Time to think about how to, and what to ship. Clearly whilst all this has been going on I’ve needed to think about the sort of loops that Orbiter is best equipped with, and that’s not easy – I’ve worked hard to make it work well with all sorts of loops. But in any case it will need a series of “stem” based loops to be at least part of its deliverable, and I’ve been trying to make some of these as I go – but sample/loop designing/building/editing is a whole other series of posts. Plus it will need some of those cinematic pads and melodic material too, as well as full-drum-loops.
This will be a download only product – no CD/DVDs in a box thing. So there is always tension here – more loops = more download bandwidth and time consuming download activities for users, less loops = well, less, and we don’t really want that. Continua would be of help here as it is apparently very very quick and includes a custom re-startable download system.
I wish I knew what to do, I could go down the same route as Slice – and make Genre based packs, Orbiter:DubStep, Orbiter:House etc. but Orbiter seems to be well beyond that in many ways, it’s turning/turned into a more generic loop-playback/sound-design tool. So current thinking is I’m going to try and ship 1,000 loops – yep a thousand – possibly a bit mad, and it will be *BIG*. Worse to come though… I decided all of the loops should be mastered to tape, so it was off to eBay to buy a tape machine. Clearly I only needed one track to record on to and sample back from so multi-track tape machine not required. Some sort of mastering machine then. So away I went to get one, no one has ANY use for these things anymore right? So these should be dirt cheap right? Wrong… Research completed and I wanted a Pro quality machine so I clearly needed a 15IPS machine, preferably a ½ track – I ended up settling on a Revox B77 Mark II or similar. Ebay told me these (in good condition) would set me back £500+ Ouch!
Next there’s the manual, always a chore, but always a useful thing. And there’s the video-walkthrus, ditto. But, apart from me, who really reads the manual? So if I sacrifice the manual for a set of videos would that be better?
Next problem is: Product Price. It has all the functionality of a product like Stylus RMX plus a LOT more, and I mean a LOT. In fact I cant think of a loop playback system that comes anywhere near it. Looking today the list price of Stylus RMX is: $399.00 but I’ve always been unconvinced by these sorts of prices. However I also realise that charging $24.95 in many ways belittles what it is, a pro-product with pro-functionality and capabilities. Plus it’s take a big chunk of my year to build this thing – 9 months. I’m going to have to make a decision, right now I think $179.00 sounds-about-right. But SampleLogic just announced Rhythmology, which looks like it does similar things to Orbiter for an intro price of $199.00, so maybe $129.00? Still looking back all the way to the start of this and the Slice V4 experience, I might not sell many no matter what the price. Which leads to;
Distribution/Marketing/Reviews…and what to do about getting these lined up. OK hands up who’s a reviewer? Who wants to be one? Who is/wants to be a distributor?
Meanwhile here’s a, not particular, secret: There are two business models at work here. First “build a Kontakt software product filled with cool functionality and nice sounds and sell it to musicians” That’s what I’ve been talking about in this post, and in many ways it is an assumed position in all the previous posts. But business model 2 lives along-side model 1, and always has for me. It’s “build a Kontakt software product filled with cool functionality and licence this to audio content owners, so they can build their own instruments to sell to musicians”. Here audio content owners(sample library owners) get to launch a Kontakt instrument with MUCH lower costs and less risk than building their own, I wrote about this in a white-paper nearly 2 years ago now, and nothing much has changed https://channelrobot.com/10/building-audio-products , except building simple Kontakt instruments has in the end got easier, and the market is even more crowded and prices are still falling. I’ve done this licensing a number of time with products I’ve built, and it works nicely for everyone involved.
So Orbiter just got added to the list of things you can license from me. What can you license? I’m glad you asked:
- Loop Player (Orbiter)
- Drum ROMpler (Studio)
- Drum Machine (Factory)
- ROMpler (Formula)
- Ambient Drone Machine (424)
— With other stuff coming. Get in contact if you are interested.
