Synth Collection heading for iPhone and iPad
raspberrypisynthesizer.blogspot.com
raspberrypisynthesizer.blogspot.com
I wrote this person multiple times since they posted this /a year ago/
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Drop me a line if you are interested Interested meaning, commercially interested -
a) interested in licensing 3 amazing-sounding, ultra-efficient soft synth engines, destruction tested on a Raspberry Pi model 1
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Never heard anything about a price point. Never saw a release for money. Never saw a preview of the synths (other than a tiny one). Never heard anything about the possibility of open-sourcing it (so therefore not maintaining it himself) etc.
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This just seems like so many sour grapes. I mean, maybe the synths stink and that's why no one wants to buy them. Maybe not. But how would anyone know when he refers to interested people as "tyre kickers" and never releases a price or donation model for the software??
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In the meantime, Sonic Pi is turning into a pretty damn capable music package for the Pi. (And Processing runs on the Pi now as well). It's gone from what I would consider a tool that uses music and the instantaneous feedback loop of creating sounds to teach coding to being a full fledged piece of music software with a lot of capability. If it can go headless soon and output/input midi it will be even more fantastic. I'm happy to support it on Patreon.
There are many possibilities for Phil. He really has to think in terms of musician value, not the software artifact.
My first suggestion is to sell a playable instrument, e.g. to bundle a controller with a pre-installed RPi. The real market is for something a musician can switch on and play. Musicians want a box you can open, turn on, press buttons and hear sound. No logins, configuration, compilation, boot-up, login, installation. Make sure you have the right jacks (MIDI, 1/4" audio output, 3.5mm headphone). Notice all this hardware is difficult to pirate. Musicians only have limited time to pirate and a surprising number of them actually pay for software after pirating it for a while. They are mainly motivated by reliability, getting the newest thing (piracy has some lag associated with it) and resale value (pirated stuff can't be re-sold) and to some extent social embarrassment. Basically, if they're making money from your software, they're more likely to pay you.
I have found the overlap between programmers and musicians to be a thin-ass Venn diagram. You can't sell possibilities or flexibility (only expandability, but that's a low priority). You have to sell playability. Most musicians will take chances on something new, but they don't want to invest a ton of time in it. They'll see what it does NOW, not in the future and introduce it as an accompaniment to an existing track. As they build a relationship with it, they'll rely on it more and more.
My suggestion to Phil is to put together a small run of about 10 immediately-playable systems and sell them. Stay close to the people you sell to, encouraging them to use it and listening to them. Use their feedback to iterate. Standard startup stuff.
You'll have some pirates, but those will mostly be people who are good at the Raspberry Pi, not people like my uncle, who can turn on a laptop, but find computers tedious and prefer to spend their energy strumming, knob-twiddling, looking for people to rehearse with, etc. In fact, your pirates will help spread the word to musician friends.
After that part is covered, you can get into the marvelous flexibility of software synthesis! But again, make it easy for musicians. You won't want them to have to learn a new skill, such as RPi, just to use your synthesizers!!!
the article linked is missing one of the diagrams, but if you check the image url's, you can find it.
> Which of course, in a totally bizarre move, kills stone dead the entire software industry and the future careers that the platform is intended to nurture - it's supposed to teach kids how to code, because software development is hard, and by learning this hard skill these kids will have a meaningful career. But in a world where software has zero value - literally zero, because in Pi world everything is free, and is supposed to be free, and any attempt to make stuff not be free will not get support - what value does that place on the people who develop software?
"How are these kids supposed to learn how to code if I can't sell them my closed sourced software?"
I'm not opposed selling commercial/proprietary software, but how do you delude yourself that doing so is assisting open-source and education? Also what do they mean by "will not get support"? Who should provide this support? Google or Apple don't support buggy apps. They don't push bugfixes when Tinder is broken. The best you can get is a refund for a paid app within a very small time window.
> The choices are give it away for free, and support it indefinitely into the future for free, or don't release it at all on the Pi.
What? You could give it away for free and abandon it, or let others maintain/support it. You can sell it and support it. You can sell it and not support it. You can preload a binary onto a Raspberry Pi and only sell it as a hardware unit. It's also likely not specific to the Pi (since they're porting it to iOS), you could likely compile and sell it for any Linux system, or even other ARM boards that compete with the Pi. Sonic Pi isn't exclusive to the Pi, it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (ARM and x86/x64).
Unfortunately for this guy he will probably find that iOS app store has turned into 'land of dead apps'.
Well then, that sounds like a dumb business decision by the author. Who spends 4 years working on something they only intend on selling, without ever checking if their market wants to buy it?
Defaults can set powerful expectations. A freemium model could work if the market were a bit more willing to pay for software.