Reply To: Musio upcoming livestream w/ announcement and Q&A

[LinkedMusicians]

On Brian said

I am about half way thought yesterdays Q&A YT and I tend to agree with @GoncaloL.  I don’t see any incentive for them to develop new Musio branded libraries, now that they are planning future revenue generation from third party devs.  There is no incentive for them to commission new content under the Musio brand when they can have them form a “third party” company to revenue share outside the Musio subs and Musio Lifetime sphere.  Sour grapes over the devaluation of the lifetime plan aside, none of any of this really matters if the platform doesn’t survive, so kudos for them trying to build a revenue model that keeps them afloat.  I think the Musio One deal at IIRC 150 bucks (?) was a crazy good deal.

Don’t ever confuse me with an optimist. I’m a pragmatist all the way. So keep that in mind with this post.

There is a ton of incentive for Cinesamples to create new Musio libraries. Let’s say they make 30% profit margins — I have no idea what the deal is, that’s just a number I picked out of thin air — from selling other developers’ libraries. Whatever that margin is, Cinesamples still makes a higher profit margin from selling their own sample libraries (once they’ve broken even on production costs). Bringing aboard third-party developers not only enables Cinesamples to pay their bills, it also funds the creation of new sample libraries. Without the revenue from selling third-party libraries, I’m not confident that Cinesamples would survive or they might survive, but would have less employees, possibly even just Mike with contractors used on a per project basis like the way a lot of small developers work.

The problem I see is strategic and it could be a deal breaker for the business if it’s not fixed. Mike has priced the third-party libraries inconsistently with the Musio brand’s value proposition. I expected that they’d price libraries low, similar to what 8Dio is doing with SoundPaint. But the third-party libraries are priced the same or 20% less than their Kontakt Player equivalents when this is a far less sophisticated platform without the same scripting capabilities, the same effects capabilities, or even the ability to have presets. That makes no sense and if Mike doesn’t fix that right away, I think it will certainly have negative implications for the Musio brand positioning and sales revenue.  Now, Mike could be planning to deep discount the libraries in the marketplace — but I still think even having list prices so close or identical to their Kontakt Player equivalents is a very, very bad mistake. They positioned Musio as making sample libraries more affordable. But the prices for the third-party libraries in their marketplace are completely inconsistent with that value proposition. That causes confusion with the (sample buyer) marketplace. It makes no sense. I’m very confident that Kontakt users  would NOT pay the same price for a Musio version of a sample library as they would for a Kontakt or Kontakt Player version.

You can buy True Strike for Kontakt Player for the same price as the Musio version and get all sorts of editing capabilities, all sorts of effects, all sorts of presets, and be using the best sampler in the industry — one you can feel relatively confident will still be updated in 5 years. You can’t say any of that about Musio. Mike needs to better understand his target audience and his brand. If those sample library prices came down 40%, I think this can succeed. Now, maybe Mike’s planning to just use huge deep discounting in sales like he’s been doing. Sales promotions drive most of the sales in this industry. But the fact that he’s listing libraries so high is a mistake nonetheless.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

4