Eric, I own Stylus RMX from new, Trilogy(2009) from new, paid for upgrade to Trillian, is their a crossgrade price for Omnisphere or full price option only, just wondered?

Sorry, we don't do crossgrades or sell the products new directly to users. We rely on our dealers to handle all of those types of transactions.

BTW, if you purchased Trilogy in 2009, your Trilian upgrade should have been free....no?

I parted with money to recieve the upgrade by post, so not entirely free to get the upgrade(which is what I meant)but apart from that have you read the installer issue I have had when running the latest Trilian update(trilogy patches), 3 of the filenames/extensions are too long and had to use 'ignore' 3 times to complete the install, so 3 files(don't know what) are missing from the update...read the other post about spectrasonics installs please!

Please send the feedback regarding the installer issues directly to the company...thanks!

info@spectrasonics.net

Already done it today...just thought it's quite important and got a generic automated response - but it could affect all window users, that's why I thought you should know, the update works but 3 files are missing and don't know what this will affect, I have sent the info - but not the missing file names, I would have to run the installer again to catch them...

thx...we'll get on it.

First of all: how many times is the average VSTi going to be sold over say, a ten year period? (I can't imagine many ten year old VSTis being particulary sought after.) Once? Twice? Three times at most?
Secondly: then don't offer the same level of support for second hand owners of your software. Offer them a paid for help service, (reasonably priced, of course, not $80 an hour or some other ridiculous figure.)


That is all completely true, but then we get to this strange bit:




How likely is that to happen, and with how many of the copies that you have sold? Isn't this ridiculous? What are the chances of even one copy of Omnisphere being sold ten times over, say, ten years, if you allowed it?



Again, these are ludicrous figures, and you would obviously never have more than even one person "using the same copy", a phrase which implies they are using it simultaneously... i.e. that is was never even sold in the first place, each user just carried on using it after selling it AND getting support from you.


No it doesn't, because "then" doesn't exist, and could never occur. I would be amazed if even 0.1% of the copies of Omnisphere sold, were re-sold ten times by ten different owners, in a ten year period.
Do you think that is likely?


Producing free patches for current owners doesn't cost you a penny more or less, whether you have person A using the product, or person B, who bought it off person A...
How could it?

Ongoing support for new OS and hosts doesn't cost you a penny more whether Mr.Jones or Mr.Smith owns copy 9,999 of Omnisphere, how could it? So why imply that it does? Why imply that you would be losing out by offering support to owners of used Omnispheres?

Say you sell 10,000 copies of Omnisphere, and this year, 500 of them are sold, to 'Persons 'B''.

You still only have 10,000 copies of Omnisphere to support. You have still been paid 10,000 lots of money for them. You have lost nothing. You have added no work WHATSOEVER to your workload.

Please tell me where I'm wrong. I must be missing something.

Apparently, supporting Mr.Smith is more difficult than supporting Mr.Jones, because Mr.Smith bought Omnisphere from Mr.Jones.
Obviously this is rubbish.



Who to? You? Or the customers?

Have you ever heard the phrase, "The customer is always right"?


Not judging from what you've written above.
Last edited by sonkeysankey on Tue Jan 05, 2010 3:32 pm; edited 1 time in total

What a crap.

Run that by me again... "it's case-by-case". So YOU get to decide whether you'll allow the 'owner' (renter, more like) of your software, to sell it?
And what if you don't? This is simply an astonishing attitude to take towards your customers.
Can you give us an example of a case where you WOULDN'T allow the customer to sell the piece of software that they had paid a very large amount of money for? I'd love to hear it!





Okay, I'm lost.
Mr.Smith buys Omnisphere, and presumably registers it with challenge response (correct me if I'm wrong). He has to make an account on your site presumably, dead easy, he just registers his e-mail address and details, he loads up Omnisphere and it runs a challenge response program, and he gets a code, and that's it. You then know that Mr.Smith is at IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xx whatever, and his e-mail address, his name and address, etc.

Mr.Smith then wants to sell Omnisphere. Can you tell me where there is any possibility of fraud? I don't get it, seriously.
If Mr.Jones, who has never bought Omnisphere, but wants to 'sell' it, even though he doesn't own it, contacts you, what can he possibly say to convince you that he actually owns it? He won't have registered on your site, he won't have used a challenge response program to register it, so you won't have his IP address logged to that serial number of Omnisphere.

I just don't get where there could possibly be any fraud.

Why not just allow Mr.Smith to log in to his Spectrasonics account, choose 'transfer licence', and then he changes the e-mail address and name to that of the new owner?
That way you don't have to do a thing, the customer does all the work, and everybody is happy - no transfer fee required at all.

Since you have already been paid by Mr.Smith for support for Omnisphere, there is no financial reason (except the obvious which I won't state for fear of sounding rude) for not giving the new owner exactly the same support. (Apart from sending out new discs if he has lost his old ones - I don't see why anybody shouldn't have to pay for that service, cost price, of course.)

I was waiting for the inevitable...

Please, elaborate.

Me too.

The costs of support tend to be reduced as the users are overcoming their problems. If for example three out of ten users have installation issues, then the costs will increase with the number of installations.

Also already fixed problems with Mr. Smith might require attention with Mr. Jones.

Considering how long our instruments are supported and widely used over long periods of time I'd say much, much higher than that.

Also, people who buy used also tend to resell more often.


Nah...that's lame.

Everything we've learned about this resale topic is that used customers absolutely want to receive the same level of service as new customers. Just read this thread as an example (or dozens of others on the same topic.)


In my experience, highly likely.


Of course it's only one user at a time, but it's still multiple people using the same license....which is the opposite of our licensing model in the sample licensing world.


Sure. All the evidence I have from doing this for many years is that the tendency can be that wherever possible, musicians will try to use the same copy to save money. We have lots of pro users sharing their copies with other users/collaborators too....even when they can easily afford to buy separate licenses.

All sample licensing is based on the single-user principle. License transfers of sample-licensing products are a rare exception to this, so it comes with some limitations.


Simple. Used sales often takes away sales of new units.

Since the market is small, every sale counts.

If a used sale is just as easy as a new sale and the product is identical as a new sale, then why should a customer buy a new copy when you can save a lot of money buying it used and get exactly the same product with the same support?


Yep.

Your numbers are way off and you don't know what's involved in how we work.

If we keep the used sales amount low, then it can work...but if it gets high it becomes a huge problem.

The limitations we have in place we have come up with after a lot of thought to try and offer something that's fair to everyone. But limitations of any kind are never popular.


I agree and that's not my point.


Both.

Regardless of the comments about the limitations we have, people FAR prefer the change we made in our policy to allow License Transfers from when they were not allowed at all.

I've asked and followed the discussion on this forum many times if people prefer to have License Transfer options or not, and it's really important for a lot of people. Customers generally do not like the policy of the many companies in our field of sample-based products that do not allow transfers.


I do. No need to be rude. We can agree to disagree.

Cheers,

spectrum

How much are the support staff at Spectrasonics paid? $20 an hour? Let's say it is.
How long does it take to answer the average support question? Let's say 20 minutes to be really generous. That's $7ish. How many support questions is each customer going to ask during the next ten years?
Installation questions? How many people have "installation issues"? I've installed umpteen VSTs over the years, loads and loads of free ones (whose authors are under no obligation whatsoever to make a 'good' installation package for), and never had a single problem. Not one.

This is starting to sound mighty similar to the 'Helix support' myth...

While your general argument is true, (that Mr.Jones may bring new support issues that Mr.Smith had either not had, or had already had answered), I just don't buy this 'support' problem at all. If you're paying £329 for a piece of software that requires virtually no overheads to produce (compared to its price, what is the cost of the discs and packaging), then the rest is either profit or can provide support. I just don't buy this idea that even 10% of users are costing more than £5 in a lifetime (say 10 years tops in the VST world) of ownership of a product.

Anyway - they could easily just charge secondhand owners a REASONABLE fee for support - not the equivalent of what they would have to charge if they paid their support staff $100 an hour (which I'm sure they don't), but the equivalent of what they would have to charge if they paid them whatever the going rate is. ($20? I don't know, but I doubt it is much more than that, if it is more.) Meaning about $3 - $5 per question. After all, if the customer can't install Omnisphere, yet 99.9% of all other customers can, the problem must lie in something in the customer's system configuration, and is nothing to do with Spectrasonics at all.

Now, what about everything else I wrote above...

[quote="spectrum"]



Hang on - either they want to keep Omnisphere for ever, because it's so good, or they don't. Can't have it both ways. When you say "much higher than that", which number are you referring to? I used "Once? Twice? Three times at most?" and you're saying that if you allowed people to re-sell Omnisphere indefinitely, that "much higher" than even THREE people would buy it over a ten year period?





I think that the first person who buys Omnisphere second hand would MUCH rather have the option of re-selling it if they wanted to, while paying $5 for support queries, than those who prefer to not even be able to sell it.
I've never needed support except when I have asked WilliamK basic questions about finding a download link for something - which he answered within an hour, with no support staff at all, just him, the coder of Wusikstation. How come he can do it, but you can't?









How can you have experience of this, when you don't allow more than one resale of Omnisphere? If you're talking about other VSTs, that doesn't apply, because they aren't your products.







Do you agree that the 500 and 1,000 figures are ludicrous? And therefore totally irrelevant to your argument?






I didn't mention anything at all about "sharing their copies". Why are you addressing a completely different subject? I'm talking about re-selling it, not sharing it. Two completely different things. When the first owner sells it, they update their entry on your database with the details of the new owner. The old owner is therefore no longer entitled to use Omnisphere.
Sharing a copy is nothing to do with the 0.1% of the copies of Omnisphere being sold ten times in a ten year period.



Doesn't have to come with any such limitations. Your customers don't like it.





Exactly. Why didn't you say that in the first place then?



But if most owners of Omnisphere are really happy with it (and I have no reason to believe they aren't, just because it isn't my cup of tea, doesn't mean thousands of people love it), they won't want to sell it - therefore 99% of copies will never be up for sale. Therefore this will hardly effect your profits in any way.



No reason at all - except that very few owners will sell Omnisphere, hence those looking for a second hand copy will end up paying 80% or more of the new price, if there is sufficient demand for it (which I presume there is).







I just presumed that you were selling 10,000 copies a year or something like that. What proportion of used sales do you think there would be then, if you allowed unlimited second hand sales?
How does Wusikstation keep going when there are no transfer fees, and no limitations on reselling it once you've bought it?





How is it fair to everyone? I see no evidence of that at all.










Well whoop e do! Of course they would! That's exactly my point! It's just a shame that anybody who does buy a Spectrasonics product secondhand is then stuck with it IF they don't like it. (I expect most WILL like it, but it's a big risk when it's a lot of money.)


Of course. That doesn't negate the problem with NFR.






Hardly rude, just a statement of my opinion.

By the way, this forum software has a bug - I had to manually add quotes to all of Eric's replies.