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Disadvantage to Musio Lifetime Subscription?

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BlackShadow2804

Member
I've been eyeing the Musio Lifetime sub for a while now as $400 for all their instruments is pretty great, but it got me thinking. What are the disadvantages? How are they able to price it so low giving you access to all their instruments, when, if you bought them from the CineSamples site, it's valued at around $6k?
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This has been discussed ad nauseam in half a dozen Musio threads (not a dig at you, but a fact). So maybe read through some of those.

TL;DR:

Noone knows. They seem to have painted themselves in a corner a little bit, with regard to pricing and their ability to earn a quote / unquote “healthy” revenue.

They started as a subscription, then started selling lifetime subs for 499 (only 100! Quick!), then sold way more of those, then introduced the Musio1 “buy” option, etc.

It seems their uptake in actual subscribers is rather low, given how they have continually changed their ‘proposal’. So this MAY mean their revenue or “earning capacity” may ultimately be too low to actually make a sustainable living.

Then again, maybe they’re just doing some sort of trial & error marketing-as-they-go and their business is going like crazy.

Or it’s somewhere in between. All of these speculative theories have been elaborately brought up and discussed. As I said: do a search and there’s pages and pages of it.

How are we feeling about Musio?

Seems like a crazy good deal to me. A few years ago I was looking forward to sales to buy individual Cinesamples libraries for 140$. Now it's all of them for just 300$. Is there a catch that I'm not seeing? Is something different from their Kontakt equivalent? Edit: Also, would you invest in it...
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Musio--Straight talk

How are you getting on with it? I'm seriously considering getting it for a year to see if I like it well enough to get the life time. What are the pros and cons? Real talk though focused on uses, pluses and minuses and not on flabby general "It's good" or "It sucks" type talk. The only...
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Introducing Musio 1 - The Non-Subscription Option!

Hello everyone! We are very excited to announce Musio 1, a new addition to the business model for those who don't want a subscription. Musio 1 grants a perpetual license for all instruments and collections released this year (including the ones listed on our (broken link removed) for 2023)...
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Also, I think the Musio versions do not come with all the microphone positions yet. They said they are working on adding that as a feature. I honestly do not use microphone positions a lot, because of resource constraints, both storage and RAM. So, I am looking into getting Musio 1 as it will be a lot more resource friendly. Can anyone here who has both the Kontakt Version and the Musio version of say, CineBrass Core tell me the difference in size? And also apart from the lack of microphone signals, anything else it cannot do that Kontakt can?

Edit: I have CineBrass Core on Kontakt, so if anyone can tell me the size with Musio, that will help me a ton. Thanks :)
 
I don't know why some people always seem to get upset when Musio is mentioned. For the price there's really nothing else out there that compares. Even if you don't like one specific instrument or collection, you get tons of other stuff, most of which is of fantastic quality. I really can't fathom why one would not be satisfied with this offering.
 
I only own a few CineSamples libraries in my DAW, but I use CineBrass and CinePerc frequently in StaffPad. I use Tina Guo and CinePiano on both platforms, and I find them all to be very useful. The only thing keeping me from grabbing Musio on a big sale is all of the libraries on my hard drive that already lie fallow. I don’t need to add to that collection. I’ve settled in nicely with the Berlin stuff, but any way you slice it, Musio is a whole lot of bang for your buck. Same with the EW stuff. If I were just starting out, knowing what I know now, I’d look no further than the subscription models.
 
Musio lifetimer here - I still go to the main CineSamples libraries - they are superior in mic positions and flexibility.

If I were just starting Musio is more than enough. But I did already have the others.
 
doctoremmet said:
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It seems their uptake in actual subscribers is rather low, given how they have continually changed their ‘proposal’. So this MAY mean their revenue or “earning capacity” may ultimately be too low to actually make a sustainable living.
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This statement feels like unsubstantiated speculation to me. Guessing the state of a company just from the frequency of their sales? Just curious... Thanks :)
 
When they made that offer on the site I tried out some of the sounds and I didn't like them. Honestly if I wanted some core instruments for around $199, I would buy from 8Dio rather than Musio since 8Dio also has some seriously deep discounts with the advantage of being able to buy a la carte and perhaps being able to pay for a future SoundPaint upgrade (if you're interesting in that sort of thing)
 
PancakesBear said:
When they made that offer on the site I tried out some of the sounds and I didn't like them. Honestly if I wanted some core instruments for around $199, I would buy from 8Dio rather than Musio since 8Dio also has some seriously deep discounts with the advantage of being able to buy a la carte and perhaps being able to pay for a future SoundPaint upgrade (if you're interesting in that sort of thing)
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I think the CineSamples stuff is more well rounded and better programmed if the Musio versions are close to the Kontakt versions. Both CS and 8dio have more or less abandoned their Kontakt lines but Musio seems more of a port of the Kontakt libraries whereas Soundpaint is more akin to a reimagining. I can’t say I’m drawn to Soundpaint at all, though many seem to think it has high value. But I think you’d be hard pressed to spend $199 at 8dio even at the glitchiest of 8dio pricing and come close to what you can pick up through Musio 1 at $199.
 
Chris_B said:
doctoremmet said:
So this MAY mean their revenue or “earning capacity” may ultimately be too low to actually make a sustainable living.
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This statement feels like unsubstantiated speculation to me. Guessing the state of a company just from the frequency of their sales? Just curious... Thanks :)
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It's speculation, but it's not wild speculation, since most of us (like Temme) have been around long enough to at least guess what the tea leaves are telling us.

We know from experience (and from every developer telling us) that most of a product's sales come from the initial period you offer it. The biggest chunk of income is in that first month. In this case, that first perpetual offering would be last summer, when they offered lifetime Musio for $499. (On sale from $999. Remember what a killer deal we all thought that was?)

Countless developers have told us that sales decline pretty rapidly after a product's initial offering, although there can be additional spikes from an occasional boost from a big sale. But in Cinesamples' case, subsequent sales haven't been "occasional." (I think this is the third time Musio 1 has been offered for $199 in the last two months?) My guess is they're experiencing a serious case of diminishing returns at this point, since the low hanging fruit, and even much of the medium hanging fruit, has already been picked. (I could be wrong, of course, but that's my guess.)

I'm guessing that by now, most Musio users here on the forum (including me) own Musio 1, rather than subscribing. So for many (if not most) of us, CS/Musio doesn't have anything left to sell us. Making a perpetual license so price-attractive is great for a short-term income spike, but it reduces future sales AND it reduces subscriber numbers.

That diminishes their back end. But they need that back end. Not just for new products (beyond kalimbas and toy pianos), but also to keep the software up to date (Mac OS updates are not a developer's friend), let alone adding multiple mics, etc. None of that is cheap.

So it's not that crazy for people to wonder if a sustainable amount of income is going to keep coming in for the coming year or years. I hope it does, of course, since I'm a customer myself, but the rollout and marketing strategy does give me pause.

* Note - As a developer myself, I realize it's not a great look for me to be chiming in here, although our products are very different, so I don't think I'd call myself a "competitor". As a long time member, though, and especially as one who's seen a whole lot of companies come and go, it's hard to keep biting my tongue and not share my own thoughts.
 
I think it's telling that even the folks who are believing CineSamples business model isn't sustainable still bought Musio 1 (myself included) For now they probably have enough cash.

I really want the multi mic upgrade, but my guess is, that from the moment they would release that, they would kill their Kontakt version income. So that's a clear negative incentive.

On the other hand they need as many customers as possible in Musio. With enough customers in Musio, I guess their survival mostly depends on if it's truly a lot easier to develop for Musio than it is for Kontakt. Only that way they can create a Musio 2 within enough time, before other revenue has dried up. I think it's been very impressive how much they have made available in Musio in only a few years with only a small team.
 
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Chris_B said:
This statement feels like unsubstantiated speculation to me. Guessing the state of a company just from the frequency of their sales? Just curious... Thanks :)
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It is not my statement, rather it seems to be a talking point that’s being thrown out there in the numerous discussions. I’m merely repeating it in my half baked “summary”. So I concur. It may not be a “wild” speculation because there is some merit to it, as Mike points out.
 
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To be clear: I get and appreciate OP’s original question. It is a valid one.

As to speculation about a company’s or business’ future, there have been many threads lately where forum members seem to think or even claim to know how a company is doing, seeing all sorts of “writings on the wall”. Spitfire is doomed because their most recent publicly disclosed balance sheet shows a loss, 8Dio and Soundpaint are spoiling the market because they’re doomed for sure and they’re of course major ***holes anyway, and Musio doesn’t have a sustainable business. “I mean, look at those prices”.

I am in the camp of people who think the market may be saturated but the many sales have always been there as far as I can see and according to vendors also a necessity. So I don’t attribute a lot of “predictive value” to them. I have no idea about any of the vendors’ future financial outlooks. All i meant to do was to mention some of these views. I should have made that more clear.

I bought Musio lifetime for $499 and like the product. ;)
 
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Thanks @doctoremmet, I agree: the Op asks a fair question. I understand the concept of risk when buying libs. Some that I have bought are from 1-person companies--about as risky as it gets in my book. The "out" you have if any of them go belly-up is that you have the libs. Same with Musio: if you have the storage you can download their entire catalog locally.

Whenever a company chooses to break an old mold with the goal of mining future sales in a different mode or direction there is always risk. I understood that risk, weighed the benefits of the Musio catalog and the features and libs they had on their roadmap, and bought the lifetime deal a year ago.

When I think about equating the risk of working with Musio and their ability to survive/thrive with the risk of buying from 1-person companies I see less risk with Musio. They have a team with multiple support folks, developers, prod managers, etc. I have watched their online video sessions and the key people impress me as a sincere, knowledgeable, and motivated team. Looking at them as an investor of sorts.

What is more important to me as a daily user than watching sales events is how they are continuing to provide responsive support and roll out user-requested feature releases and library/instrument updates. Support has been both responsive and effective. And the quality of their new releases has been excellent. These things count big time for me and are not signs of a company in trouble.

For what it's worth I think their Total Available Market is bigger than what many think but THAT is an unsubstantiated opinion :)

To bed, then back to music...
 
Weirdly, I love to buy libraries from the one-man-band companies. Xsample, Bunker Samples, Wrongtools, Aaron Venture, Ben Osterhouse, Karoryfer Samples, Jasper, Streamtech, Guareschi, Marcos Ciscar, David Forner and others. They seem to be doing some of the most creative stuff. If I get to use the samples for a couple of cool pieces of music, it’ll be worth any risk for me ;)
 
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For some reason I prefer the Kontakt version rather than the Musio player. As a new composer I would go with EW or Musio subscription, best value, excellent products at a price that is hard to beat.

I have decided to move away from subscription, personal choice. Cinesamples are great samples and to offer them at a good deal without forking out tons of money is golden.
 
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