# Cost Reduction & Optimisation Tips for Sample Library & Plugin Developers



## pulsedownloader (Jul 13, 2022)

With inflation and recession fears, customers are have less budgets and income is slowing. Here's a number of ways your sample library or plugin company can reduce overheads and run more lean during these times.









Cost Reduction & Optimisation Tips for Sample Library & Plugin Companies - Pulse Downloader


With the current market conditions of excessive inflation, oversaturation of products and recession looming, now more than ever customers are being very careful with their money and beginning to spend less. Across the industry, many companies are seeing reduced customer spending and thus reduced...




pulsedownloader.com





(This article is aimed at sample library / plugin developers so may not be of interest to you if you're not involved in that)


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## jbuhler (Jul 13, 2022)

pulsedownloader said:


> With inflation and recession fears, customers are have less budgets and income is slowing. Here's a number of ways your sample library or plugin company can reduce overheads and run more lean during these times.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Is it true that income is slowing? Or is the same spending just dispersed across more products so income per product is down? Is it down? (I’m not even sure where you’d find industry-wide statistics on sales of VIs and plugins.)


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## pulsedownloader (Jul 13, 2022)

We surveyed multiple brands and stores and they confirmed that they have seen a definitive decline in revenue since March when the Ukraine crisis happened (resulting in increased fuel costs) and when inflation figures were published.


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## jbuhler (Jul 13, 2022)

pulsedownloader said:


> We surveyed multiple brands and stores and they confirmed that they have seen a definitive decline in revenue since March when the Ukraine crisis happened (resulting in increased fuel costs) and when inflation figures were published.


Interesting! I’ve noticed the increased frequency and depth of sales of course but thought that was likely due to market saturation more than overall spending being down.


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## pulsedownloader (Jul 13, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> Interesting! I’ve noticed the increased frequency and depth of sales of course but thought that was likely due to market saturation more than overall spending being down.


Yes some companies are taking it to the extreme with 4 emails per day


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## Daren Audio (Jul 14, 2022)

The tech sector is laying off and rescinding job offers. And that tends to spill over to other industry sectors as well. That's a not a good sign. 

Nevertheless, great tips for staying lean for any e-commerce business platform (not just sample developers). I used to outsource graphics and video editing but then decided to make them in-house. Re-negotiated my web hosting service (rare but it actually worked).


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## Chromofonic (Jul 15, 2022)

I think it is a combination of factors.

The general impact of the Ukraine conflict.
A correctional economic shift after a pandemic.
Saturation of the market (due to aggressive emailing and sales practices).
Fatigue, due to a new breed of concepts, like Pianobook, that raise the threshold between professional and amateur qualities, possibly benefiting companies with big capital at the expense of smaller operations.
These are just personal opinions!


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## HybridPunk (Jul 22, 2022)

Great article!


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## jbuhler (Jul 22, 2022)

Chromofonic said:


> I think it is a combination of factors.
> 
> The general impact of the Ukraine conflict.
> A correctional economic shift after a pandemic.
> ...


I’m pretty sure the saturation of the market came from the high number of sample libraries being offered for sale, not the marketing or number of emails that have been sent. Indeed the increased marketing is likely a consequence of the saturation more than its cause.


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## X-Bassist (Jul 22, 2022)

Another issue may be that there’s so much stuff in the market nowadays that a lot of people like me that have a lot purchased already have stopped regularly purchasing vi’s in favor of hardware upgrades or studio retooling.

There would have to be a major tech or design improvement before I would regularly buy again and things have basically remained the same since 2010. Yes, a lot of libraries with new sounds have been released, but the tech has not really improved enough. I expected VI’s like sample modeling brass to be improved (nope), more intelligent engines (nope) and auto articulation switching to take over by now… yet it’s still keyswitches. 😂

I suppose all these companies making their own sample players (spitfire, OT, etc) has replaced real tech improvements. Everyone is reinventing the kontakt wheel, meanwhile NI is coasting while everyone else tries to catch up.


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## jbuhler (Jul 22, 2022)

X-Bassist said:


> Another issue may be that there’s so much stuff in the market nowadays that a lot of people like me that have a lot purchased already have stopped regularly purchasing vi’s in favor of hardware upgrades or studio retooling.
> 
> There would have to be a major tech or design improvement before I would regularly buy again and things have basically remained the same since 2010. Yes, a lot of libraries with new sounds have been released, but the tech has not really improved enough. I expected VI’s like sample modeling brass to be improved (nope), more intelligent engines (nope) and auto articulation switching to take over by now… yet it’s still keyswitches. 😂
> 
> I suppose all these companies making their own sample players (spitfire, OT, etc) has replaced real tech improvements. Everyone is reinventing the kontakt wheel, meanwhile NI is coasting while everyone else tries to catch up.



I’d push the date forward a little into the mid 2010s but It seems to me that computer development slowed in the 2010s and it took awhile for the tech to get to the point of realizing what the most ambitious libraries made in the early teens could do. Meanwhile sample developers discovered in a real way during this period that volume made up in spades for lower margins. So there was a rush to release libraries that could be sold on volume, and that in turn led to super saturation of certain types of libraries but also a real expansion of the market but also a real change in it, since hobbyists displaced professionals as the main target and driver of the market. Both the saturation and the increase in the size of the market (meaning that more casual users formed a large portion of this market) found increased marketing as a solution. Marketing is also a time honored way of increasing the barrier to entry to a market. So there’s that too.


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