Reply To: 🆓🎁New FREE SYNTH from Majetone and It Sounds Beautiful

[LinkedMusicians]

Majetone / James (it’s a one-person business, like many small Kontakt sample developer businesses) just sent out an email to his subscribers that he is pausing downloads for this freebie. The kind of vitiol he’s facing are familiar to anyone who has managed social media and having been managed digital a long time, I’ve witness an incredible amount of cruelty online and know what it’s like to be the target of it. How we treat one another matters. James is a very talented musician and sample developer and it’s heartbreaking to see how the toxicity of forum members (not here, but other places) impact him. I actually haven’t had time to download the synth yet. I’m a Windows user, so I’m hoping that he leaves that up. But I’m going to send him a letter (email) of encouragement to let him know that he’s appreciated. I’m going to link to this thread so he can see what I wrote about him and have a reminder that his work is valued and appreciated.

The amount of downloads has somewhat caught me off guard, it’s been way bigger than anything I’ve done. I routinely seem to underestimate that, but it’s genuine surprise – I often feel like I’ve been creating in a vacuum and for myself for so long it surprises me when it isn’t that! So thank you for the support. But.

 

Over the past couple of days there’s been a large amount of vitriol. I’ve been called a lot of things. I know the internet can be a cold dark place, but christ. Bit much to be honest. I’m just a person who’s made a synth and wanted to share that on the internet in the hope of drawing attention to his plugin company. Thats it. I love doing this stuff and I want it to be good. Not everyone who’s had an issue has been aggressive and I’m grateful for that but there’s been a large enough amount of it, I get it – you don’t know me, something doesn’t work and that’s frustrating, I sort of get it, but also… it’s hard to deal with and also try and troubleshoot problems.

 

I didn’t and wouldn’t release a plugin that didn’t work in to the world, I tested it and it threw up none of the issues that users are having on Mac and I can’t replicate those to fix it, I thought I had it with the update, but without being able to replicate it I’m sort of limited to ‘hit and hope’ which is stressful and ultimately leads me to some sort of impasse.

 

I’m not trying to con anyone or engage in any nefarious practices – because frankly, life is too short and that isn’t where my interests lie and I’d hope that my work up until this point would demonstrate that. I want to make stuff, I don’t want to be shouted at by strangers from a doom portal.

 

Releasing plugins is stressful enough as is and I’ve decided that frankly it isn’t worth the aggravation and to stop Pantomime 4 from distribution immediately, if you’ve downloaded it and it works – it will continue to work. It will be back I’m sure, but I’m going to solve these issues first without it being distributed.

 

I’m sure this whole thing has done me/majetone some damage, which I’m disappointed and sad about and I’m not sure how to move forwards from. If you’re angry, I’m sorry about that. I’m sure that people will think this whole thing has been a cynical move, it hasn’t, it’s been my idea of a nightmare.

 

It’s made me question whether or not to continue doing this at all – which I think is an emotive knee jerk on my part and I need some time and space to figure this out. It’s not every interaction but a large amount of them have been just awful, and if that’s what growing a company is – do I want that? I want to make stuff, but I’ve noticed that seems to come with an open invitation for rudeness, entitlement and aggression and I just don’t want that nor do I want to support it.

 

I’m not quite sure how to conclude this or how I’ll feel in a couple of days but I think for now, the best thing is just putting the brakes on and try and figure out why this link issue is happening in Mac, without adding more fuel to the fire with continued downloads. I’m sure it will return, sorry if you’d intended on downloading and missed it I hope you can understand my reasons for this.

Best wishes,

James

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