Rhythmic Robot Holiday Sale – Up to 50% off Kontakt instruments

[LinkedMusicians]

Note: I’ve been a customer of this developer for a long time and have interacted with one of the co-owners and always found them to make really cool sample libraries. They’re not highly detailed, “deep-sampled” libraries, but they’re really good and I’ve found them excellent to deal with during one occasion in more than a decade of being of customer when I needed to rely on support. I can easily recommend them.

https://www.rhythmicrobot.com/hot-deals

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3

[jude77]

I’m with you on RR.  Like you, the one time I needed support I got it quickly, and generally found them very easy to work with.  Their niche is very quirky instruments that you won’t find anywhere else, so if you’re looking for originality this is definitely the place to start.

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[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

I’m with you on RR.  Like you, the one time I needed support I got it quickly, and generally found them very easy to work with.  Their niche is very quirky instruments that you won’t find anywhere else, so if you’re looking for originality this is definitely the place to start.

It was probably a decade ago that I think there was something I inquired about or something that I double purchased and one of the co-owners responded to me via email and the guy was so down to earth, friendly, and helpful. I’ve been a customer and fan of theirs for a long time, but it’s always great to find that the people you buy from are really nice people. He had shared with me that this was just his and his partner’s side business, that they both had full-time jobs. He was just really open and decent. It was refreshing and I let him know that if I could ever be of help with an idea, to let me know. I love indie developers like that whose work really inspires me. It’s the reason why I’ve helped more than three dozen of them out over the years. My motivation is as simple as, I have this skill set and experience, why not use it to help out the very small, indie developers that make products I use if it only takes me a short time? I still do it, but not as much as I once did. And I am using LinkedMusicians to shine the light on small, indie developers.

For anyone who wonders, I don’t look at indie developers to fund LinkedMusicians or have any plans to do so. I want LM to be a place that holds up talented indie developers (many of them are one or two-person operations, heavily relying on contractors). I’ve only looked to retailers, branded merchandise, and contributions to fund LinkedMuscians operation. Increasingly, forums — like VI-Control (especially VI-Control) — are charging even the smallest developers to share their sales and participate in conversations, while they’re letting aligned, paying developers use employees and contractors pose as customer forum members praising their products while claiming competitors’ products are inferior (every indie developer I’ve talked to is aware of these practices). The result is that it’s getting harder to find honest conversations on forums that aren’t infected by developers and site owners’ sponsors shilling. If we see any signs of developer employees or contractors creating shill accounts here — and over time, I’m sure we will (Impact Soundworks is the developer that I’ve witnessed do this more aggressively than any other developer and that is why they are banned here) — they’ll quickly be weeded out.

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[jude77]

The first paragraph was definitely a bit of sunshine on an otherwise cold, gray and rainy day.  I realize that most small developers probably work on a shoestring budget, so I try to support them whenever I can.  Tone Empire comes immediately to mind.  I had to deal with him a year or so ago and he was just a super guy.  Very patient and determined to solve my problem.

On the other hand, the information in paragraph two was something I had suspected for a long time.  I remember a post of yours on the old CW forum where you revealed that a massive number of “reviewers” on Youtube are actually being compensated in some way for a positive review.  I know this is naive on my part, but I was honestly surprised and the news that forums like VI-Control were manipulating posts was a true shock as well!  You need to write an expose so clods like me can be more cautious when relying on forums/social media for actual reviews.

I truly appreciate what you do!

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[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

The first paragraph was definitely a bit of sunshine on an otherwise cold, gray and rainy day.  I realize that most small developers probably work on a shoestring budget, so I try to support them whenever I can.  Tone Empire comes immediately to mind.  I had to deal with him a year or so ago and he was just a super guy.  Very patient and determined to solve my problem.

On the other hand, the information in paragraph two was something I had suspected for a long time.  I remember a post of yours on the old CW forum where you revealed that a massive number of “reviewers” on Youtube are actually being compensated in some way for a positive review.  I know this is naive on my part, but I was honestly surprised and the news that forums like VI-Control were manipulating posts was a true shock as well!  You need to write an expose so clods like me can be more cautious when relying on forums/social media for actual reviews.

I truly appreciate what you do!

It would probably blow your mind to learn that even the guys who post deals — like one who used to post here — regularly get free NFRs from the developers they post about as well as cash from some of them (and the retailers). I tried to persuade the former frequent poster here to disclose that as legally (in the US from a regulatory perspective) it’s supposed to be disclosed — he refused. Basically, he ignored every request I ever made. I don’t know if you caught it, but I did get one developer, Andrew Fly to acknowledge that he gives that individual free products in exchange for his posts. Do not — for a second  — think that Andrew is alone in that. The difference is, I’ve gotten to be friends with Andew, and I suspected that he is one of the only developers who would be honest about this stuff.

People think that everyone posting is doing so for fun. But some people are doing so for cash and prizes. Right now, there are only a handful of us posting, and i feel very confident that we don’t have anyone engaging in those practices. Because I own the site, I am starting to get a bunch of developers who are sending me NFRs. and I have some friends who I have received NFRs from for a long time. I always tell developers who send me libraries or plugins that I’m not interested in being an influencer and I won’t praise anything I don’t sincerely like. I’ve probably received a dozen NFRs since starting LinkedMusicians — largely from retailers trying to get me to try new sample libraries and plugins. I always tell them, just like when I had a marketing publication, I would be sent more than 100 books in a year, and I would write about one of two of them. When publicists got upset with me, I would fire back stuff like, “I could to a write up on the book and tell people that I don’t think it’s worth reading, that it really doesn’t offer anything valuable. so don’t waste your money. If you like, I can publish that?” No publicist ever wanted me to publish that! So I only wrote about books I could honestly recommend.

If I write about my personal experience with a sample library or plugin, it’s generally because (1) I genuinely love it or (2) I genuinely don’t think it’s very good and I think it would be helpful for our community if I shared what I’ve learned.

Now, I’ve given advice to a bunch of sample library developers and I’ve only ever shared my opinions as a user on a handful of them. One thing I will share about me, if I know a developer and we really like each other, and I don’t love their sample libraries or plugins, I simply won’t discuss them. In cases like Steven Slate drums — I gave Steven a consultation years ago. We really hit it off. I think his drum libraries are a good fit for musicians who produce high energy rock. But I don’t think they’re a great fit for me. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not wired to be insincere or give false praise.

In any event, all of this is why I’ve designed LinkedMusicians so that it has the best of what other forums have BUT doesn’t allow for the manipulation of members that has become common in these forums as they’re taking in a lot of money and the truth is, when there’s a lot of money to be made, ethical compromise is commonplace.

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[patrickwichrowski]

“But some people are doing so for cash and prizes”

@peter I’m here to learn. And I learned a lot about music production from Deals forum here and in CW. Because I was a very hardware synth oriented guy until 2017. But the necessity and the IK free Syntronik dragged me into the deals world. And reading all the posts and comments over the years, I could trace a clear line of what I need and what I don’t need to achieve the kind of “classic synth sound” that I imagine. As I don’t want to be a copy and paste of my musician idols, but my thinking is: “What I would do or sound if I lived in that era (70’s)”.

And about the guy who prefer to acumulate licenses, I prefer to make music. I too have lots and lots of plugins that I don’t use anymore, but they were points of discovery and testing, and were substituted by the more adequated ones.

 

I’m more the silent guy type, most of the time just liking posts. But learning a lot 😉

https://linktr.ee/patrickwichrowski/

https://patrickwichrowski.bandcamp.com/

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