prodigalson
Senior Member
I'm glad Jim that you mentioned total sales in your post and inserted a bit of reality into the thread. I aways cringe a bit when reading these speculation posts on costs because there seems to be this feeling from some folks on the forum that sample developers are these large "companies" and that this market they sell to is way bigger then it really is. They aren't and the market is extremely small/niche. When I read some of the posts it makes me think we believe these companies are the size of General Electric! I believe every sale for a sample developer is pretty important for them and most of the sample developers are probably more like one or two man operations. But because of the wonders of Photoshop, websites and Final Cut Pro the marketing image projected might make one think they are much bigger. When I worked for Ensoniq we only had or needed for that matter something like 6 or 7 regional sales reps for the entire United States and this was at the height of our sales of the Mirage and EPS. The DX7 was an anomaly and sold 200,000 units and I think they still hold the record. No one came close to that in sales and I know we did not (and we were considered a big company at NAMM by the size of our booth in relation to others) and these keyboard type products we sold would appeal to way more people like the Church Market, Studios, Schools, Weekend Warriors, Students, and Professional Musicians (The smallest market btw) then someone willing to spend $700 for a download of digitized violin recordings so they can compose with "True Legato" Yes I know Spitfire is a tiny bit of an exception because they have a few people on staff but keep in mind it wasn't too long ago that Paul and Christian were answering tech support questions. Accoring to Wikapedia Moog sold 12,000 Minimoog synthesizers in 11 years. That's about 20 sales a week and I wonder if that number would be on the high side for a sample developer averaging out over the life of a specific library.
Sure, you might be right, I dont have hard facts to suggest otherwise. I would only argue that we’re not talking about $3500 synthesizers in the 80s. The market and world is very different now in the internet age after the great democratization of the music industry. Production is different, supply is different. Now that everyone and their mother can create music in their bedroom that 30 years ago would have needed a $100,000 in recording equipment, it means that there are exponentially more people trying to do it. I can’t help but see the meteoric drop in prices of high end libraries we’ve seen in just the last 5-10 years as evidence of that.
Yes, spitfire may be a relative outlier but their YouTube channel has over 50,000 subscribers. Just peruse YouTube and there is what seems (to me) and infinite number of channels showing their off production music, publishing tutorials, doing reviews etc etc. And all of just sample libraries.
No one is suggesting these companies are the size of GE but in 2018 you don’t have to be more than a handful of people to create and sell 10,000 units of a sample library.
Even on vi control I’ve personally noticed that every year or so there is a whole new “generation” of members contributing.