Show HN: iOS MIDI Routing App
imidipatchbay.com
imidipatchbay.com
Where is the video showing the app capabilities?
Could you imagine a president of the USA not going to TV? only doing writing to newspapers or doing radio like in the 1930s?
There is not excuse for not showing how the real thing works live, you had worked hard and you deserve it too.
But I know that official videos on the website would be best. I'll do that!
On an unrelated point, 50 Euros? Are you smoking crack, OP? The two best-selling soft synths in the world, AniMoog and iMS-20 are only $30 each, and compared to them MIDI is glue. Orphion is only $5, and that is truly a breakthrough in performance and compositional control. I could list more examples, but my point is that you are charging way too much for a piece of utility software.
People with large master keyboards generally already have split and zone functionality built in - it's not as nice and well-designed as in you prrogram, but they'll probably use what they already have, or employ a free editor/librarian package from the manufacturer to set it up on their computer. Many other musicians will use a computer to do this routing, because it's not so weird to have a laptop on stage; still others will use something like a MIDIbox, Cirklon, MPC+JJOS or Nord Modular to do this routing and scaling, or build a hardware configuration that obviates that need.
In short, I love what you're doing, but I think you need to cut the price to between $15 and $20 - $10 might be even better. Piracy is not a big problem on iOS so you should be able to sell a multiple larger than your price division, if you see what I mean. I see you have a Lite version that allows 2 patch zones and has a 30 minute timeout. This doesn't make sense to me either; if it only lasts 30 minutes at a time it's not going to get used on stage and people won't have the patience to set it up repeatedly in their studio, so you might as well let people try the full functionality for those 30 minutes.
My first instinct was to post this immediately on Synthtopia, Matrixsynth, and various gear forums, but when I saw the 50 Euro price I put the brakes on, because I believe the vast majority of musicians will reject your app at that price without even trying it. And there are so many music apps on iOS that after you make that impression you will find it hard to change later.
Sorry to be so blunt with this criticism, but I really think you are placing a limit on your app's success with this price. It looks like a great product, and I want to go and recommend it to hundreds of people right now, but at this price I believe you would get 5 sales instead of 500.
However, I got feedback from keyboardists who have absolutely no problem with this price as long as the app does what they really need when doing their job. Maybe there are many other people who would buy the app, if it was cheaper. But including that market would make professional users unhappy by the time since the further development of the app would have to take the feedback of all those people into account - and could not focus on what professionals need. The needs of keyboardists playing musicals or other live gigs are different to those playing keyboard at home. E.g. I will soon support multiple input keyboards and more complex controller routings.
Btw., the lite version runs forever as long as it is in the foreground. Only the background time is limited to 30 minutes. Select "Never turn off display" and you can use the app the full day and night in your studio.
All those alternatives you mentioned would be more expensive than this app, at least if one already have an iPad. Or they would require lots of time of configuration. Master keyboards with that kind of functions are very expensive - however, with this app you can buy a cheap one, or one which focuses more on great hammer action than complex midi functions.
Apps like AniMoog and iMS-20 are from big companies which use their apps to just be presented in the app store. Lots of the knowledge which was necessary for developing these synths was already in the company and only had to be ported to the iOS system. Don't expect that synths like these would pay of for that price; you really have to see it in the company's context.
However, I know that some customers don't care about that and feel uneasy to pay so much for an app. But I hope that I find the users who see this as a niche solution for their exact problem.
I guess the reason I am stressing the issue so strongly is that in my experience [1] it can be a mistake to focus too heavily on the Pro demographic: there are not as many of them (obviously) but more importantly, because they are pro users they already have some kind of solution to this problem; either they have implemented a technical solution by purchasing the all-powerful master keyboard workstation, or they have a stage tech to solve these problems for them, or they just bring a second or third keyboard on stage with them, because they're paying for the roadies anyway, so there is little marginal cost increase in having them set up more gear. When pros tell you your product is great what they're saying is that they would use it if they needed something like that, but not that they will switch to it if they already have something that does that job.
Your market, by contrast, is the synth keyboardist who wants to trigger multiple rack modules with their own distinct sound (rather than relying on a monolithic keyboard with 128-note polyphony but a conservative sound palette), but who can't or won't lug around or set up multiple keyboards - and, crucially, who doesn't have a permanent solution in place for the split/zone problem. What I've noticed about pro musicians, especially ones who are not technologists, is that while they may vocally approve of what you're offering, if they already have a configuration that works it's almost impossible to get them to switch because they don't want any disruptions in their workflow. So you're limited to a smallish number of established experimenters plus a somewhat larger number of new entrants who haven't solved the problem yet. Your app will be just right for that latter group, but it's a small subset of the potential buyers; to profit from this market segment you need very high margins, eg like Muse Receptor.
I totally respect your desire to cater to pro users, but just be aware of the different size markets for handcrafted samurai swords vs. swiss army knives.
1. as part of the product team for this: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03/articles/soundartchame...
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/04/07/imidipatchbay-l...