On 27 Aug 2004, at 23:54, Mike Carlyle wrote:
I'd rather see you sell the samples and allow users to build their own kits, if desired. I assume these are new and original recorded samples that are not available anywhere else.
Good quality reasonably priced samples are, I think, always a valuable commodity. There are lots of very expensive sample packs available, well outside the home hobbyist's budget (even the relatively keen home hobbyist), and it's usally extremely difficult to find out anything about the nature of the samples themselves. Hell, I've looked around for ages trying to find some affordable ethnic percussion, and it's damn near impossible to find out what you would be spending all that money _on_! So I haven't bought any. I'm not rich enough to spend money on something that I have to hope doesn't suck :P And I would say that good, well-documented collections of samples at "shareware-style" prices would quickly find a market in these days of GarageBand and ProTools. (Of course, I would say that, since I am part of that market :) That said, there's no reason not to have separate pricing structure for complete dbkit and samples-only. While I like messing around with kit building and kit bashing (to steal a turn of phrase from the plastic modelers :) I could probably be convinced to cough up a few bucks for a ready made Latin kit. After all, I could always tweak it to my own satisfaction later. But definitely the valuable part is the samples -- without samples, no kit. With samples, anyone can make a kit, given time and -- much as in the case of ns_kit, share it about pretty easily to anyone else with the samples. You might even consider selling the samples and having free dbkits as an incentive for people to buy your samples ("look, this dbkit is all set up to go ... if you have my sample pack!").
My recent nskit is about 50 megs, with embedded samples. Do you think most users would be able to download it? If not, I think the CD option should at least be offered.
One could always charge extra for the CD.
As for how much I would pay? I suppose that I would feel funny if I had to pay more than I did for Doggiebox itself. I can't remember what that was. Something like 29 bucks maybe?
Current price is USD39, I think. And not being a pro, I couldn't possibly afford more than that anyway. Actually, I couldn't afford more than rather less.
I would suggest to you that offering the most flexible product packaging is key, as long as it doesn't drive your actual costs up. In other words, offer "loose" samples, kits on CD, kits for download, icon packages, whatever you think someone might want to buy. Offering only ready made kits and making them available in one format only might stem some potenial income.
I would concur with that analysis. I would probably get the freeware version an screw around with it, and if I thought it was cool, I'd spring for the full-on version. I mean, that's kind of how shareware works. It's kind of how I got Doggiebox :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/