate about it, when we really.., or most of us anyway...have no fxxxing clue what the facts and figures are anyway. yawn.

Perhaps CS2 would not have sold a single copy ( if that is the case) had it not been pirated , it was never a major release with loads of promotion, besides a few forums.
Who knows, i don`t , at least...maybe the CS2 peeps had a bad day, and will come back and smack up our asses with a mindblowing brass lib they had in the pipeline for 2 years ? 

What seems to be clear, is that the interest in sample libs, is bigger now than ever, so perhaps the reality is both, more piracy and more sales..., i know everyone in here keeps informing everyone else what they bought at all times, so there has to be some sales to go around atleast, even if half of them come from just Ed and Repeat ;P


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:


> kb - I'm extremely dubious that things are anything like as black and white as you suggest.



I think its more black and white than you think. You either make money from pirates or you do nothing and make nothing. How to achieve that is the grey area, and the point I am trying to have a discussion on 

Again I use subscription model as an example. There are many examples of it being affective in TV, Film and Music. Netflix made finding and streaming tv shows and films more appealing and easier to access than it is to pirate them. If you want to pirate whole tv show season you are looking at a few gigs of hard drive space for hd movies, lots of agressive in your face advertising, potential viruses and malware...Netflix made it so you search for its name and press play. Thats it, in full HD, it even plays the next episode when its done. NOW I know this will not perfectly transfer over to the sample library industry but its a perfect example of how a company demonstrated to pirates the worth of its service. They made it easier to be legitimate than it was to pirate. THAT is what we need. Again I am not saying subscription is the be all end all but if you could at least grasp WHY the Netflix model worked for TV and Film we can get on the same page.

-DJ


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

kb123 @ Sat May 04 said:


> But Ed. so many devs have come on to VI and said their sales have dropped to *ZERO *the moment they have gone on to a pirate site. So, how much clearer does it need to be?



I've never seen that, but even if that is true that a few said something to that effect, you need to demonstrate thats true as a rule, not just because of one or two developers had a shitty experience. Its also very likely that they were being hyperbolic, which apparently you've never considered. I think whats most likely is that they never said that, you just read what you wanted to read. I mean really, you actually think they are being literal if they said their sales drop to _zero_? So absolutely no one bought the product once it was pirated? As I said, Dan, a developer which had no copy protection whatsoever on his very popular product (aside a watermark on the files, correct me if Im wrong) is telling you he still does just fine in sales. How do you explain that? You want to cherry pick and make sweeping generalisations about an entire industry, and you're not even cherry picking well.

Are all these developers very rich and literally crazy, where they in many cases spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on developing products that they already know they have no possible hope of ever even breaking even with, let alone turn a profit on? Your view of this doesnt actually match with reality but you seem perfectly happy with these massive contradictions. Could it be that maybe there's some aspect to this you havent considered?


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## HugoCarpinteiro (May 4, 2013)

I found this post from Nine Volt Audio, a VI developer talking about piracy.

ninevolt:
"One pirate site currently lists 13,699 illegal downloads of TAIKO 2. If each person had paid $1.00 for his or her copy from this site, it would amount to more than the library has grossed so far. I disclose this information to illustrate the point that these libraries are investments, and getting them "in the black" takes time, effort and further capital to promote them. "



http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=365466


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

HugoCarpinteiro @ Sat May 04 said:


> I found this post from Nine Volt Audio, a VI developer talking about piracy.
> 
> ninevolt:
> "One pirate site currently lists 13,699 illegal downloads of TAIKO 2. If each person had paid $1.00 for his or her copy from this site, it would amount to more than the library has grossed so far. I disclose this information to illustrate the point that these libraries are investments, and getting them "in the black" takes time, effort and further capital to promote them. "
> ...



Hi Hugo, and welcome to the forum! I remember that sad thread. Now I'm speculating, but it could be that NVA made $12,000 from that Taiko library. Does that cover costs? Dunno. But obviously it's a long way from zero sales. Actually NVA are an interesting case, they've repackaged their entire range as a bundle price. I'd be interested to hear how that went - I was a little dubious myself, I kept looking at the range and thinking, gee there's 2 or 3 I'd like, but I don't really want all the clutter. It's kind of the opposite solution to the piecemeal approach, which is what NI do so it must work in the right circumstances. Personally I'd have preferred to choose 3 libs for $100 or something, but that's just me, we're all different an' all that.

And, taking the absolute worst case scenario, thanks to Cobra we know that CS2 has sold one copy in a post-torrent world! I agree with Cobra's point about hyperbole (and Ed's). It doesn't help anyone's case to claim sales have dropped to zero when they clearly haven't, it has the opposite effect.


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

I also wonder if kb123 managed to interpret NVA's post as saying sales droped to "zero" after TAIKO2 was pirated. 

Hyperbole wouldnt be so bad if people didnt forget thats what it is.


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## andy_i (May 4, 2013)

I bought CS2 two weeks ago - love the product. Thumbs up for CS3.


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## Guy Rowland (May 4, 2013)

Wow, there's a breakout of ex-lurkers! Welcome Andy_i. That's TWO post-torrent CS2 users... doubled in 16 minutes.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Sat May 04 said:


> HugoCarpinteiro @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Now I'm speculating, but it could be that NVA made $12,000 from that Taiko library. Does that cover costs? Dunno. But obviously it's a long way from zero sales.



On this point its worth re hashing something I said earlier about companies under-estimating piracy. 

In this day and age. As much as it sucks and how much of a ball ache it can be....Piracy exsists and if you release something digitally you should count on it being stolen and distributed for free at some point. 

This will sound controversial but if companies are not accepting piracy as a constant in our industry they only have themselves to blame. Before you spend money on creating a product you _have_ to decide if you will make that money back. If you will, the nyou green light the project. If you wont you scrap it or adjust it until you will.....thats business 101. 

Its terrible that it must be this way, but as the industry is right now, in that initial discussion you have to account for piracy. 'How many do I expect to be sold before it gets pirated?', 'will people still buy it given the option of piracy?', 'what can I do to prevent piracy for as long as possible?', 'how can I make it more appealing so that the legitimate version is better than the illegal?'. 

I sometimes get the impression that people were expecting not to be pirated. Because you spend more money on a product doesn't mean people will see your efforts and decide to buy, if they cant see it being worth the money for them...and if you put the library out of reach of the majority to attempt to cover cost you have to factor in the fact those that cannot obtain it legally and still want it will probably pirate...and then when that happens, will you _still_make back your money. If not scrap it or change it. That's just simple business.

-DJ


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## devastat (May 4, 2013)

Watermarking sample content should be an effective way to help prevent piracy. If nothing else, it should at least help to trace where the audio content was leaked from. It could be used on music tracks as well (and some do).


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

A lot of sophistry here IMHO,

it is simple: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you make ANY excuse or rationalization for pirating, you are the latter.

We all need to condemn it in the strongest possible terms., like "if you are a pirate, you are a scumbag."


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> A lot of sophistry here IMHO,
> 
> it is simple: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you make ANY excuse or rationalization for pirating, you are the latter.
> 
> We all need to condemn it in the strongest possible terms., like "if you are a pirate, you are a scumbag."



Regardless of whether that is debatable or not, hyperbolic arguments such as saying that you cannot make a profitable business as a sample developer, that once a library is pirated you will never sell any copies ever again, is not helping anyone. If you're coming into the argument with this attitude any reasonable bystander is likely to dismiss a lot of your concerns, many of which may be valid, as hysterical.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> A lot of sophistry here IMHO,
> 
> it is simple: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you make ANY excuse or rationalization for pirating, you are the latter.
> 
> We all need to condemn it in the strongest possible terms., like "if you are a pirate, you are a scumbag."



I'm not rationalizing nor excusing piracy on any level (if you are referring to me).

Its a an unfortunate fact that digital products will most likely at some point be pirated. I'm saying companies should take this into account when planning to create or release a library.

I am also trying to discuss ways of turning those pirates into legitimate customers.

-DJ


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

OK, let's all agree that Pirates Are Filthy Criminal Scumbags. Witnessed this 4th of May MMXIII, etc. etc. etc. *GAVEL*

Is the problem now solved?

Of course not. No amount of righteous indignation will put money back in these companies' bank accounts.


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

I wan't expecting this thread to turn into a piracy discussion topic. 

All I needed to know is if Cinematic Strings 3 will be released in the near future. :roll: 

I subscribe to the Adobe Creative Suite, for a monthly subscription fee, that I find very reasonable, I get the entire Creative Suite of apps. on my computer, this would have cost me thousands of $ if I was to buy the CS6 package. Adobe is also expected to release their next version of the Creative Suite CS7 on May 6th ! So as a subscriber I'm able to use their latest, and greatest apps. all I have to do is keep my subscription alive. 

Do you think that a Subscription based Sample Library service would make sense, and possibly help in dramatically reducing the pirating issue ? I would guess it has a lot of potential, but developers need to get together, and discuss this at a conference of some type. imho. this looks like where many digital products are heading these days. Maybe it's time the sample library business model needs to move forward, and evolve. Plus I feel the user base of Libraries would be substantially increased via a more affordable monthly subscription service, compared to the current system. Which seems to encourage piracy/theft of SW products. 

It would be nice to hear from Cinematic Strings, to get some feedback directly from them. So far that has not happened. 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

Here is what I think some of you are missing: it starts with all of us. If parents consistently give their kids the message that it is absolutely wrong, the number of kids who pirate will diminish. Not go away, but diminish.

But if people give the message, as I think some of you are doing, "well, sure it is wrong, but it happens" then you are de facto rationalizing the practice and it will become more and more societally acceptable.


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## MaestroRage (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> A lot of sophistry here IMHO,
> 
> it is simple: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you make ANY excuse or rationalization for pirating, you are the latter.
> 
> We all need to condemn it in the strongest possible terms., like "if you are a pirate, you are a scumbag."



Ah, the 'ol "you're either with us or against us!" mentality. It's simple and pointless statements like that which never yield solutions to problems. Condemning pirates and calling them scum effectively cuts off any chance of converting them into legit buyers imo. 

I'm wondering if perhaps creating more "demo" versions of products could help. Either by removing keys from the keyboard (or even just providing one octave). One common grounds of piracy is not knowing if putting $xxx of dollars down on a product will pay off. 

SoundIron was doing a fascinating thing where they were selling micro packs of their libraries. I wonder if that helped in any significant way.

In the perfect world, the way i'd see it is treat the product like a game with DLC. Lets take CS2 for example here. You buy the core package, which is very barebones (like maybe only the legato of each section). For idk, $80. That's an immediate no brainer start.

Then lets say you want to buy the pizzicato sections. That would be like $10 per section (so total of $50 for all 5). You get what I mean? Ultimately if you buy each articulation/section piece by piece like this you could stand to make even more money by having the total cost come up to something like $700. There are countless articles and case studies that have shown players who spend money on free to play games for example actually end up spending hundreds and hundreds (in some rare cases, thousands) but will not pay $60 upfront for any game.

I for one think that would solve a lot of issues. People get to try out a library for really cheap with little risk of feeling burned if they didn't like it, there is no need for subscriptions, there is a HUGE accessibility boost across the sheets.

Actually now that I think about it, I would absolutely love to have a service like Steam for VST's. Have a huge concentrated area like KVRaudio that has all the vst's available in one place so you can also find things really easily. Buy core elements/different components. 

Infrastructure though... that's a heavy heavy investment in infrastructure. Only somebody like Native Instruments could pull it off imo.


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## ThomasL (May 4, 2013)

The problem is in my humble opinion much, much bigger.

Take Photoshop. (I have been using it since version 3. For a good 10 years I used it several hours per day, everyday of the week. I had a valid license.)

Photoshop is quite a remarkable program. It can do everything you need to professionally enhance/edit/create imagery of (almost) any kind.

Everybody want's it. "Everybody" is using it. I don't know exactly how it is faring these days with Adobes cloud-syncing and what not but I believe there still are cracks out there.

Photoshop has more features than the average user will ever need. Photoshop has more features than almost everybody needs. It certainly has more than I need/needed.

But Photoshop is THE standard. People aren't editing images, they are PHOTOSHOPPING them. Average Joe who doesn't spend $10 on software yearly has it, because he wants the best EVEN though he has no clue of it's features.

Why is this? Simple, a few people are actually making money of this. Ever wondered why/how it can be that there are magazines like "Photoshop User" with a ton of tutorials for creating the simplest little thing which "professionals" wouldn't even bother learning? Average Joe wants to learn. And there is advertising money. Would those magazines ever exist if you needed a valid license to read it? I think not. Would all those people buy Photoshop if there were no access cracks? Certainly not.

Long story but I feel that "everybody" is starting to see digital as "free" more or less and so long somebody/anybody is making any sort of money on this situation pirated software will be here.

Note: I'm not saying that the magazines are condoning (correct word?) piracy, but they can't hide from the fact that they are making money of it.

Note 2: The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is excluded from my example 

Well, my 2 cents.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> Here is what I think some of you are missing: it starts with all of us. If parents consistently give their kids the message that it is absolutely wrong, the number of kids who pirate will diminish. Not go away, but diminish.
> 
> But if people give the message, as I think some of you are doing, "well, sure it is wrong, but it happens" then you are de facto rationalizing the practice and it will become more and more societally acceptable.



Telling the naughty pirates what they are doing is wrong and that they are scum will most likely get you the polite 'two fingers and fuck you' response. Every other day we hear stories about how TV Network here and movie studio there are telling pirates what they are doing is wrong and hitting people with massive life destroying lawsuits yet piracy still exists. So I think the whole sending a message thing sort of flys over the head of the majority here.

Now adjusting a business stratagy to make your products more accessible to people who would otherwise have no other means than piracy to get your product, is in no way sending a bad message. When Netflix was launched and people realized you could stream all those tv shows and films, on demand for such a low cost...did you hear people claim that Netflix was promoting piracy, that it was saying piracy is ok to do? Absolutely not! it gave those without the means to access the content, the means and if their figures are anything to go by people jumped on it en mass.

Would you seriously look me in the face an say Netflix's overwhelming success and the fact it is proven to convert those who would normally pirate into paying customers rationalizing piracy or making it more socially acceptable? Nexflix is a prime example of a company who understood why people were pirating and they created a service which would would be more appealing. So far it seems to be working incredibly well, this is the sort of focus we need to get into our industry.

Also, pointing to the fact that piracy does exist is not rationalizing it. It is something that _will_ affect developers one way or another. To ignore it would be crazy. Again stating that doesn't mean I think its ok, but the fact is...it will happen and developers need to be pre prepared for it.

-DJ


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

I think Jay's position on this is really that if we keep saying its terrible that will stop or reduce piracy. Thats why he has the "you're either with us or against us" mentality, because it means that if you waver even slightly from a position thats about as nuanced as "piracy is terrible and thats that!!", you're not helping toward that goal, that if everyone just said what he says then this would be effective. Its really a stage of denial, because of course piracy isnt going to go away just because some people are really really unhappy about it.


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

I'll certainly continue to not pirate anything, and will make damn sure my kids (when they exist) don't pirate anything, and perhaps one day we'll live in a bright beautiful piracy-free utopian wonderland.

In the meantime, however, the combination of 1) sticking your head in the sand, 2) acting surprised and offended, and 3) publicly denouncing people, seems like a crappy business model.

Muziksculp (bless your sanity), I'd be interested in a Cinematic Strings 3 too. It wouldn't be an immediate must-buy for me, as I'm quite satisfied with my strings already (CS2 and LASS), but if there was a new version that offered some combination of harmonics, con sordino, portamento/glissando, col legno, horror effects, etc.... I would take a serious look.


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

mk282 @ Sat May 04 said:


> Since CS2 was pirated, I sense Alex and David are pretty much discouraged regarding producing any new libraries.



They announced a while back they were working on woodwinds as the next library.


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

Really?

Any word on a release date? (Like, what year at least?)


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

RasmusFors @ Sat May 04 said:


> On the note of piracy
> 
> I think that most of the pirates are amateurs who only use their pirated samples/loop for "bedroom mockups", with the only purpose of showing it to family/friends. All proffesionals buy their stuff because they earn money from making their music. If you were a 15 year old boy who only wanted to make a cool beat to show to your friends, would you then buy a 399 sample library ? Most amateurs don't have that amount of money. I'm not defending the pirates, but people need to understand that by pirating a library you give it a an audience which never would have bought it anyways. It's still stealing and still wrong, but if 100 people downloaded "sample library x", "devolper x" haven't lost 100 customers.



Utter. BULL. You are still, in a covert manner, justifying stealing. Too many devs have testified here that when copy protection is in place, sales go up.

Don't repeal: Thou shalt not steal.

@Daniel - sorry, I vehemently disagree with your position on USB keys. Between iLok and Syncrosoft (Cubase, Vienna and others), and whatever key Reason and Samplitude are using, USB keys are now ubiquitous. 

Protect Thyself and Thine Investment in Thyself. Minimize as best as possible the opportunity for people to steal from you.


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

TomMartin @ Sat May 04 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Cinematic Strings is a good library with a lot of bang for the buck and yet they are apparently getting ripped off a lot, so that shoots your theory out the window for me.
> ...



So. What. This is still a professional's industry. It's not the McDonald's value menu. 

Professionals understand the time, energy and detail that goes into creating products we use to make a living doing something we love, and that requires significant risk on our part to do, rather than finding a 9-5 gig. If an amateur wants a library, do what lots of pros do, including myself: save for it.


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

music2emotions @ Sat May 04 said:


> Seems to me that Money is indeed the root of all evil...



The correct translation from the Greek is, "The fawning craving desire for money is the root of all evil."


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

CobraTrumpet @ Sat May 04 said:


> Really?
> 
> Any word on a release date? (Like, what year at least?)



A release date was not mentioned, but the sampling, from what I understand, has been done in the same hall as the strings.


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## mark812 (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> I wan't expecting this thread to turn into a piracy discussion topic.
> 
> All I needed to know is if Cinematic Strings 3 will be released in the near future. :roll:
> 
> ...



Why don't you just ask them directly?


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

Peter Alexander @ Sat May 04 said:


> @Daniel - sorry, I vehemently disagree with your position on USB keys. Between iLok and Syncrosoft (Cubase, Vienna and others), and whatever key Reason and Samplitude are using, USB keys are now ubiquitous.



Personally I think USB keys would be absolutely wonderful if all the licences for sample libraries (and software) were not actually stored on it, capable of being lost by fire, theft, damage and well you get the idea. If it was instead stored on a database in the cloud and the USB was merely a conduit and meant nothing if it was lost or stolen, that would be fantastic.


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## Andrew Aversa (May 4, 2013)

Here's my take as a developer since 2008. Our stuff has been pirated - a lot. No copy protection, no iLok, etc. However, Shreddage 2 did very well despite being pirated and sales have continued beyond the day that it hit the torrent websites. Most popular developers here do VERY well in SPITE of piracy - 8dio, Cinesamples, Soundiron, Spitfire etc. have all thrived, expanded, and tackled bigger & bigger projects. 

I think Jay is correct that we do all need to do our personal part in condemning piracy - no arguments here. I frequent many forums / chat rooms / etc. for music production and anytime I hear about someone pirating something, I remind them that there are many excellent free tools, and that they should not be pirating commercial tools. Better to save your money and buy something, learn it, and use it properly. I am also a moderator on multiple forums including the largest music making subreddit on Reddit.com and I delete any mentions of piracy that I see.

*BUT...* it simply does not end there. Doing that stuff will not solve piracy. I agree with Daniel that we as developers must seek ways to capture segments of the market that normally pirate. Netflix is a perfect example. Tons of people torrent movies, but when Netflix is available in their area, the torrent activity drops dramatically. The ONLY explanation for this is that people WERE willing to pay for content, just not with the old distribution systems. Likewise, Steam (for video games) has enabled developers to do extraordinarily well by providing fast, easy delivery and low prices. 

This does not mean taking a $500 product and changing the price to $50, obviously, but let us remember that all things are relative. Early orchestral libraries were thousands of dollars. Back before we had QLSO Silver, Gold, and Platinum there was just the one thing and it was $2000-3000 IIRC. It was common to see new Soundsonline products debut at $1000+. I remember buying RA for that much, a price that would be unheard of today. The original NI Komplete was $1000 for a long time, so was Logic. Symphony of Voices by Spectrasonics was $400+ - now you can get Omnisphere for just a bit more than that, and 100x more sounds.

Why the trend toward lower prices? The answer should be simple... because over the last 10-15 years the market for home computer music production has exploded and the audience is far bigger. East West (and everyone else) realized that while you can do well selling orchestral libraries for $2000+, having versions for $200-400 will result in way more profit overall. In other words, developers have already been changing with the times and adjusting their pricing to reflect the larger audience for music software. There is no arbitrary price a library 'should' be - we just try to price our products at a point where we can capture the largest audience at the most profitable point.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Peter Alexander @ Sat May 04 said:


> RasmusFors @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > On the note of piracy
> ...



Just being common doesnt by default mean they are the best way to handle copy protection. Absolutely they work but like I mentioned in my earlier post, if your ilok goes down, you are shit out of luck. Even after spending the high upfront fee, you are completely denied access to something you paid good money for...if you want to use it again you have to pay for the privilege, surely you can see how this is a negative? Its one of those DRM system that feels like it punishes the legitimate user. Of course the DRM is there to stop pirates and its ultimately their fault however a customer on a deadline who spent $1000+ on a sample library that doesn't work because the ilok died.

Out of interest what are you basing your first comment on? I can't think of an example where adding DRM has _increased_ sales. The only way to judge that would to be to have a library that was already out then add copy protection and see if sales went up. I think what you might have meant is that once copy protection came in less people pirated it, which doesnt mean sales went up....the only way other than including copy protection post release is to compare sales figures to a previous library, which still wouldn't work as product 2 might be more popular than product 1 DRM or not.



> So. What. This is still a professional's industry. It's not the McDonald's value menu.
> 
> Professionals understand the time, energy and detail that goes into creating products we use to make a living doing something we love, and that requires significant risk on our part to do, rather than finding a 9-5 gig. If an amateur wants a library, do what lots of pros do, including myself: save for it.



The fact that its a professional industry doesn't mean anything to someone who wants to get their hands on the latest sound. I agree, they should save money and buy it like the rest of us...but we know thats not happening, if the option is there they will jump on it. Many here have used 'the path of least resistance' terminology a few times. I for one would love to see a system in our industry where that person who doesnt want to pay the large upfront fee will still be able to become a customer instead of ignoring them, leaving piracy as the only option to them. I'm not justifying it, or excusing it, just pointing out that someone who wants it bad enough but doesnt have the means to get it legitimately will still get it. Again its something we developers should be aware of before making decisions that affect us financially.

-DJ


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

zircon_st @ Sat May 04 said:


> Here's my take as a developer since 2008. Our stuff has been pirated - a lot. No copy protection, no iLok, etc. However, Shreddage 2 did very well despite being pirated and sales have continued beyond the day that it hit the torrent websites. Most popular developers here do VERY well in SPITE of piracy - 8dio, Cinesamples, Soundiron, Spitfire etc. have all thrived, expanded, and tackled bigger & bigger projects.
> 
> I think Jay is correct that we do all need to do our personal part in condemning piracy - no arguments here. I frequent many forums / chat rooms / etc. for music production and anytime I hear about someone pirating something, I remind them that there are many excellent free tools, and that they should not be pirating commercial tools. Better to save your money and buy something, learn it, and use it properly. I am also a moderator on multiple forums including the largest music making subreddit on Reddit.com and I delete any mentions of piracy that I see.
> 
> ...



I agree with everything you said here, Steam was another great example that slipped my mind. 

I think we have got to a point where libraries shouldn't necessarily get cheaper, there just needs easier way for people to access them....there is a reason furniture stores let you spread the cost of a tv or sofa over 6 months. Only a select few can afford large upfront fees. As developers we have to realize it is better to receive our products asking over a longer amount of time than to lose that customer to piracy because we wouldn't move on their options to access it. The market is there, its just being overlooked.

-DJ


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

mark812 @ Sat May 04 said:


> muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I wan't expecting this thread to turn into a piracy discussion topic.
> ...



Actually, I did. 

I emailed them a question a few weeks ago via their website's contact link, asking about this. But so far have not received a reply/feedback from Cinematic Strings.


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

Daniel, I have personally developed and launched more products, mostly in music, then anyone else on this forum. So, I DO have SOME experience in this area. 

1. You have a personal financial responsibility to yourself, as best as possible, to protect your creativity. 

2. You can never eliminate piracy you can only minimize it. But again, as others have reported here, when piracy was minimized with some type of CP, sales and income went up. Eric Persing has stated this more than once. Last summer, Cinesamples posted what happened when one of their products hit the servers. 

3. Granted, USB keys are NOT perfect, but they are a start. The issues you brought up are company policies, not the key.

4. Many devs unfortunately assume that most everyone in music are sales prospects for their libraries. This is not so. The first qualifying sales characteristic is the financial ability to buy a computer. Parents buy $3000 music computers and game systems for their 15-year-olds, not 15-year-olds. The 15-year-old talked about in these discussions is stealing because he can, because he has the means and the fast Internet connection to do so. In marketing, 12-24 year olds are grouped together as a soda pop buy and the musical instruments they can most often save up for and can buy are guitars, bass guitars, etc. 

5. The cloud solution is both interesting and scary. We have the monthly Adobe subscription to the CS series. Great deal. But you are forever locked into monthly payments. If you let the subscription expire, you have no software. Therefore, you have to buy the entire bundle at list price. Adobe discounts, like Apple discounts, are minimal. As Thomas Mavin brought up earlier, Adobe is crucial to our production in other areas. So anything we do, especially the more we do video lectures, the more dependent we become on Adobe. 

6. Companies are able to thrive even with piracy because they've spent years building up customer lists of people who value their work enough to pay for it. Thus, a devs customer list is one of its chief and most valuable assets. 

7. If you want to reach a broader audience that's younger, then pay attention to the education market at the collegiate level. Every year you have a renewable customer base. Cubase is now on the iPad for $49.95. There is a new market. 

Consider reading these columns I specifically write for devs: The Consumers Are Coming:
http://soniccontrol.tv/bucks/marketing/


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> [
> Telling the naughty pirates what they are doing is wrong and that they are scum will most likely get you the polite 'two fingers and fuck you' response. Every other day we hear stories about how TV Network here and movie studio there are telling pirates what they are doing is wrong and hitting people with massive life destroying lawsuits yet piracy still exists. So I think the whole sending a message thing sort of flys over the head of the majority here.
> 
> Now adjusting a business stratagy to make your products more accessible to people who would otherwise have no other means than piracy to get your product, is in no way sending a bad message. When Netflix was launched and people realized you could stream all those tv shows and films, on demand for such a low cost...did you hear people claim that Netflix was promoting piracy, that it was saying piracy is ok to do? Absolutely not! it gave those without the means to access the content, the means and if their figures are anything to go by people jumped on it en mass.
> ...



Well, Netflix itself is not pirating, they are airing licensed product.

You CAN educate if you start young. Let me tell you a story:

When I wads 15 , I played in a rock band. At the time I sang lead and played a Wurlitzer Electric Piano, which had 4 legs so I played sitting down. I thought it would be cooler to play standing up, like the guitarist and bassist. We ere playing at a restaurant that had a tall waiter's stand on wheels I put the Wurly up on it and it was great.

At the end of the evening when we were packing up, my bass player said "Take it with you."

I said, "But that's stealing."

He said, "Not really and they have a bunch of them, they won't miss it."

So I took it home. The next day my Dad saw it and asked where I got it. I told him. He immediately packed me in the car and the stand, drove to the restaurant, made me confess and apologize. The owner was nice about it, but clearly not amused. My allowance was forfeited for 2 weeks.

I never stole anything again.

Fast forward a number of years and I would swap libraries with my friends. Then I became friendly with a developer who explained why this was EXACTLY the same thing as stealing that stand. In short, I was being a scumbag.

I stopped doing so and now I would never do that or run a crack.

If you catch your 15 year old with a crack of Photoshop and say, "This is wrong, delete it and next time I see you using pirated software you lose your computer use for a week", EVENTUALLY you will raise a generation that understands that it is wrong and does so far less than THIS generation, which is full of scumbags

You don't get them to stop stealing by making painless alternatives to stealing; you teach them that it is morally wrong.

I may be quixotic here but I would rather stand up for doing the right thing and be considered naive or foolish than not do so and give people the message that while it is wrong but not that bad as there are no real consequences to you for doing it, since so many do it.

OK, I'm done.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

Peter Alexander @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel, I have personally developed and launched more products, mostly in music, then anyone else on this forum. So, I DO have SOME experience in this area.
> 
> 1. You have a personal financial responsibility to yourself, as best as possible, to protect your creativity.
> 
> ...



Haha firstly I respect the fact that you have plenty of experience with this subject however even though I may not have released as many products I would like to hope my opinion, even if disagreed with, is respected in turn. I may be new to the scene but it doesn't by default mean what I am saying is wrong or carries no insight 

1. Of course you have to protect your creativity however that doesn't necessarily mean that copy protection will do this for you. As we have all seen, 99% of the developers who post here have had something pirated, so DRM is clearly not working as well as it should. I am talking about a shift in mindset for developers from trying to make libraries harder to crack to making them easier to obtain legally. If piracy is going to happen anyway, does it not make sense to try to have as many of those not willing to pay your upfront fee, obtain the library legitimately (do you let the expensive tv sit in a warehouse or do you rent it out)

2. I totally agree you can not completely eradicate piracy however I am suggesting copy protection is not the only means to minimize it. Look at it this way, you put some fancy new DRM on your library and it doesnt get craked right away. The pro users pay the fee as always and those that can't afford it dont have it. You now have a large group of people who want that library but can't get it, this is all the incentive a clever entrepreneurial pirate hacker needs to work out a way to circumvent your new system, because he can rope all of those who cant afford your product into clicking through his ads to get the pirated crack, they may even have to pay a small fee if its in high enough demand. NOW consider if you have a way for those who cant afford to legally obtain it, to get there hands on it without piracy....all of a sudden there is not such a large group begging for that new DRM to be cracked which offers a much lower insentive to the clever hacker who will not have the 'customer' he wants to justify his 'work'. Like I say not just Copy Protection is the only way to reduce piracy when you look at the bigger picture.

3. I agree they are not perfect, and they do work to an extent however I was just offering my opinion that there could be better ways to deal with it to make it less of a pain for a customer. Ed's suggestion of licences on the cloud are a good example, then you dont have issues should it break or it gets lost.

4. Comparing hardware to software is a little irrelevant in this discussion. The way the society and the law sees guitar theft and guitar sample library theft are very different unfortunately. The examples are in the interest of being a realist. The mom will buy the guitar because its the only way little timmy will get his guitar. However if timmy decides he wants to start writing music with the big new sample library and he can get a pirated copy he will chose that option if its the only way he can. Lets assume timmy is the 15 year old and there was a way even he could get it legitimately, you jsut made a new customer out of someone you had written off. Its easier for timmy to ask mummy for £10 a month rather than £1000.

5. Lets say you are 18 and moving away from home for the first time. Chanses are you and your family cant afford the £100,000+ price of a new house, so what do you do? you rent. You dont get to keep the house after your 'subscription' ends. You did however get to live away from home for the time you paid rent and all the benefits that includes. I apply this principle to the part you made on cloud computing and software rental.

6. Totally agree, a companies customers are its key assets. I am suggesting expanding those assets by making libraries easier to obtain legally, showing those new customers why you are worth investing in, giving more likelihood of them investing in you again.

7. The education discount in itself is almost an anti piracy measure at this point. It comes from the fact businesses know students dont have much money and offer a discount....they would rather have their business at a lower fee than not at all (tv in the warehouse?) Now if you could apply this principle to little timmy or the 40 year old working 3 jobs to support his family but wants to activity get involved in music creation. Pirates come from all walks of life.

-DJ


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> You don't get them to stop stealing by making painless alternatives to stealing; you teach them that it is morally wrong.
> 
> I may be quixotic here but I would rather stand up for doing the right thing and be considered naive or foolish than not do so and give people the message that while it is wrong but not that bad as there are no real consequences to you for doing it, since so many do it.
> 
> OK, I'm done.



Unfortunately the type or organization it would require to influence an entire generation that pirating is wrong, is just simply not in place and unless there was some form of drastic change in the law and way its enforced, piracy wont be going away anytime soon. Developers will not benefit at all from operating as if piracy isnt an issue for them. The more prepared you are for it the better you can deal with it when it happens.

And I totally disagree with your statement! You *can* stop stealing by making a product easier to obtain. Like people have mentioned, path of least resistance. If someone has decided they are getting something, they will get it the easiest way for them. (See Netflix example)

I do agree with you on one point though (shock)...the fact that so many people pirate doesn't make it right however it does still happen and will continue to do so, we have to be realist about the situation, there is only so much you can do at a low level. Spreading the good word just wont fly with people who pirate, you need action from the highest levels of government and law enforcement....until then you have to adjust your business model to account for the piracy element of the industry. 

I mean look at it this way...we all know stealing is wrong however we still have thieves. No amount of 'stealing is wrong' talks will change this, and people become thieves for different reasons. Some do it because they can, these are the people you will never change, thats why we have burglar alarms. Some do it because they cant afford to feed themselves so its their only option, thats why we have things like soup kitchens and shelters. The best we can do is minimize piracy is to add more 'burglar alarms' and more 'soup kitchens'.


-DJ


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## EastWest Lurker (May 4, 2013)

It doesn't require "an organization". It requires enough parents and GUYS LIKE US to to teach younger people.

OK, I really AM done now because this kind of cynical acceptance that "people simply are going to pirate so we have to give them easy alternatives" is just too depressing a view of humanity for me.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat May 04 said:


> It doesn't require "an organization". It requires enough parents and GUYS LIKE US to to teach younger people.
> 
> OK, I really AM done now because this kind of cynical acceptance that "people simply are going to pirate so we have to give them easy alternatives" is just too depressing a view of humanity for me.



Theft has existed since before recorded history (I guess lol, I dont know...its not recorded) 

To think that theft is something unique to this generation is silly. The fact that there are little to no consequences is a new thing however. You have to be real here, I know its a horrible bleak outlook but all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the bunch, one parent to not tell their kid piracy is wrong, then that kid tells his friends how easy it is, then its another whole generation 'ruined'. Developers unfortunately _will_ have to accept that it exists, because it does, and if we are all being real here it wont be going anywhere soon.

When I say an easy alternative to stealing I dont necessarily mean lowering prices...look at the principle of buying a new sofa, you cant afford the £1000 up front but you can afford to pay for it over 6 months. Look at renting a house, you cant afford the £100,000+ up front but you can afford to rent it and live in it for the duration.

Flat denying alternatives and easier access to your product to people who WANT to give you their money is what will mean a higher percent of people pirating it 'just because they can' . And the fact they can will not go away overnight, if ever. (see example of thieves still existing)

-DJ


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

"Murder, rape, poverty, drug addiction, robbery are inevitable, so we shouldn't bother discussing the morality of such things. We should simply and pragmatically accept that they exist, and hope they don't happen to us. If they do, we should shrug and say that's the way of things in the modern world. We must move ahead."

The above statements are a little too accepting and pragmatic for me. I think sometimes people should take stands. Mine is that theft is theft, and I'd be delighted to see more piracy prosecutions.

I'm completely resigned to dongles if they help developers. I see them as small inconveniences compared to the benefit they offer developers.


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## Andrew Aversa (May 4, 2013)

The whole piracy discussion here actually IMPROVES my faith in humanity when you look at, again, examples like Netflix, Steam, and iTunes. Innovative companies have shown again and again that IF you make better alternatives to piracy, people WILL stop pirating. That's actually great news. It shows that people will spend money and pay for the software / music / movies they use even if they do have the alternative to pirate it, as long as the method of purchase is convenient and the price is right.



> Murder, rape, poverty, drug addiction, robbery are inevitable, so we shouldn't bother discussing the morality of such things.



This is such a straw man, I'm not sure why it keeps being brought up. Seriously! This isn't an "either/or" issue, guys. You can say "piracy is bad" AND take actions to make better alternatives to it. The latter doesn't negate the former. Acknowledging the existence of piracy isn't condoning it - there is simply no logical connection there, at all, period. Please stop with the straw men!


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

Why are you defending murder and rape Andrew???? And cant you see thats exactly the same???? ....Excuse me I must withdraw to my fainting couch.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:


> "Murder, rape, poverty, drug addiction, robbery are inevitable, so we shouldn't bother discussing the morality of such things. We should simply and pragmatically accept that they exist, and hope they don't happen to us. If they do, we should shrug and say that's the way of things in the modern world. We must move ahead."
> 
> The above statements are a little too accepting and pragmatic for me. I think sometimes people should take stands. Mine is that theft is theft, and I'd be delighted to see more piracy prosecutions.
> 
> I'm completely resigned to dongles if they help developers. I see them as small inconveniences compared to the benefit they offer developers.



You can, and we have been discussing the morality of those crimes since history began. That's why laws change. Whats illegal to smoke in America is a nice cafe break in Amsterdam. 

To suggest as you did that murder, rape, poverty etc are exclusive modern times _("We should simply and pragmatically accept that they exist, and hope they don't happen to us. If they do, we should shrug and say that's the way of things in the modern world. We must move ahead.")_ is just plain silly and I think that must be a mistyped phrase. Again a bleak outlook on life.. We have law enforcement, laws, justice systems etc BECUASE these things ARE a part of life. Thats the exact reason a woman doesnt walk home alone along a dark alley way at night because she has accepted the fact that if she does something bad could happen. The reason we have burglar alarms is because we have accepted that in the real world people will be burgled. 

I agree all these crimes suck but they too are in fact a part of life and we all subconsciously accept them as such (do lock your car or leave it on with the keys in the ignition) 

Thats not to say we shouldn't constantly make stands against them, the more we draw attention to them the more cautious people will be. There will still be drug addicts but thats why we have rehab for people who want to get clean. There are still murders but thats why we have police to help prevent them. We still have poverty but thats why we have food aid. NOW to get back on topic we have piracy but right now there is no rehab, there is no police, there is no food aid....we need to have something in place to make those who dont want to pirate have a means to become a legitimate customer. 

We can never irradiate these crimes, only minimize them and create ways to keep people on the better side of the situation.

-DJ

p.s comparing piracy to murder and rape was a step to far IMO


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## MaestroRage (May 4, 2013)

NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:


> "Murder, rape, poverty, drug addiction, robbery are inevitable, so we shouldn't bother discussing the morality of such things. We should simply and pragmatically accept that they exist, and hope they don't happen to us. If they do, we should shrug and say that's the way of things in the modern world. We must move ahead."



Yes because in the real world, when the laws are really stringent and focuses on punishing the person rather then finding means of reforming them, works every time. The US has the highest ratio of prisoners to civilians in the world. It must surely be one of the safest places to live.

Oh wait. The incredible expensive prisons have done a fine job bleeding the country dry and has only managed to accomplish as much as the War on Drugs has. The ghettos still exist, poverty still exists. These areas manage to continue creating new criminals to stuff in these over populated prisons.

Yet when supports are implemented to help these communities. To educate them and to offer a different path things turn around.

Exhibit A

We've already covered the netflix effect, the steam effect, the adobe subscription effect.

A solution exists. I personally still get all tingly when I think about a Steam platform for VSTs. Can you imagine it? Log onto my VSTeam, look at that, VST A is on sale! Neat, i'll buy it. Licenses, support, everything I could need all in one place.

Now add the whole "buy what parts I need" thing to it. Now we're cooking serious accessibility.


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

zircon_st @ Sat May 04 said:


> The whole piracy discussion here actually IMPROVES my faith in humanity when you look at, again, examples like Netflix, Steam, and iTunes. Innovative companies have shown again and again that IF you make better alternatives to piracy, people WILL stop pirating. That's actually great news. It shows that people will spend money and pay for the software / music / movies they use even if they do have the alternative to pirate it, as long as the method of purchase is convenient and the price is right.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Sorry, morality is never a straw man. I'm pleased you've found a business model that works for you, and I'm a fan of your work and a customer of yours, but I find the justifications and the throwing up of hands at this issue, the lack of assignment of blame to be unfortunate and wrong-headed. By not strongly condeming it, you are essentially rubber-stamping what I consider to be horrendous behavior, and I paid thousands of dollars to iTunes to drag my kid off Limewire, so I've put my money where my mouth is. I know plenty of professionals who pirate their software, too, and the whole thing disgusts me.

I do not accept your pov, which seems to be 'yeah, it's bad but oh well'. Why you wouldn't support a dongle solution is beyond my ken. Anecdotally, two of YOUR libraries were on a colleague's hard drive recently, and I know him to steal stuff and took him to task over a few beers. After my thundering from the pulpit, he ended up buying the smaller developers' stuff (including yours, you're welcome). It was a start, though some larger companies are unlikely to be compensated.

People can hold different points of view and both can be valid from differing perspectives, but that "straw man" b.s. is antithetical to debate. It sounds cool to say, though.


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## Andrew Aversa (May 4, 2013)

I'm glad you've supported ISW (and helped others to as well!) - thanks! And I think this has been a friendly, civil debate typical of VI. 

So let me clarify something. I'm legitimately confused as to where you're getting the "justification" stuff from, and the lack of assignment of blame. Where did anyone say piracy was OK, or that it was justified, or otherwise defend the actions of pirates? You're saying I (or we) are not strongly condemning it, but perhaps there is a semantic issue here? Like I mentioned earlier, anytime *I* know someone who is pirating music software I always reprimand them and point them to legit free stuff at sites like KVRAudio, noting that there is no excuse for piracy when you don't NEED it to make good music. I also mod on several forums with a combined total of 60k+ members and have a zero-tolerance policy for piracy discussion there. 

By your standard, is that strong enough? I don't have any kids yet - once I do, I will be teaching them the same thing. I'd say I'm doing everything I personally can to condemn piracy! And I can do and say all of that, while simultaneously thinking of ways that I (as a developer) can mitigate piracy through business model decisions. I still don't see how they're mutually exclusive...

The dongle thing.. here's my actual take. I use two dongles myself so I'm not flat out against them. It boils down to a business decision. Right now, the only dongle solutions are not available for Kontakt, and since the vast majority of our customers are Kontakt users, that fact alone makes it a non-starter. If NI approached us tomorrow and asked if we would TRY a dongle solution, I might consider it, but I would have to weigh:

* How many additional sales we gain from having the dongle, i.e. would-be pirates buy it instead

vs.

* How many sales we LOSE from having the dongle, because some people simply don't like them, and it would drive the cost of the product up.

Right now, given our price point, I believe we would lose more than we gain by switching to a dongle-based system. But I'm watching the development of Mach5 closely. I've spoken to numerous Kontakt devs and scripters, and there is quite a bit of support on it from the developer side. If it gets to the point where there is a significant install base for Mach5, and its CPU usage is much more optimized than it is now, then I would strongly consider a switch.


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## MaestroRage (May 4, 2013)

Nobody is throwing up their hands! That's exactly what his point was. No matter how much you shake your head or pretend good moral compass will fix the issue of piracy is what I find unfortunate and wrong-headed.

While I very strongly applaud your commitment to fixing the problem in your way, you aren't acknowledging that the problem can NEVER be erased. As a consumer, the choice to pirate or not is your call. As the developer, you HAVE to be a realist and tackle the piracy issue in whatever ways you can.

It's really just that simple. Consumers have that distance between themselves and the fires of piracy. You can shake your head and be as moral as you want, it still doesn't help the developer. The developer, if they want to thrive and do well, has to adapt and recognize the key issues or they will simply be weeded out by those who have.

Another note to consider here is also region based. Since devs exist on the global scale it doesn't surprise anybody that HUGE piracy happens in third world countries where $500 USD is basically 2 months rent. In Thailand for example there was a statistic that said something like 90% of the software is pirated. Because nobody in their right minds is going to give up 2 months rent.

Cue, accessibility measures. Maybe those same guys can afford $80 for the core component. Maybe they can afford the $20 for a few articulations that they want.

Anyway, now we're just running in circles. I don't think anybody is convincing anybody else. I'm also stepping out.


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## Daniel James (May 4, 2013)

"I do not accept your pov, which seems to be 'yeah, it's bad but oh well'."

There is a difference between saying yeah its bad ah well and acknowledging there is a problem and incorporating it into you thought and planning process. Piracy exists, it sucks but its there. Best we can do is work on ways to reduce it, same with any crime.

-DJ


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

Some people also need to learn that its possible to have a very real loss, but also have a *net *gain.


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

> Unfortunately the type or organization it would require to influence an entire generation that pirating is wrong, is just simply not in place and unless there was some form of drastic change in the law and way its enforced, piracy wont be going away anytime soon.



The name of this organization is called - _parents._


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

I understand what you're saying, Andrew, and I agree it's a civil debate. I'm a big fan of productive debate, and a true hater of incivility  

My example was obviously quite extreme, but it underscored the point I wanted to make- I am much more interested in practical ways to protect developers than I am in giving a pass to a societal trend that I think sucks. I appreciate the efforts you mentioned- I wish everyone woud speak up as strongly and simply say that this crap is wrong. Again, I'd like to see more prosecutions for theft of intellectual property.

In retrospect, it's sort of hard to believe N.I. has invested so little in protecting third party developers while charging them plenty for encoding. This is the danger of virtual monopolies, I suppose. Hopefully, some of these third party platforms will come to fruition and offer some competition. Until then, dongles seem to be the only way for developers to effectively protect themselves, and I'm sure it's not an easy decision.

I wish you continued success.


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## Sean Beeson (May 4, 2013)

I for one would be excited for a Cinematic Winds and a Cinematic Brass! Here's hoping Alex chimes in. I have been bugging him via email for months now :D


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## Peter Alexander (May 4, 2013)

@Daniel - I _absolutely_ respect you which is why I took my time to respond to you. I'll say no more. Best with your future libraries.


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> Some people also need to learn that its possible to have a very real loss, but also have a *net *gain.



_Some people_ are such cheeky monkeys


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

Daniel James @ Sat May 04 said:


> "I do not accept your pov, which seems to be 'yeah, it's bad but oh well'."
> 
> There is a difference between saying yeah its bad ah well and acknowledging there is a problem and incorporating it into you thought and planning process. Piracy exists, it sucks but its there. Best we can do is work on ways to reduce it, same with any crime.
> 
> -DJ



Daniel, perhaps if your fine library (which I own!) was on a dongle, you would have quadrupled your sales, and it might never have been cracked, or not for a good while. Maybe new platfoms will be developed with much stronger encryption. I am no scientist, but it seems to me that less energy put into acceptance and more energy put into making platforms less vulnerable would be a net positive.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. :wink: 

P.S.- as I said to Andrew, yes, my example was extreme- but honestly? I think software piracy should qualify under the same penalties as the theft of physical goods under the larceny statutes, including the same jail time depending on the price of the product. Do you think that might modify behavior?


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:


> Daniel, perhaps if your fine library (which I own!) was on a dongle, you would have quadrupled your sales, and it might never have been cracked, or not for a good while. Maybe new platfoms will be developed with much stronger encryption. I am no scientist, but it seems to me that less energy put into acceptance and more energy put into making platforms less vulnerable would be a net positive.



Maybe that is true. Is there any way we can test this hypothesis? Or is it just assumed that after accounting for the cost of copy protecting your library, the lost income from those who will refuse to or cant be bothered buying a dongle for this one product and therefore cant impulse buy, and then account for all the lost income from all the people who pirate it after its cracked because of the aforementioned aversion to dongles, that you'd end up with not only a net gain compared with not having any copy protection, but a *substantial *net gain?


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

Looking into the future, I have a feeling we will see more developers going with Mach Five (UVI) engine, which uses iLok authorization, and MOTU/UVI might have some better schemes of additional protection for their valued sample developing licensed customers. 

imho. NI should help improve things for developers, but so far they have been lazy to do so. At the end of the day, this will eventually reflect negatively on them if they don't do something to improve their protection scheme. (i.e. NI could switch to Syncrosoft authorization), VSL & Steinberg use it.

Time will tell.


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Daniel, perhaps if your fine library (which I own!) was on a dongle, you would have quadrupled your sales, and it might never have been cracked, or not for a good while. Maybe new platfoms will be developed with much stronger encryption. I am no scientist, but it seems to me that less energy put into acceptance and more energy put into making platforms less vulnerable would be a net positive.
> ...



I'm not *sure* if there *is* any such *test*, Ed, sorry. Is there any way you can think of to* prove* your net gain *hypothesis*?

(this* bolding* is *fun*!)


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:


> I'm not *sure* if there *is* any such *test*, Ed, sorry. Is there any way you can think of to* prove* your net gain *hypothesis*?
> 
> (this* bolding* is *fun*!)



I almost forgot I was talking with NYC Composer where its always like pulling teeth getting across the most basic of concepts.

That isnt a hypothesis. It was a list of possible scenarios that can lead to a dongle based library making less profit, even if it did manage to get a certain demographic to buy the library when they would have pirated it without one. Maybe it would be just as profitable as you say, but maybe not, your implication is that it would obviously be. I dont think its so obvious. So often I see simplistic arguments by those like you, or Jay on this subject, and I want to point out that the reality could be more nuanced than you're allowing. That is when you arent comparing software piracy to rape and murder, or like someone else was doing earlier, trying to convince people that once your product is pirated you're never getting any sales ever again


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

I wonder if some people view alternate business models (subscriptions, micro-transactions, etc.) as "compromise with the pirates" and therefore unacceptable?


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

CobraTrumpet @ Sat May 04 said:


> I wonder if some people view alternate business models (subscriptions, micro-transactions, etc.) as "compromise with the pirates" and therefore unacceptable?



I think the reaction here shows exactly that. Itunes, netflicks, spotify, they are all compromises, if you think about it.


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## muziksculp (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> CobraTrumpet @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I wonder if some people view alternate business models (subscriptions, micro-transactions, etc.) as "compromise with the pirates" and therefore unacceptable?
> ...



Why do you feel they are compromises ? 

I feel they increase the NUMBER of customers, which at the end equalize, or even further improve their revenue. They are just different business models that reduce the need for pirating digital products, and from what I see, they are the models of the future ! 

imho. they are not a compromise, but better business models. Maybe the Sample Library world should not ignore it, and look into something similar in the future. They will only gain more customers, and reduce the number of pirated libraries (dramatically). 

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## Ed (May 4, 2013)

muziksculp @ Sat May 04 said:


> Ed @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > CobraTrumpet @ Sat May 04 said:
> ...



I should clarify. They are just as much compromises as what is being proposed.

But they *do *actually stem from compromises. I was around when Napster got started, and remember when it died. If the music industry had its way it would LOVE to keep selling CDs and DVDs at the same prices they were selling the things the 90s, rather than for the equivalent of peanuts today. They were raking it in. New business' like Spotify and Netflicks are making a lot of money from the new market, and many artists have become very successful with the new model. Even just talking about piracy itself guys like the South Park creators say piracy helped them enormously. But new artists that are doing better in the digital age through itunes sales than they would have in the traditional model doesnt mean that these infrastructures didnt initially stem from a desire to compromise. After fighting the hell out of Napster and the like, eventually record companies realised they weren't going to stop illegal downloads of their music and so had to find a way to monitise the internet, but that did mean taking a cut of what they used to be able to charge. The internet changed everything.


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## Arbee (May 4, 2013)

If a developer is to make a living then he/she needs $x per annum to make it worthwhile. From there comes a price for a product to recoup costs plus a margin. So, if we accept a loss to piracy then all the honest people get to pay a higher price to cover the loss. Am I missing something? I pay more for something because others feel entitled to steal what they want rather than save/work for it. Hmm.

On a broader note, I really believe that "digital = devalued" in the minds of consumers regardless of whether it's music, images or anything else. For some reason pirates think of digital product like oxygen, it's just "out there" so why can't I just have it? Just look how quickly that mindset is transferring to ebooks. Once you take away the physical product people think you should pay next to nothing for it.

Motivation for pirating TV shows and movies however seems a little more complex as it seems as much about "I want it NOW!" as "I want it for nothing".

Just to be clear, I'm one of those old farts who thinks stealing is stealing, no matter how you like to spin it. And I'm happy with USB protection for the developers whose products I highly value. Anyway, we've been here before......


.


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## Conor (May 4, 2013)

I'm with you, Muziksculp. There's been a huge shift in the way we buy digital goods (music, movies & TV, software), and also a huge "democratization" of content-creation tools (cheap webcams, Garageband shipping with every Mac). New ways of licensing sample libraries would just be part of these larger trends.

Maybe there are good, level-headed business arguments against this? I don't know. If so, the opposition here is too busy fighting their holy crusade to articulate them. 

(Edit: I'm all for the crusade against "pirate culture," mind you. I'm just much more interested in talking about what developers can do in the here and now.)


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## NYC Composer (May 4, 2013)

Ed @ Sat May 04 said:


> NYC Composer @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm not *sure* if there *is* any such *test*, Ed, sorry. Is there any way you can think of to* prove* your net gain *hypothesis*?
> ...



The assumption that people who disagree with you are so stupid that you need to *emphasize* the points you make in disrespectful ways goes a long way towards people actually wanting to listen to anything you have to say, I'm sure.

Carry on blithely, Ed!


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## Edward_Martin (May 4, 2013)

I have to agree with Daniel James on this one, his outlook is the most sensible and realistic about the nature of piracy in my opinion. If your a company, and piracy is genuinely effecting your bottom line, then you take the necessary measures to stop it, be that watermarking, or dongles. Though even dongles aren't 100%, this is just a fact of life, it is what it is and you have to deal with it and accept it and plan for it when you get into this sticky business of digital goods. Please, don't tell me it actually catches any of you by surprise. I really believe that those that pirate libraries are those that would have otherwise never bought it, regardless of whether they could afford it or not. Someone mentioned that these kids can afford the computer and fast internet as well as an assortment of goodies, but I'd wager they'd just as likely steal movies, games as well as other totally unrelated stuff just as soon as they'd download your vi for free if only to have it sitting pretty on their brand new $300 hard drive, or simply because they want to see what all this music making fuss is all about. Some may pick it up for sometime and promptly move on to stealing video making software and try their hand at being the next Spielberg when their attempts at music utterly fail. If THIS is the target audience your trying to get money out of, good luck!  Others might actually get into it and in time might get good enough to find work doing so, when that happens, they will more than likely buy the library...not because their morally obligated to (not everyone has your stalwart upbringing EW), but because not doing so would otherwise compromise their fledgling careers. I have yet to see a VI on here explicitly marketed directly to hobbyists, in which case, you would be monumentally naive to think that a $200-300-and-beyond price point is a good idea for that sort of crowd. No, you guys target pros (or at least claim to do so) so as bad as piracy is, get off it, Hans Zimmer isn't stealing your library! On the other hand, maybe the next Hans Zimmer might, and by then he/she will be buying your libraries legitimately. I am not an apologist for piracy, but I just don't buy this crap that piracy is the cause of a product doing poorly, I'd first look at the price-vs-quality ratio of your product or what the competition has to offer by comparison.


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## Edward_Martin (May 4, 2013)

Also, a lot of bold claims have been posted here, I want to see proof of a company doing better financially after implementing DRM protection, be it dongles or otherwise. I'd bet that for each company that uses dongles there is another none dongled alternative doing just as well or better, whether it be making the rounds on the net or not, but who would be so bold as to show us the numbers?

Hollywood Strings vs. LA Scoring Strings or Spitfire's Sable series would be a great example of what I mean. I would say Cinematic Strings 2, but that seems like a niche library geared towards that out-of-the box big sound, so something like the above mentioned which would require a bit more tweaking would offer a much better comparison.


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## Guy Rowland (May 5, 2013)

Look at it - the newest MegaThread, 5 pages in under 24 hours and yet what have we learmed? It's the same old arguments, sad to say.

Frustrated with always hearing horror stories followed by these interminable long repetitive arguments, I started a thread a while ago which was specifically about finding positive responses to piracy, 90% of this debate should really have gone there. We've had claims about what Alex may or may not have said, about that his sales have dropped to zero (disproved) and also heard that apparently he's working on a winds library. Shouldn't this thread deal with that sort of thing?

Meanwhile, how about collectively working through how a subscription / piecemeal model might work over in the solutions thread? http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28554


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## muziksculp (May 5, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Sun May 05 said:


> Look at it - the newest MegaThread, 5 pages in under 24 hours and yet what have we learmed? It's the same old arguments, sad to say.
> 
> Frustrated with always hearing horror stories followed by these interminable long repetitive arguments, I started a thread a while ago which was specifically about finding positive responses to piracy, 90% of this debate should really have gone there. We've had claims about what Alex may or may not have said, about that his sales have dropped to zero (disproved) and also heard that apparently he's working on a winds library. Shouldn't this thread deal with that sort of thing?
> 
> Meanwhile, how about collectively working through how a subscription / piecemeal model might work over in the solutions thread? http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28554



I posted this topic to simply find out if anyone here has any idea if there will be a 'Cinematic Strings 3' release... as you can see, it moved into the piracy topic, since this was brought up by a reply to my initial post. I also emailed 'Cinematic Strings' via their contact link on their official website a couple of weeks ago, enquiring about this topic, but so far, I have not received any feedback from them via email. 

Yes, I think a dedicated thread to discuss piracy, (which exists, and you provided a link to) is where this discussion belongs. 

Meanwhile, I wonder if we will hear any feedback from 'Cinematic Strings' Alex and/or David, to get a general idea if they have plans to delight us with *Cinematic Stirngs 3*, or something else, be it woodwinds, brass, or ... ? 

All The Best,
Muziksculp


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## Hanu_H (May 5, 2013)

I am a bit late for this party but I have to say few things...

About Spotify, iTunes and such, in my opinion and many of the other professionals feel the same way, it's ruining music industry. I played in this quite successful metal band for 7 years and was living the change. It's really impossible to make money on selling records anymore. My friends band was listened 400 000 times in a Spotify. Guess how much money they got? 50€. Yeah that's true. And also the fact that iTunes is selling music at the 0.99$ a song it gives the artist about 5-10 cents per song. If even that. Piracy and all the streaming and downloading services have ruined the music industry. Now it's going after a movie industry with NetFlix and such. Only thing that makes it different is that you cannot stream all the newest movies and you still get some viewers in the movie theaters. People are whining about the prices of the record. Now you got new albums with 10-12 € and it's haven't changed anything. Piracy is even bigger than ever. Some people will always go with the free option, even if it's already cheap and easily accessible.

So if sample devs would go the same root it will most definitely ruin that industry too. If you start giving your products away too cheap, it's a path of no return. After that you only have a way down, because people will be disappointed if you raise your prices. That's what happened with Spotify here in Finland. People were really excited with the free version and after the monthly fee came, majority of the people who praised it, started whining that it was ruined. And the fee is staggering 4,99€/month?!??

I think that new technology that is coming will change the whole world of piracy. I am talking about the 3D printers that already exist and will be a new market in the future. I think the companies have to stop piracy before that thing launches. Or what do you think about pirating a coffee mug? Or even a working flute? What about toys? I think that some kind of internet police force is a must in the future. I don't think you can ever stop piracy 100%, but it should be made as rare as stealing a car. Now it's really approved by many and people say there's nothing you can do about it, so just live with it. It's stupid, unfair and it has made making music more difficult.

One thing I really don't understand is how a website like YouTube is allowed to stream illegal music? Google is one of the biggest companies in the world and they are breaking the laws as we speak. Nice example is if you put a murder video in there, it will disappear. But not illegal music? For that the composer has to contact YouTube and after a few weeks they might take it out. And after a few days it's back online...

-Hannes


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## mk282 (May 5, 2013)

muziksculp @ 4.5.2013 said:


> BenG @ Sat May 04 said:
> 
> 
> > I was wondering about the how it would be pirated as well.
> ...




NI doesn't care, even with piracy they have high gross revenue overall because enough people seem to buy their stuff. Plus, they make hardware you can't crack. They will never go iLok, mark my words. Several developers have approached NI with this issue, all they said was in line of "continue making libraries, provide support and updates, if you worry too much about piracy then you're wasting time you could be using for working on your next library".

And it's a great thing they won't go iLok, because I bloody hate that thing.


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## mark812 (May 5, 2013)

I don't think that NI will ever go iLok as well. While they should improve their anti-piracy measures, they aren't stupid - they know that they would lose much more paying customers because of iLok.


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## NYC Composer (May 5, 2013)

Hanu_H @ Sun May 05 said:


> I am a bit late for this party but I have to say few things...
> 
> About Spotify, iTunes and such, in my opinion and many of the other professionals feel the same way, it's ruining music industry. I played in this quite successful metal band for 7 years and was living the change. It's really impossible to make money on selling records anymore. My friends band was listened 400 000 times in a Spotify. Guess how much money they got? 50€. Yeah that's true. And also the fact that iTunes is selling music at the 0.99$ a song it gives the artist about 5-10 cents per song. If even that. Piracy and all the streaming and downloading services have ruined the music industry. Now it's going after a movie industry with NetFlix and such. Only thing that makes it different is that you cannot stream all the newest movies and you still get some viewers in the movie theaters. People are whining about the prices of the record. Now you got new albums with 10-12 € and it's haven't changed anything. Piracy is even bigger than ever. Some people will always go with the free option, even if it's already cheap and easily accessible.
> 
> ...



+1- i really enjoy the notion that Spotify is artist positive. A cockroach couldn't eat on what those thieves are paying. You thought the RECORD COMPANIES were bad and corporate, but these guys are cool?? Record companies fronted millions to develop and promote artists. These dudes are spending millions to promote themselves, and the trickle down to artists is laughable.


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## Alex W (May 5, 2013)

Hi everyone, this is an interesting thread, and I really appreciate all the positive comments about the library. 

In short: piracy is bad, yes it has affected sales, no it hasn't ruined our business. We're still working towards releasing new material, and will be doing so in the future, no question. Creating new orchestral libraries always takes a lot of testing. This means booking recording time with players, and then spending weeks, which quickly turn into months, testing new ideas and trying to figure out new and intuitive ways of doing things. I’m really excited about all the things I’ve learned, and am looking forward to incorporating lots of new features into our future products.

Regarding the issue of piracy in general, there have been a lot of good points made in this thread. It’s a very complex issue, but I believe it's a mistake to think that it's worthwhile pandering to pirates. I think it's far more productive to basically ignore them and focus on dealing with respectful professionals who want to add CS2 to their setup because they like the product, they like us, and they appreciate our after-sale support. The positive response to CS2 over the past 12 months has exceeded our expectations, and I'm really happy that there are so many good people out there who are glad to support us. About a third of our customers are students, which is really cool too.

Piracy is a tough thing to combat, and unfortunately it must be factored into any modern developer’s business plan. One way to offset the losses from piracy is to offer personal advice and support, provide free updates, and give good educational discounts. The initial upgrade price from CS1 to CS2 was only $49, and we plan to continue offering loyalty discounts to our customers when it comes time to release new products. I’d also advise any developers to strongly consider both watermarking and also going down the "Kontakt Player" route, as these two measures provide some degree of protection.

Lastly, although the title of this topic is a question about Cinematic Strings, the thread itself quickly shifted into a discussion about sample library piracy in general and CS2 in particular. I appreciate the positive attitudes people have expressed when it comes to looking for better ways to combat piracy, but ironically, publicising the issue in this thread could potentially cost us a few sales. So I wouldn't mind if it just sank off the front page...

Thanks everyone. 

Cheers,
Alex


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## mk282 (May 5, 2013)

Kontakt Player really provides no protection at all (watermarking provided optionally by NI is just a stopgap measure IMHO). Cracked Kontakt versions can open any Kontakt Player library with no Service Center authorisation whatsoever...

It's sad, but true.


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## Guy Rowland (May 5, 2013)

Sorry to prolong the thread Alex, but great post - it seems to me you've got it spot on, and it confirms what many of us suspected - piracy is always nasty and painful, but can be survived and survived well. Actually I think the visibility of devs is a help - you're less likely to steal from someone when you see them as a person, especially a hardworking one.

CS has a great reputation with support etc, this has to work to your advantage in this battle. All the best with your future releases.


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## muziksculp (May 5, 2013)

Hi Alex,

Thanks for dropping by, this is very nice of you, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to chime in on this topic, and the topic of Piracy (which was a side track from the main topic, but seems to be a hot topic these days, that comes to the forefront, although this was not intended to be the focus of this thread). 

I'm delighted to know that you are active developing new orchestral libraries, and are taking your time to test new ideas, techniques, ..etc. That is wonderful news. 

*Cinematic Strings 2* is a fantastic product, I have no doubt that your future products will be even better, given the experience you have gained developing Cinematic Strings. 

Piracy is a big problem in this, and many other software industries, developers need to be cautious, and take the best measures possible to minimize this problem. 

You can rest assured that there are many loyal customers, that will buy your great products today, and in the future, given the quality of your product line, good customer support, listening to what customers, and potential future customers are interested in, this will assure you a steady stream of paying, and loyal customers, which I feel you have earned by making the right decisions, and trying to perfect and further elevate the standards of your product/craft. 

I wish you, and the rest of the Cinematic Strings team a lot of success.

Cheers,
Muziksculp


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## procreative (May 5, 2013)

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. As many libraries continue to grow in GB size I think many pirates will struggle to download illegally without subscribing to a premium sharing account.

2. By pirating they probably always feel behind as new versions with improvements or bug fixes come out (think Spitfire who issue updates within weeks).

Here is an off the wall idea: Get the chap who made Continuata to develop the most efficient sharing service there is and launch it as a pseudo sharing site. Then as each "pirate" signs up to get their hands on said goodies you have two choices:

1. Share the revenue from premium account sign-ups or
2. Prosecute said sign-ups*

* Not as desirable as proving intent to steal and actually locating them would be fraut with problems such as local laws, the court system and actually recovering any judgment.

Alternatively the modular release might work, but as with music where albums were the thing, when this model no longer works its more difficult for the musicians as they can no longer stuff a few weaker songs on to the album as fillers. Similarly there are sample libraries where if they were separated some modules would not sell.


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## EastWest Lurker (May 5, 2013)

Glad to hear that you are not discouraged Alex. You produced a fine library and should do more of them.


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## mk282 (May 5, 2013)

procreative @ 5.5.2013 said:


> 1. As many libraries continue to grow in GB size I think many pirates will struggle to download illegally without subscribing to a premium sharing account.



This is not applicable to torrents in a lot of cases.


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## ThomasL (May 5, 2013)

NYC Composer @ 2013-05-05 said:


> You thought the RECORD COMPANIES were bad and corporate, but these guys are cool??


You don't know who owns Spotify do you


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## reid (May 5, 2013)

Lars Ulrich?


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## ThomasL (May 5, 2013)

reid @ 2013-05-05 said:


> Lars Ulrich?


Only if he owns one of these companies:

http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/07/this-i ... cap-table/

The record companies (as of 2009) own this:
Sony BMG 5,8%
Universal Music 4,8%
Warner Music 3,8%
EMI 1,9%
Merlin 1,0%


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## Hanu_H (May 5, 2013)

ThomasL @ Sun May 05 said:


> You don't know who owns Spotify do you


If you are suggesting that record companies own Spotify you are wrong. Spotify only makes deals with record companies for paying royalties. And it's not much. I think royalties for streaming audio should be about the same as for the radio, but it's not even close. And that's the reason why some record companies have taken their records out of the Spotify.


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## ThomasL (May 5, 2013)

Hanu_H @ 2013-05-05 said:


> ThomasL @ Sun May 05 said:
> 
> 
> > You don't know who owns Spotify do you
> ...


They do that as well, see my post above yours.


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## Hanu_H (May 6, 2013)

ThomasL @ Sun May 05 said:


> They do that as well, see my post above yours.


I wouldn't call it owning if the biggest record company in the world owns 5,8%. And there's hundreds of companies who don't have any. I think it's safe to say that the founders of Spotify who still have 51,9% makes all the shots. It's just normal business to sell stocks to get some more funds.


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## scientist (May 6, 2013)

sorry to continue the OT, but


Hanu_H @ Mon May 06 said:


> ThomasL @ Sun May 05 said:
> 
> 
> > They do that as well, see my post above yours.
> ...



not only do major labels have a share in the company itself, they own the IP to the majority of content spotify wishes to license. of course they call the shots. the new boss is _literally_ the same as the old boss.


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