Perhaps I should do an end-around all these authorisation and download issues and adopt a completely radical distribution model, the one I call the “WPMUDev.org model”, check them out. In their model everything is always available to members – but not like (say) Slate Digital where its everything you can eat whilst you pay the subscription and you’re attached to the interwebs. No its more radical than that it’s “Sign-up and download everything and keep it for ever, EVEN IF YOU STOP SUBSCRIBING”
How does this work? Its classic Kevin Kelly (look here: http://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/), the value is not in the bits, it’s in the service. So why not sign-up for 1 month, download everything, and quit? why keep paying? Here’s why:
Currency – You will always have the latest version of each product – right now right away, not when some pirate gets around to cracking and uploading the version with the features you want, and I *know* that I tweak every single product I build to add more stuff, even AFTER its been delivered in version 1.0
New Stuff – if each month or so there is something worth the entry price, then its worth continuing to pay it. So if you sign up in June and download everything then quit you miss July, August and onwards releases.
Authentication – not the user, but the product – you know you have the genuine article, not something riddled with mal-ware from some pirate.
Community – you get a say in what happens next, what feature you want and how you’d like it to play out, personalisation in software development
Support – You get access to the developer – you get stuck with the “how do I?” Well they KNOW the product, so ask them, and if it cant do what you want see the point above.
The Moral High Ground – you are doing the right thing, also called patronage
One of the nice things(for me) here would be I could ship with only say 200 loops in the first release of Orbiter and add more every month….
So I’d charge around £8.50/month, and I’m seriously considering it. What’s holding me back? In truth not the model, but building out a subscription based web site. That was an ugly effort last time I did it.
Meanwhile back in the real world… I am really really working hard at avoiding doing the loop building for Orbiter, and even if I say so my self I think I’m getting quite good at it. I pulled together all the Factory instruments(Kick Factory, Snare Factory, Percussion Factory and the unreleased Hat Factory and Toms Factory) into one package, and sent them off to KontaktHub – lets see how they go. I did the same for Grid Machine instruments too, packaging Matrix, Chain, Pulse and River (it’s a 6Gb+ archive) and sent them off too. It was interesting playing with all these – some of them are really not bad.
I also agreed to provide an engine ( a single voice version of Formula) to an open-source/free sound initiative, more on that later, and built out the Geared Audio pages on the web site, speaking of web-site and free – over 400 downloads of FreeForm Volume 1 now, check i tout if you haven’t downloaded it yet.
