LINKEDMUSICIANS FORUM WILL SOON CLOSE AND TRANSITION TO OUR SUBREDDIT

[LinkedMusicians]

Deal posting will soon cease. We’re going to go out with a bang and focus on the IK / Orange Tree Samples giveaway as we say goodbye to LinkedMusicians Forum and OPEN MIC. Both will close following the giveaway.

Thanks,
Peter

Our new community home is here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedMusicians/

• This topic was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.
• This topic was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.
• This topic was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.

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1132

[MrFigg]

I guess i understand why but its a sad time. Weve had it good for too long. Thanks for the effort you put in Peter.

13

[LinkedMusicians]

On MrFigg said

I guess i understand why but its a sad time. Weve had it good for too long. Thanks for the effort you put in Peter.

@mrfigg After suggestions from my friend, @Thor — who along with @GregJazz have always been just amazing, encouraging friends that both encouraged me to attempt to play music again, then to start LinkedMusicians, I have a plan to keep the community together. Running LinkedMusicians as a social media platform, forum, and content site, as well as the emails, is more than a full-time job. And the duty to keep the deals up was the part that made it completely exhausting. There’s also  the kind of cyber attacks, the bogus DCMA removal request I dealt with last month, the legal requirements for a social media sites, the email — plus the costs of the high powered server were on. While I have a contract that runs until January, if this is just a resource site, I no longer need a server with 16 CPU, and 16 GB RAM, so I won’t be facing anywhere near the same costs and the subreddit is free to run.

Thor just suggested Discord, but candidly, I really find Discord a mess. What I would love to do is to move our social group back to an excellent platform, at our subreddit. I really should have planned this out. At the subreddit, we can keep everyone together, I can share deals occasionally, you can post deals when you feel like it, and it’s actually the ideal place to grow the community. I can use LinkedMusicians as a place to store resources, like freebie lists or best of lists that we make in the subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedMusicians/

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by LinkedMusicians.

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21

[fretman]

Very sad, but I understand.

I get a “page not found error” on the reddit link you posted.

Studio One, Windows, RME UFX, Yamaha MSP7

2

[LinkedMusicians]

On fretman said

Very sad, but I understand.

I get a “page not found error” on the reddit link you posted.

Studio One, Windows, RME UFX, Yamaha MSP7

On fretman said

Very sad, but I understand.

I get a “page not found error” on the reddit link you posted.

Sorry, I copied the mod link. But don’t be sad. I was overwhelmed managing an entire social media platform, dealing with moderation, posting deals, attacks on the site, a fake DCMA request from someone with a focus on damaging this site and creating fake accounts targeting and mocking me, and the costs of hosting a site like this, troubleshooting user’s issues and then posting deals, writing content and then trying to grow the site. After my friend @thor posted and I saw that people still want to keep the group together I feel re-energized. I don’t want to abandon this cause and this group of people I care about. I just need to make it manageable.

I’ve decided I’m going to commit to using the subreddit to keep our community together. I realize that some don’t love it, but here’s the thing, it doesn’t cost me anything, it has great community management tools, Google loves it and it’s the perfect place to grow the community — but it’s not great for storing resources like our best lists — so guess what? LinkedMusicians.com will continue as a resource that I’ll continue working on, and I can still work out deals with developers too. Most importantly, I won’t have to commit my life and thousands of dollars to a passion project, like I’ve had to do here. I won’t be posting deals like I have been. But I can still post great deals when they’re out. I can promise that. Without having to do all of the other stuff, it will be fun again.

Thor is clearly a lot smarter than me. Thank goodness for Thor! I sincerely love him. He’s one of my favorite humans, as is @GregJazz.The two are true friends and just wonderful people. Having to constantly post deals or this community dies has been a giant burden. I am ready for LinkedMusicians to be joyful again. My wife and kids will tell you that I’m incapable of being insincere. I’m just wired to be sincere. And I can’t hide that loathed the burden of having to post deals all of the time. I get why there are people who do that thing — they get kickbacks from the developer and retailers, as I’ve had one developer acknowledge that he has given undisclosed gifts to a prolific deal poster that was once here. But I’ll be super candid — while I paid for around 3 months of hosting from November affiliate earnings, it really took a ridiculous amount of work to raise $70 and I think the hosting for this site — on a promotional contract is like $120 or something a month, then, I have all of these other software (plugin subscriptions) that I need to pay maintenance on. It has been pretty much impossible make this site self-sufficient. But if I turn it into a resource site and move the social parts to the subreddit, it’s A LOT cheaper to run.

Anyhow, I realize I’m oversharing. I’m just feeling a huge weight is off my shoulders and I don’t need to end this community. I just need to move the social community to the subreddit and it’s the best of both worlds and I’ll have my life back without destroying what I’ve spent 1 1/2 years building — and @lamia6 has done a ton of work on — and a lot of others have put their hearts into. I am actually overjoyed at this moment.

Thanks to @thor and everyone who is part of this community. I promise to stay committed, just not to obsessively posting deals. But I’ll still post great ones on the subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedMusicians/

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15

[jude77]

This was huge surprise, but totally understandable.  I don’t know anything about managing websites, but I would think that a presence on reddit would offer a huge boost in participation.  I’m on board the move.

In the meanwhile, Peter, you’re amazing for having gotten us this far.

12

[Brian]

My nickel’s worth-  Back to Reddit is what I was hoping we would pivot to.  I like seeing all the deals in one place, sure, but there are other places you can do that.  What I come here for is the engagement with intelligent creatives.  I realized over the past few months I completely stopped visiting KVR and VI- just rarely if I am looking for some specific hints on a music gadget.  I think it would be great to discuss and debate specific deals on https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedMusicians/, but to be honest I would just as soon NOT see a daily flood, or at least put those in a sub-sub, if you can do that?  I gotta learn more about Reddit mechanics.  The King is dead.  Long live the King!

11

[LinkedMusicians]

On Brian said

My nickel’s worth-  Back to Reddit is what I was hoping we would pivot to.  I like seeing all the deals in one place, sure, but there are other places you can do that.  What I come here for is the engagement with intelligent creatives.  I realized over the past few months I completely stopped visiting KVR and VI- just rarely if I am looking for some specific hints on a music gadget.  I think it would be great to discuss and debate specific deals on https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedMusicians/, but to be honest I would just as soon NOT see a daily flood, or at least put those in a sub-sub, if you can do that?  I gotta learn more about Reddit mechanics.  The King is dead.  Long live the King!

If I could have just figured that out a year ago! Oh well, now that I’ve figured it out, I am excited about this project again and without being weighed down by doing brain-dead manual labor, I think I may add a section of this site for honest community reviews (registered members only) of sample libraries, plugins, and other gear and price comparison within the next 4 months, and keep the social media community on the subreddit. I’ll post only killer deals when I can and everyone else can post stuff like codes they find. I can continue the relationship with developers and retailers and work on more exclusive deals, special discount codes, and giveaways. I just need to be free of doing the deal posting. That somewhat derailed the project, to be candid, which I realize has made certain people happy, but it didn’t derail this project. It just set us back a year. But LinkedMusicians 2.0 is going to be significantly superior to the track we were on.

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[patrickwichrowski]

https://linktr.ee/patrickwichrowski/

https://patrickwichrowski.bandcamp.com/

1

[mibby]

Well, this was a surprise. Because of “stuff”, I’ve just been lurking mostly and checking in here and there. I’m glad to see folks will still be hanging around on the Reddit. Thanks for all the effort Peter (and others)!

Apollo Twin Duo USB | ARC Studio | Fender Studio Pro 8 | Windows

1

[LinkedMusicians]

I’m working on a logo for the LinkedMusicians subreddit — following Reddit’s standards. But I realize that it won’t be ideal with our dark and light feature on the site. By the way, this site will be redesigned without the social media / forum functionality, maintaining all of the free resources, plus I’m looking at adding a section that allows reviews of sample libraries, plugins, and — I’m not sure about this — adding a price comparison engine that I was previously working on (and already partially paid for).

So, I don’t want to give everything away so that it can be copied, but what I’m doing will be different, and I believe significantly more useful than typical price comparison affiliate marketing sites like Music Software Deals. If you’re familiar with Consumer Reports, think about how they do brand reliability studies. They poll their members. They actually have turned to affiliate programs to fund their operations, which at first, I was appalled at, but later came to see that it was financially necessary for their survival. I basically am looking at doing something similar for this industry and I’m very confident that no one else is interested in doing it, because they’re all focused on making as much profit as possible. I’m driven by passion. I might be able to make a profit on it after a few years, but I’m looking at making things pay for themselves.

This has been a passion project that frankly, after we lost our deal poster, we lost 1 year. This reconfiguration is something necessary, not only for LinkedMusicians to continue, but for it to grow, and I believe it can grow at a rate far beyond what is possible with the present configuration. I will no longer be tied to laborious deal posting, but will focus on sharing only truly compelling deals, while working on automating the process. That enables me to not focus on deals, but on growing the community and the creative side and encouraging members to create and develop as musicians and music producers.  Candidly, while I’m a deal addict, and it’s fun to acquire stuff, the real joy here is in making music. That is what LinkedMusicians was created for, and spending so much focus on only deals is not something I want to do and there’s no need to do after automating the mindless task of deal posting. But I need to get off of the grind of mindless manual deal posting to focus on automating the process and creating a resource that doesn’t yet exist that I believe should exist.

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1

[Vst0nE]

Peter, my thought, that will be the end as no one really goes to reddit for deals, that interface is not really suitable for it, back to kvr, rekkerd or cakewalk then i guess, shame it did not survive. just my couple of cents.

[LinkedMusicians]

On Vst0nE said

Peter, my thought, that will be the end as no one really goes to reddit for deals, that interface is not really suitable for it, back to kvr, rekkerd or cakewalk then i guess, shame it did not survive. just my couple of cents.

I respect that. Despite our beta group coming from the Cakewalk Deals subforum, I never intended for deals to be the primary driver here. Don’t get me wrong—I’m a fellow deals addict!—but my desire has always been to make this a place where we can move beyond just buying stuff and encourage one another to grow as creators in a healthier, non-toxic environment. I realize that shift isn’t a fit for everyone.

I do plan on changing things up in the new environment to help cut through the noise. I want to focus on the ‘killer deals’ instead of getting lost in a sea of irrelevant posts just to be prolific, which is the reality of all of the deals forums in this space, they’re mostly filler.

Regarding the move to Reddit: my profession is digital marketing and strategy, and from that perspective, it’s clear the tide has shifted. Old-school forums have been in significant decline for at least 15 years (that’s why building the one here was so expensive, the days of developers giving away tools free or making cheap scripts/plugins for forums has largely passed, the small group that still focus on forums are charging a lot more than they did a decade ago); they often struggle to attract new users, with recent data showing that roughly 70% of forum-style engagement from creators under 50 has moved to more integrated platforms.

Conversely, Reddit is well-established as a powerhouse for deal groups. There are over 3 million people currently in dedicated ‘deals’ subreddits for tech, media, and retail. They use it specifically because the voting system acts as a real-time ‘quality filter’ that traditional forums just can’t replicate. It helps us find the best deals without the noise.

Just to give you some perspective on how popular Reddit is for deals groups (keep in mind that Reddit gets 126 million daily active users, to say it plainly — forums gave way to subreddits a long time ago; right now we just have the big survivors that built up communities during better times and then there are the small developer forums like Cakewalk Discuss that probably sees less than 50,000 unique visitors per month according to the more trustworthy third-party estimates):

r/buildapcsales (PC Tech): 1.1 Million+ members
r/Freebies (Free Products): 850,000+ members
r/Deals (General Retail): 220,000+ members
r/DigitalCodeSELL (Media): 120,000+ members

I understand it’s a big change, and I’m not trying to sell, just sharing knowledge. But for a community-driven approach in 2026, I really believe this is the optimal home on a number of levels.

Thanks for being part of LinkedMusicians from the beginning. I sincerely appreciate it and I wish you all the best. wherever you land. And if you someday you have a change of heart that leads you back to LinkedMusicians, know that you’re always welcome to join us at the subreddit. We don’t require exclusivity! 🙂

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3

[swijaya]

I think I like “killer deals” more than “just deals.” it supports those like me who doesn’t have unlimited funds, while living in a country included in “countries with lower purchasing power” list of an online music course site (they are offering scholarships for students from those countries).

Honestly, I’m also more familiar with forums format (although my Reddit account is 9 years old). I usually end up on Reddit because of Google searches. But who knows.

I’m aware that there are thousands members in there.

1

[fretman]

On Brian said

….  I like seeing all the deals in one place, sure, but there are other places you can do that…..

Where else do you go for a list of deals?

Studio One, Windows, RME UFX, Yamaha MSP7

[LinkedMusicians]

On fretman said

On Brian said

….  I like seeing all the deals in one place, sure, but there are other places you can do that…..

Come on. I just poured my heart into this place, time and money and the first thing you’re doing is using LinkedMusicians to ask about where to replace the site? There are tons of places. Ask Google and you’ll see plenty of choices. Facebook Groups and subreddits are the best sources.  The guy that used to be the frequent deal poster here grabbed most of his deals from a Facebook Group we were both in and emails he subscribes to.

My approach is more elaborate. I created an interface with RSS and AI that rounds up various deal groups, blogs, and retailers in one place. The value I added was curating it. But it’s laborious. If you want to do that and help the community, I would be happy to set you up and train you.

Here’s the thing, those deal groups don’t post the lowest prices. They post the affiliate retailer deals that give them the highest commissions. I always took the effort to make sure  that I was posted the lowest price I could find after checking with 4 stores I trust the most to have the lowest prices — Audio Deluxe, Plugin Boutique, Best Service, and JRR Shop. But if you buy a lot of stuff — take advantage of loyalty cash programs and Audio Deluxe and Plugin Boutique will actually give you the best deals in time.

What I would like to do is get us all scouring deals and come back and share the best deal of best 5 deals we find for the day. I’d be willing to train people and show them how to set up a basic dashboard of deals groups. It won’t include everything I set up for myself, but it will be excellent. I can withdraw the offer at any time, so act soon!

If we can do this, the community pitches in, it’s not all on the back of one person.

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[mira]

Thank you so so much dear Peter for all, im on reddit too and write comment after year on subreddit forum 🙂 hope we all meet here..

 

To be honest i absolutely understand why you do this, for all what happend during year… spend energy, time, money…. better be with family more…   but im really sad, because you make place like paradise… and thanks for this… i think this will never repeat….

 

Want you wish all good dear friend Peter, míra

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by mira.

4

[LinkedMusicians]

On mira said

Thank you so so much dear Peter for all, im on reddit too and write comment after year on subreddit forum 🙂 hope we all meet here..

 

To be honest i absolutely understand why you do this, for all what happend during year… spend energy, time, money…. better be with family more…   but im really sad, because you make place like paradise… and thanks for this… i think this will never repeat….

 

With wish all good dear friend Peter, míra

Every time I see your words, I see a kindred spirit. It’s a great example of how powerful and simple connections can be.

I’m so glad to have you on board. To be really candid, even if it isn’t about deals, I want to keep in touch with group members. There are people who were only here for the deals, and I’ll be very candid, I have no connection with them. If that’s what this place was, then that’s fine. But I tried to create something special and I would love to keep at it, and I think a big part of me would actually prefer we didn’t have deals, and just focused on discussing making music and encouraging one another in our musical endeavors. That was the biggest inspiration for me doing this. I honestly feel like the deal part of the site cheapens that.

The free lists, I love because there are no barriers to entry (besides a computer and MIDI controller). There are no motives to be judged. I put time in creating that list because I hope that some of the people who use it are those who didn’t have the budget to make purchases and find something beautiful that surprises and inspires them. That would be fantastic to me. While finding deals on products is fun. It’s just not as meaningful to me. One of our members — someone very special to me — shared a song he just completed with me in a PM. He was really excited to share it and I thought it was a cool song and a lot of fun and listened to it from start to finish and let  him now I enjoyed it.

Just simple acts of consideration and encouragement of each other in our musical endeavors. That to me is very meaningful.

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4

[Author]

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