Why not pirate?

[Nabeel Ansari]

Well I don't really love it all that much so I guess... you're right? Also I'm pretty sure skill isn't a requirement to use Kontakt. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to load up a Shreddage multi.

Wait I can just PRESS A BUTTON AND LOAD A VST?! THAT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!!!!

Well no derp, dude, but can you use it properly? I think not.

I remember one day I sent an email to those who made Guitar Pro, telling them that I use a pirated version of their GP5 but that I had the intention to buy the product in a near futur because I used it for a lot of years and that it helped me so much.

In the reply, they asked me to 'spread the word' about their software to my friend who composed (talk good) as a penitence until I buy it.

I think they were more glad to have a someone sold to their product before even buying it.

I had a similar experience with Image-Line (FL Studio). They said that because I said I would buy it ASAP when I was in a situation that allowed me to, they're fine with me using it.

Also Dew., I got Kontakt for $200. It's called a sale. (yes, music software has sales too!) That's HALF the damn price. That is saving a dollar per day in a glass jar for not even two thirds of a year.

[SnappleMan]

Part of the reason that most professional sound libraries and plugins cost so much is because they have to account for the massive hit they take from piracy. So a $400 multisampled Kazoo library, KFP (Kazoo From Purgatory, 78gb of the most sought after hand made one of a kind kazoos extensively sampled and running through the revolutionary SPIT engine which authentically emulates the sound and feel of real saliva flying through the kazoo and hitting your face, a microphone or one of many surfaces [further brought to life via extensively recorded impulse responses included in the package], all of which you can blend together to achieve a very unique performance), might only cost $150 if people stopped pirating this stuff.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Part of the reason that most professional sound libraries and plugins cost so much is because they have to account for the massive hit they take from piracy.

In other words, the more you pirate, the more you get a reason to (albeit a stupid one).

[SonicThHedgog]

Wait I can just PRESS A BUTTON AND LOAD A VST?! THAT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!!!!

Well no derp, dude, but can you use it properly? I think not.

I had a similar experience with Image-Line (FL Studio). They said that because I said I would buy it ASAP when I was in a situation that allowed me to, they're fine with me using it.

Also Dew., I got Kontakt for $200. It's called a sale. (yes, music software has sales too!) That's HALF the damn price. That is saving a dollar per day in a glass jar for not even two thirds of a year.

You paid for the player or the package?

you do realize Kore player and Kontakt player are free yes?(?) (excluding there sample packages that you pay for)

[big giant circles]

the more overhyped VSTs like Omnisphere and Trilian

To me, Spectrasonics is a ripoff.

Spectrasonics is awesome and you shut your whore mouth you dirty pirate hooker.

I love you Snapple <3

[mickomoo]

Kontact is $400? I got Komplete 6 for 349 I believe. I might have been inclined to pirate, however I don't think I have the heart. Also I don't feel like searching for a safe site to pirate from. luckily my dad has a studio and buys equipment so I piggy back off of him lol

[Dew]

Well no derp, dude, but can you use it properly? I think not.

What are you even getting at? I'm tempted to respond to this straight off, but I'd rather have a clearer idea of what you're implying.

[Gario]

He's most likely referring to the (relatively) complicated nuances and functions of any particular vst/vsti (this includes samplers, like Kontact). Anyone can load a sample and let it rip (which probably won't sound good/realistic, no matter how professional the sample library), but to make the sample sound believable it takes a lot of time and skill to finesse and automate the controls.

[zircon]

For the record, I don't pirate PC games. Why? Because I can afford them. It's ignorant to just say, "Oh, well anyone can just save up money, you're just a LAZY THIEF." I'd be ecstatic if I could just throw that kind of money around. Maybe if I didn't spend any money on gaming for half a year I could save $400 to drop on Kontakt. That isn't worth it to me, though, so I pirate.

But why not just use free software, or buy inexpensive music-making software? There is so much good stuff out there. When I started out (2003) there was nothing. You didn't have the free Kontakt Player and Alchemey Player with gigabytes upon gigabytes of free samples. You didn't have free orchestral sounds from East West, amazing free synths from companies like u-he, free effects like TLs Pocket Limiter/Maximizer and dBlue Glitch, and so on. Yet even as a high school student, I spent $1000 on Komplete 2. Might sound like a lot, but I spent at least that much on MTG, video games, etc.

The point is twofold. One, that it is reasonable to expect that you would spend money on a hobby. The other is that pirating really does affect developers. You might have bought Shreddage, and I appreciate that, but thousands upon thousands of others (conservative estimate) did not buy it. It is all over torrent sites and file sharing sites. I'm sure not everyone would have bought it if it were unpirateable, but some percentage of them would have. That makes me sad. Nobody likes their hard work being taken from them, especially when they're offering it at such a low price to begin with.

Here's a history lesson for you. East West (www.soundsonline.com) has some of the most popular, best-selling and critically-acclaimed libraries around. Yet several years ago, they opted to stop using Kontakt and develop their own plugin. This no doubt has cost them tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs. Not only that, but almost everyone hates the new plugin. It's buggy and unstable. Only now, YEARS later, has it become more accepted (and even today, I don't know anyone who would say it's better than Kontakt.) So why did they do it? Piracy. Kontakt is pirateable. Their plugin uses a dongle, and it is not pirateable.

You might think that driving their library costs up and additive intense hardware-based DRM would lose them sales. I'm sure it did. But the fact that they are doing better than ever leads me to believe that they've made up for this by eliminating ALL piracy of their libraries. Literally 100% of it. Now maybe if people hadn't pirated their stuff extensively to begin with, they would have stuck with Kontakt, and consumers would be happier.

[Dew]

I'm aware of the iLok system. One's currently plugged into the back of my desktop, since back in 2009 I bought Ministry of Rock and used it extensively before I discovered Shreddage. My income was a bit more expendable at the time. I still use it for my bass and lead guitar.

[Tensei]

I pirate pretty much everything initially. Why? Because I see no reason to drop $400 on an intricately sampled Kazoo VSTi if I'm only going to use it for one song that I won't be selling anyway.

I often find it hard to judge whether I will end up using a particular VST over a longer period of time, which is why I usually end up giving programs 'test runs' over several weeks. Once I notice that I'm using stuff like Sample Modeling Brass and LASS in every other song, I have no issues with paying for it.

I think similarly to Steam, music programs would benefit from a centralized online distribution platform that handles DRM and downloading/installing by itself because honestly, I think a lot of the piracy stems from the fact that it's often just plainly more convenient to hit up pirate bay and apply a crack than having to handle whatever draconian DRM the developer comes up with (though NI service center is pretty good in this regard).

[PROTO·DOME]

I completely agree with Overcoat. Purchased stuff now has so many bloody registrations, mandatory updates and things that pirate software is usually the more attractive option. Heck, anything with limited installations practically is a definite no for me. I miss the days where software would come on a serial-free CD with unlimited installs, without having to connect to the internet- it actually felt like you owned the software.

Companies nowadays pile in so much anti-piracy rubbish it's becoming a deterrent, and why? Software is cracked in a matter of days, if not hours. What have they achieved? I know not everyone's the culprit in these circumstances, but it is a large majority.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of person to download something, then if I like it and use it, I'll buy it. But I think it's pretty sad (and something's wrong) when you'd increasingly prefer to buy the pirate version then the legit version because it allows more freedom.

EDIT -

free effects like TLs Pocket Limiter

I use this on every freakin' track of every song I've ever written, it's amazing. But yeah, I'd like to echo the sentiment that there is TONNES of brilliant free software out there. Everything I use in FL is free (or comes with FL).

[prophetik music]

But the fact that they are doing better than ever leads me to believe that they've made up for this by eliminating ALL piracy of their libraries. Literally 100% of it. Now maybe if people hadn't pirated their stuff extensively to begin with, they would have stuck with Kontakt, and consumers would be happier.

just a note - the iLok was kind of hacked a while ago, if i remember correctly. all east west plugins that use their proprietary sample format are available online, with a keygen of sorts that allows you to 'register' spoof your iLok into accepting it.

the only time that i can think of where a vst wasn't hacked because of good anti-piracy stuff and not because of indolence was virtual guitarist 2. how well did that sell again? oh yeah, that's right, they didn't even recoup costs of development, after virtual guitarist 1 and electric edition sold like hotcakes and were cracked in hours.

i used to pirate a lot of stuff, and to this day i'll purchase something and then download the pirated version just to get around the bullshit registration key stuff that's out there. does that make me a terrible person? probably. but there's a lot of awesome vsts out there that you simply can't buy any more - Virtual Bassist comes to mind - and that there isn't driver support for, or it won't install on windows 7, or something. what do you do in that case? i won't let a developer tell me when something's not useful anymore, sorry. i'll use a patch that some hacker in denmark made up every day of the week.

[eilios]

Don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of person to download something, then if I like it and use it, I'll buy it. But I think it's pretty sad (and something's wrong) when you'd increasingly prefer to buy the pirate version then the legit version because it allows more freedom.

EDIT - I use this on every freakin' track of every song I've ever written, it's amazing. But yeah, I'd like to echo the sentiment that there is TONNES of brilliant free software out there. Everything I use in FL is free (or comes with FL).

This and this. DRM should be about stopping piracy, not hindering users. The sad thing is that no matter how hard developers try to stop scurvy buccaneers, the rascals will find a way to get past DRM anyway, forcing developers to make more asinine DRM which the pirates get past regardless. It's an endless cycle that only ends up hurting everyone.

On a lighter side, TLs Pocket Limiter is amazing and I put it on everything.

[SenPi]

my oppinion is what ive seen a few others say already. I pirate stuff to try it out. I dont feel like spending a huge chunk of change, only to find out later that I probably wont use it very often and it was a waste of money. So if I pirate something and really like it, I'll buy it. If not, then I probably just wont use it anymore.

[PrototypeRaptor]

the only time that i can think of where a vst wasn't hacked because of good anti-piracy stuff and not because of indolence was virtual guitarist 2.

UAD's stuff comes to mind, too. definitely a case where a native solution would be much better than the current hardware one, but the fact that it can't be pirated means the semi-obsolete dsp hardware dongle remains.

[zircon]

just a note - the iLok was kind of hacked a while ago, if i remember correctly. all east west plugins that use their proprietary sample format are available online, with a keygen of sorts that allows you to 'register' spoof your iLok into accepting it.

Nope, all PLAY stuff is uncracked. Any would-be cracks would run like complete ass, unusable for real-world applications. I follow this kind of news like a hawk

I completely agree with Overcoat. Purchased stuff now has so many bloody registrations, mandatory updates and things that pirate software is usually the more attractive option. Heck, anything with limited installations practically is a definite no for me. I miss the days where software would come on a serial-free CD with unlimited installs, without having to connect to the internet- it actually felt like you owned the software.

Not much music software is like that. Anything by Native Instruments is basically a one-click authorization. Install the software, punch in a serial, hit "Activate". Done. Spectrasonics is the same way. Reason and FL Studio are both very easy to activate. Any NI-based libraries like LASS or Kontakt require one-click activation. Any 3rd party sample libraries (not official Kontakt Player) have no authorization at all. So what are you complaining about again? The only stuff that is a true pain would be iLok/Synchro and even then, registering my VSL Woodwinds I was pretty painless.

[Nabeel Ansari]

You paid for the player or the package?

you do realize Kore player and Kontakt player are free yes?(?) (excluding there sample packages that you pay for)

You do realize you just asked the most derp question ever posed to me?

I paid for Kontakt 4. It's not a package, it's a SAMPLER that comes with a SAMPLE LIBRARY.

Kontakt 4 =/= Kontakt Player. Kontakt Player is a crippled version of Kontakt 4.

[Darangen]

I used pirated software when I first started. I was a high school student with no job and a family that struggled to put food on the table. Now that I'm older, have a steady job and can spend money on hobbies I purchase all my software.

Snapple and Zircon have pretty good points. For people who don't care enough to save the money, or simply have no money to save, there are plenty of extremely viable free products out there. There's no reason to need to pirate the super duper latest version of cubase/sonar/flstudio or whatever program or sample library you think will magically make your music the best thing since sliced bread. Chances are that if you're not serious enough to save and purchase it, you're probably not serious enough to be able to use it correctly either.

[Rozovian]

So we all like the idea of "try it before you buy it" without any restrictions common to demos and trial versions. And those of us who are serious about music either fork out for a legal copy (cheap and expensive software) or get by with free stuff.

What could, for example, Native Instruments or Image-Line or Spectrasonics do to encourage ppl to buy their stuff legally? I mean, zircon is an FL power user, made one of the fl demo tracks for a recent version of FL... would this be possible if he had pirated the software? Did they check?

I found that user-made Reaktor stuff tends to be locked away in a secret forum somewhere on NI's site, which means that you have to be registered to get it. Sure, someone could just DL them all and make a torrent, but if NI controls the servers they could just check which user has downloaded all of it. I don't remember, but it might be that you had to register using a key from the package itself. I found a similar thing with Toontrack. You had to register the software on their site, but then you had access to some freebies, updates, and stuff like that. And again, with Spectrasonics updating their already massive preset library - log in to dl update. While this prevents some unauthorized access to the stuff, it's a bit of a hassle for legal customers to remember registration info for a dozen products, along with all the forums and server space and whatever else we've got usernames and passwords for.

Is there something that these companies could offer to registered users that isn't available otherwise? Promotion on their site, hardware, sponsorship in... something. Would exposing successful pirates do anything?

(trying to steer the thread in the direction of incentives)

[SonicThHedgog]

You do realize you just asked the most derp question ever posed to me?

I paid for Kontakt 4. It's not a package, it's a SAMPLER that comes with a SAMPLE LIBRARY.

Kontakt 4 =/= Kontakt Player. Kontakt Player is a crippled version of Kontakt 4.

Thats is what I was asking if you bought it with the samples cause I thought you only bought the player, and its basicly a package if your getting samples(anything) with it..

And the kontakt 4s are the same besides things i render useless like script, wave edit and universal imports....(kore on the same boat)

[Nabeel Ansari]

And the kontakt 4s are the same besides things i render useless like script, wave edit and universal imports....(kore on the same boat)

Those are the most important things. You can't ignore them and keep them out of the discussion because you don't use them.

Don't pick on Kontakt 4 if you don't even understand what it is. Kontakt Player is just that, a player for NI samples.

And why would you need to ask? If I said I bought Kontakt 4 for half price $200, I obviously am talking about the $400 REAL KONTAKT 4 (not the utterly useless Kontakt Player).

What could, for example, Native Instruments or Image-Line or Spectrasonics do to encourage ppl to buy their stuff legally? I mean, zircon is an FL power user, made one of the fl demo tracks for a recent version of FL... would this be possible if he had pirated the software? Did they check?

What matters not in zircon's case is if they checked... what makes it possible or not depends on the intelligence of zirc himself and if he's that derp enough to make a demo track with a pirated copy and work with the people he stole from. Whether the people check or not, that's just something you don't do.

[dannthr]

Students get a considerable discount on almost all software worth getting, there really is no reason to pirate.

Get a job and quit your whining.

[dannthr]

BTW, I just got a free plugin for being a Shreddage user.

Legit Customer Win!

[SnappleMan]

Yeah, promotional stuff rocks! I get free stuff from time to time just for using certain software.