Indie Library: Rip off or not?

[Bspendlove]

As some people may of checked in over the past few months with my library I have been developing called Cinematic Rhythms (Loads of information on my news if you are interested xD)

The thing that really made me think a lot was the price...

As a indie developer and not really known, I was thinking I would sell my library very low-end compared to other companies out there...

But I still did not know what to set the price at...

So I done some research of libraries that have 'similar' sounds and yet both unique sounds in different ways to see where I could get up to...

I recently contacted the founder from a indie company called 'Universal Sampling' found here:

Universal Sampling Website

So I decided to look at the products they have released and it looks all interesting when it gets to the point of a library called:

Euphoria

And then I looked at the demos on Youtube and the composition demos and thought, Ahhh this sounds cool... I have produced some similar loops myself using the exact same techniques of sound design, and the same synth programme.... All becoming literally sounds that 'sound' very alike/similar... ( I am not comparing my library as 'my sounds are similar'... I am just trying to get at the point of selling a library for a decent price...)

I WONDERED.... How much could this be? $40? $80???

$279.00.... Um okay, that is big money for myself as I am pretty poor... xD

I am not complaining as the title of this thread with myself saying it is a rip off or it is not a rip off....

But I am trying to say... This library is up the price range with other libraries such as

Hybrid Two's Project Alpha (Which I actually bought and its fooking great!) - $199

Heavyocity Evolve - $199

Heavyocity AEON Rhythmic - $199 (Quite a few people say its one of the best rhythmic sounding libraries out their..)

8Dio's Hybrid Tools - $299 (Just over price of Euphoria)

8Dio's Rhythmic Aura - $249

I could name more, but I am not all that with my thinking when it comes to libraries xD

So.....

Every library has its own strengths right? (+weakness)

This is what I want...

I really don't want to be selling my first library for £100 or over... Although I have spent a long time creating the samples/patches and other bits....

If you want to know details on the library for a more estimate guess (head over to my news post where I explain a lot about specific categories or read the manual when I get to put it up soon on the website... Also! in about 3 more weeks it will be www.centralcomposers.com! Yay!!!)

Quick info:

202+ nki files

over 2.4gb

Kontakt 4 (I think it works in the free player edition which is a bloody bonus for people who don't want to buy Kontakt, I am not entirely sure yet...)

4 Main Categories (Tonal Loops, Percussive Kits+Loops, FX and Hits and Instruments... Categories are quite self-explanatory ( Don't know if I said that right...))

14 Sub Categories

I personally don't think Size of the library and amount of NKI files matters, its the sounds/ideas etc...

I first planned to sell my product at £49.99 (BRITISH POUNDS! xD or just use $ and sell it for roughly $80) or I might decrease the sale to £40...)

but the first week, you can use a discount code for half price for a little weekly sale (and then it will be back to its RRP at £40)

I guess the price will depend on my YouTube demo of the library and the Library Demos on the webpage ? ;)

I also had a idea from other companies that start out... Once I have a few people on the facebook or twitter page, for a random draw out when people comment on a post and the names will be gathered and 1 will be randomly selected to win a free download of the product...

I need some ideas...

I also plan on creating small libraries to sell cheap after, to keep me with my consistency and recording instruments... I really need to think of something different though to make it more appealing and more 'unique' in its own way...

I think I said everything I needed to say, I just really need some opinions for some people so it will help me figure out what I want to focus on and do...

Thanks so much for anyone that takes interest and replies! (Some nice people on Newgrounds...)

-Brandon

[brutalexcess]

But I still did not know what to set the price at...

What you could do is a tiered pay what you want business model. That is a very friendly approach particularly for indie artists, generally used my small authors in order to make money, and for the most part the PWYW system is often regarded as consumer-friendly.

You could set certain benefits at particular tiers:

i.e. At Tier 1, you provide a larger collection of your music and sound assets for $15, Tier 2 is all of your music collection + any additional benefits you wish to add for $25

I suppose the only problem with this is the cost required to make the system in the first place. Samulis which made a custom VST some time ago is currently selling that on a pay-what-you-want basis; the good thing about the pay-what-you-want system is that it is less likely to be pirated than traditional buyout systems. Maybe it is something you want to look into.

[Bspendlove]

At 10/24/13 07:51 AM, brutalexcess wrote: You could set certain benefits at particular tiers:

i.e. At Tier 1, you provide a larger collection of your music and sound assets for $15, Tier 2 is all of your music collection + any additional benefits you wish to add for $25

So a large section of the library could be cheaper then buying the whole library itself? Or like bundles of different libraries instead of just 'Cinematic Rhythms'?

Also about the PWYW method, I guess the buyer can set the price to 0 so I would only use this with projects that are smaller? Because I personally think everyone would just put in $0 to download Cinematic Rhythms :( There is a lot of people out there like that... Although it would increase the downloads/maybe get me a bit more of a audience when selling another library...

I was thinking about releasing a similar library in the future for free or as a PWYW product....

I might not of understood the whole PWYW method though, I know nothing about it... xD

[brutalexcess]

So a large section of the library could be cheaper then buying the whole library itself? Or like bundles of different libraries instead of just 'Cinematic Rhythms'?

It's up to you to decide what you want to put as your prices for each tier. Maybe split up your library into sub-parts and sell each sub-part separately within the PWYW model - just a suggestion of course. But think about the Humble Indie Bundle which is a PWYW model, and 166 thousand and counting of these bundles are being sold and have raised just over $1 million; but that is because of the generous tier system.

You want to be generous, but you don't want it too much either. I am no music freak so the prices can vary depending on the size of your library. If it is 2.4GB you probably want to split that up into parts as I said because I don't think people would want to download an entire 2.4GB in one download - that would put me off purchasing it at a reasonable price on the PWYW system.

You can use WinRar to split up the content into parts, maybe 7 or 8 to make it easier to download - and put parts into certain tiers. That could work. Only a suggestion, but I think that could work.

[brutalexcess]

You want to be generous, but you don't want it too much either. I am no music freak so the prices can vary depending on the size of your library. If it is 2.4GB you probably want to split that up into parts as I said because I don't think people would want to download an entire 2.4GB in one download - that would put me off purchasing it at a reasonable price on the PWYW system.

Although now that I think about it £50 for 2.4GB of content is not bad. NKI files you say? I don't produce music, I only record, but I'm pretty sure most sound assets use WAV files?

[Bspendlove]

At 10/24/13 08:30 AM, brutalexcess wrote:

You want to be generous, but you don't want it too much either. I am no music freak so the prices can vary depending on the size of your library. If it is 2.4GB you probably want to split that up into parts as I said because I don't think people would want to download an entire 2.4GB in one download - that would put me off purchasing it at a reasonable price on the PWYW system.

Although now that I think about it £50 for 2.4GB of content is not bad. NKI files you say? I don't produce music, I only record, but I'm pretty sure most sound assets use WAV files?

You know, I just checked that link out and it seems a very good way to do this, thanks so much for the suggestion..

So I would say... $5 (Minimum to cover the cost of website+amazon s3 download) for each category? and then people can pay more than $5 if they want to?

Or should I go a tiny bit lower? xD

The samples are in .Wav format (I could convert them to NCW (Kontakts format) which compresses them very well) but I would rather provide .wav samples so they can drag+drop the samples into their project folder instead of using Kontakt if they don't want to..?

Roughly, each category download would be around 400-500mb in size.. And I could also do a bonus package of them all together for $15.99? (works out cheaper instead of buying each one individually...)

[brutalexcess]

You know, I just checked that link out and it seems a very good way to do this, thanks so much for the suggestion..

So I would say... $5 (Minimum to cover the cost of website+amazon s3 download) for each category? and then people can pay more than $5 if they want to?

Or should I go a tiny bit lower? xD

The samples are in .Wav format (I could convert them to NCW (Kontakts format) which compresses them very well) but I would rather provide .wav samples so they can drag+drop the samples into their project folder instead of using Kontakt if they don't want to..?

Roughly, each category download would be around 400-500mb in size.. And I could also do a bonus package of them all together for $15.99? (works out cheaper instead of buying each one individually...)

Minimum pricing is always a good way of selling your works, otherwise your website ends up going offline due to the lack of finance. And $16 sounds good to me. You can actually find really high quality indie games for about £15 on Steam which is really good -- Hard Reset is one I think, along with Trine 2, Minecraft, Cube World, etc. Given that the two latter are not on Steam they still sell extremely well on their own for a reasonably low price.

[Bspendlove]

At 10/24/13 09:54 AM, brutalexcess wrote: Minimum pricing is always a good way of selling your works, otherwise your website ends up going offline due to the lack of finance. And $16 sounds good to me. You can actually find really high quality indie games for about £15 on Steam which is really good -- Hard Reset is one I think, along with Trine 2, Minecraft, Cube World, etc. Given that the two latter are not on Steam they still sell extremely well on their own for a reasonably low price.

Ok I decided to plan out this (if you wanted to know xD)

The full bundle is $16 (which consist of all 4 main categories... (Basically all sounds)) With the option to pay more if anyone nice out there likes it...

I have split the categories also so you can buy them separately... They are $8 each, but turn out cheaper if you buy the full bundle (instead of buying all 4 individually...) Basically a bundle deal (or similar to buy 2 get the other 2 free...)

This gives the option to customize the Cinematic Rhythms library in case people don't want the Tonal Loops, or any other category...

Sounds like a good plan?

And then the little bonus raffle pick out later on could be bigger...

2 people can win the Cinematic Rhythms Bundle...

and 4 people can win their choice of any (but one) category product of Cinematic Rhythms...