Reply To: 🔥🔥 EastWest Future Bundle $143.10 reg. $497 + Get Voices of Passion FREE!

[LinkedMusicians]

On pseudopop said

Plugin Boutique and Best Service are rarely the cheapest option for people outside the US, unless they have an exclusive deal.

AudioDeluxe gives you back 3 times the amount of your purchase in DeluxeCoins, and you need at least 100 DC to get a $1 discount. They almost always have a 10% discount code available, so if you count the DeluxeCoins as a discount, in the long run you get a 12.7% discount on average. A little less, actually, because the DC you use reduces the amount of DC you gain, and the discount is realized only on future purchases.

JRR, on the other hand, can give you a 15% discount straight up, though not always.

The value that the AudioDeluxe freebies have is subjective. I now have two licenses for Voices of Passion, and I think everyone and their mother has a UVI Model D license by now. I doubt they have much resale value.

Personally, I use both stores, but mostly JRR.

It’s a nerdy little discussion, but it’s important to me, because I have to choose which retailers will go into the shopping comparison engine I’m going to be working on soon.

So EastWest Voices of Passion DID allow the discount code at JRR Shop earlier this month, but it no longer works. I don’t have a record of what it was, so going by Yan’s post, it was around $141 and some change, whereas it’s $143.10 at Audio Deluxe, which to be fair, we’ll call $143 and the difference between the two retailers before JRR Shop stopped the code at $2; that is, JRR Shop WAS $2 cheaper before they pulled away the coupon code. It’s now $159, which is approximately $16 ($15.90 if we want to be precise) more expensive than the Audio Deluxe price.

Then you add in that Audio Deluxe has a loyalty program. Of course, to your point, loyalty programs usually work by giving you discounts on future purchases (with Best Service Instant Best Coin being an exception — that I think will confuse the heck out  of consumers).  Each Deluxe Bucks point is equivalent to a US cent (a penny); 100 points = 1 USD. Voices of Passion earns 477 points, which you could consider $4.77 in price reductions for future purchases. If you plan on buying anything from Audio Deluxe in the future, it made the net savings over JRR Shop’s price nearly $3 PLUS you add that Audio Deluxe added in a free plugin, which, to your point, may or may not be to your liking. But the Voices of Passion freebie seems quite well received and I find that Audio Deluxe has some pretty compelling freebies  — but, of course, that’s completely subjective.

Anyhow that example fits with what I’ve witnessed MOST of the time comparing JRR Shop to Audio Deluxe. Now, every so often JRR Shop beats everybody, just as once in a while Plugin Boutique, Best Service, Gears4Music, Thomann, and much more rarely, Sweetwater have a price that beats every other store. But those are rarities. Subsequently, when I choose the retailers for the shopping comparison engine, I’m going to include the retailers that are normally the most competitive — not the ones that have the best price once in a while — which our forum is always going to be better at leading people to.

So, I wrote this into response to PsuedoPop, but please, I want everyone who is interested in this to chime in too. I want to make this tool super useful. It isn’t intended to replace the fourm, but to suppliment it. But I also need to manage the number of retailers in this, and some small ones also may present technical challenges to get in there — and I don’t know which ones at this point. But my list of retailers I want in their, based on my experience posting deals over this past year is:

– Audio Deluxe
– Plugin Boutique
– Best Service

@pseudopop You made a comment from a European perspective and I could use more insights from that perspective. No doubt, my being an American does mean that I can learn A LOT from your perspective and our other members from all around the globe. I think you know that I want you to share those insights. This community is and will always be global.

Stores I’m contemplating adding:

– Gears4Music  — they’re pretty new to me and brought to my attention by @lamia6, who has had good experiences with them. They occasionally have an unbeatable price.
– Thomann – as I mentioned, occasionally, this store will have a great, unbeatable price on stuff.
– Sweetwater – Most of the time, their prices are higher than Audio Deluxe, Plugin Boutique, and Best Service. But once in a while, they have unbeatable, exclusive deals.

This is, unquestionably, a software-centric list of stores (I haven’t thought about hardware, but I may in the future). I will probably do another post just on this topic, but as pseudopop started a conversation here that’s really timely considering what I’m soon going to be working on, I can really use pseudopop’s and everyone else’s input on this and the stores you like best. Because I can’t code any of this, it’s easily going to cost me over $1,000 to add this functionality. But I think it can add a ton of value to our community and fund LinkedMusicians into the future too.

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