Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

What kind of money does Kontakt Player cost developers?

Casiquire said:
I don't think the prices are reasonable for anybody but the biggest developers at which point there will be a ton of other benefits to going their own way
Click to expand...
It would be ok if you could order on demand. But apparently you have to order in advance. That doesn't make sense to me if it's about simple serial numbers. You could argue that NI does provide installation through NI Access and that they need to allocate server space for that but i'd think that is a weak argument. The high fee and and total upfront cost make it prohibitively expensive for developers to start. In fact NI creates risk for them where little could exist.
 
Nimrod7 said:
I am wondering why UVI haven’t taken the opportunity to grab that market. They don’t seem to care that much allowing 3rd parties to use their player.
Click to expand...
I asked them about this a couple years ago, and offered to give them a dedicated UVI/Falcon sub-forum, like the KSP sub-forum we already have. (For free.) Oddly, they declined, saying they're not really that interested in getting more third party developers.

It's too bad, because it's a great platform with a lot of advantages (and of course, disadvantages) over Kontakt. I can sort of understand, though, because dealing with third party developers does take a lot of work, and the fees aren't that big that it's a no brainer to do it.
 
soulofsound said:
It would be ok if you could order on demand. But apparently you have to order in advance. That doesn't make sense to me if it's about simple serial numbers. You could argue that NI does provide installation through NI Access and that they need to allocate server space for that but i'd think that is a weak argument. The high fee and and total upfront cost make it prohibitively expensive for developers to start. In fact NI creates risk for them where little could exist.
Click to expand...
Also the way it reads, it sounds like you're locked in at the initial rate. That means if you only expect to sell a hundred, but things go well and you're selling thousands, you're still paying the high rate of a hundred.
 
jbuhler said:
I don’t think the move to proprietary sample players is being drive by NI pricing. I think it’s due to copy protection, development of Kontakt not moving in direction and speed that the companies want, not wanting to be reliant on a competitor’s product, and not wanting to share sales data with a competitor.
Click to expand...
Agreed on all counts. I think cost had little to do with developers creating their own players. Mind you, back in the old days, costs were much, much higher, and I think that was a factor with East West jumping ship. But at today's pricing, I doubt that was a major factor for Spitfire's or OT's decisions. (I assume most fair sized developers order the 1,500 quantity, which gets them the lowest license cost, which IMO is pretty reasonable.)

Aside from reasons already given, I'll add a few more reasons for avoiding KPlayer:

1. NKS requirements. I freaking hate the NKS requirements. They add days of extra work for each product, almost entirely for the purposes of selling NKS hardware, rather than any benefit to my products.

2. Delay and hassle of encoding. You can't simply finish a library, then put it up for sale. It's weeks (and in some cases, months) of extra time added for encoding and "NKS Quality Control" before you can release. I hate not being in control.

3. People who need KPlayer are much less savvy than full Kontakt people, and are going to be much more expensive in terms of tech support. I mean really low level in many cases. The expanded customer potential by making a library KPlayer comes at a cost beyond just the cost of the serial.

4. Speaking of expanding your potential customer base, it's not as big a jump as you might think. Especially for orchestral, KPlayer probably doesn't increase the customer base by more than 10%. (Composers with enough money to buy orchestral libraries usually also have enough money to buy Kontakt.) For pop instruments, those numbers go up, but still not by that much, because it's still a situation where if someone can't afford Kontakt, they're probably a tough sell for libraries in general.

When we first released Realivox Blue, we offered a full Kontakt version, and for $10 more, you could get the KPlayer version. ($10 was less than what the license actually cost me, by the way.) In the first year, 90% chose the full Kontakt version. Of those who bought the KPlayer version, I'd guess half didn't have to, but bought the KPlayer version simply for the Library Tab benefits. (In following years, the KPlayer percentage went up a bit, but still not that much. Maybe 20% or 25% when I was advertising it on Facebook, where the audience is particularly less "pro.")

To be clear, we (Realitone) are moving all our libraries to KPlayer, as well as hosting on Native Access. So although these reasons piss me off, I still think the overall benefits of KPlayer (for us, at least) are worth it.
 
Mike Greene said:
Agreed on all counts. I think cost had little to do with developers creating their own players. Mind you, back in the old days, costs were much, much higher, and I think that was a factor with East West jumping ship, but at today's pricing, I doubt that was a major factor for Spitfire's or OT's decisions. (I assume most fair sized developers order the 1,500 quantity, which gets them the lowest license cost, which IMO is pretty reasonable.)

Aside from reasons given, I'll a few more reasons for avoiding KPlayer:

1. NKS requirements. I freaking hate the NKS requirements. They add days of extra work for each product, almost entirely for the purposes of selling NKS hardware, rather than any benefit to my products.

2. Delay and hassle of encoding. You can't simply finish a library, then put it up for sale. It's weeks (and in some cases, months) of extra time added for encoding and "NKS Quality Control" before you can release. I hate not being in control.

3. People who need KPlayer are much less savvy than full Kontakt people, and are going to be much more expensive in terms of tech support. I mean really low level in many cases. The expanded customer potential by making a library KPlayer comes at a cost beyond just the cost of the serial.

4. Speaking of expanding your potential customer base, it's not as big a jump as you might think. Especially for orchestral, KPlayer probably doesn't increase the customer base by more than 10%. (Composers with enough money to buy orchestral libraries usually also have enough money to buy Kontakt.) For pop instruments, those numbers go up, but still not by that much, because it's still a situation where if someone can't afford Kontakt, they're probably a tough sell for libraries in general.

When we first released Realivox Blue, we offered a full Kontakt version, and for $10 more, you could get the KPlayer version. ($10 was less than what the license actually cost me, by the way.) In the first year, 90% chose the full Kontakt version. Of those who bought the KPlayer version, I'd guess half didn't have to, but bought the KPlayer version simply for the Library Tab benefits. (In following years, the KPlayer percentage went up a bit, but still not that much. Maybe 20% or 25% when I was advertising it on Facebook, where the audience is particularly less "pro.")

To be clear, we (Realitone) are moving all our libraries to KPlayer, as well as hosting on Native Access. So although these reasons piss me off, I still think the overall benefits of KPlayer (for us, at least) are worth it.
Click to expand...
That can be a benefit to the end user when a drive goes bad or you accidentally damaged you drive for archiving purchases.
 
robgb said:
Frankly, I think 8Dio and others have the right idea in skipping Player altogether. I'm sure it cuts into profits, but by how much? Anyone serious about this stuff will have full Kontakt. It seems silly not to.
Click to expand...
You avoid the licensing schemes and in duplicate purchases if you are not into dongle swapping.
 
Mike Greene said:
Agreed on all counts. I think cost had little to do with developers creating their own players. Mind you, back in the old days, costs were much, much higher, and I think that was a factor with East West jumping ship, but at today's pricing, I doubt that was a major factor for Spitfire's or OT's decisions. (I assume most fair sized developers order the 1,500 quantity, which gets them the lowest license cost, which IMO is pretty reasonable.)

Aside from reasons given, I'll a few more reasons for avoiding KPlayer:

1. NKS requirements. I freaking hate the NKS requirements. They add days of extra work for each product, almost entirely for the purposes of selling NKS hardware, rather than any benefit to my products.

2. Delay and hassle of encoding. You can't simply finish a library, then put it up for sale. It's weeks (and in some cases, months) of extra time added for encoding and "NKS Quality Control" before you can release. I hate not being in control.

3. People who need KPlayer are much less savvy than full Kontakt people, and are going to be much more expensive in terms of tech support. I mean really low level in many cases. The expanded customer potential by making a library KPlayer comes at a cost beyond just the cost of the serial.

4. Speaking of expanding your potential customer base, it's not as big a jump as you might think. Especially for orchestral, KPlayer probably doesn't increase the customer base by more than 10%. (Composers with enough money to buy orchestral libraries usually also have enough money to buy Kontakt.) For pop instruments, those numbers go up, but still not by that much, because it's still a situation where if someone can't afford Kontakt, they're probably a tough sell for libraries in general.

When we first released Realivox Blue, we offered a full Kontakt version, and for $10 more, you could get the KPlayer version. ($10 was less than what the license actually cost me, by the way.) In the first year, 90% chose the full Kontakt version. Of those who bought the KPlayer version, I'd guess half didn't have to, but bought the KPlayer version simply for the Library Tab benefits. (In following years, the KPlayer percentage went up a bit, but still not that much. Maybe 20% or 25% when I was advertising it on Facebook, where the audience is particularly less "pro.")

To be clear, we (Realitone) are moving all our libraries to KPlayer, as well as hosting on Native Access. So although these reasons piss me off, I still think the overall benefits of KPlayer (for us, at least) are worth it.
Click to expand...
These are exactly my reasons too.

In the future maybe I will do the moving too, but for now, I see few reasons at least for my libraries.

Cheers

Ste
 
Casiquire said:
Also the way it reads, it sounds like you're locked in at the initial rate. That means if you only expect to sell a hundred, but things go well and you're selling thousands, you're still paying the high rate of a hundred.
Click to expand...
That's correct, so I always buy 1,500 licenses, even if I have my doubts I'll hit that number. I'm a tightwad at heart, so I don't want to be locked into a high per-license rate.

It's a gamble, of course, but the quantity discount makes the price difference not that much more when you add it all up, so it's a gamble worth taking, at least for me. (For example, with a $100 library, 500 licenses would cost $2,500. 1,500 licenses would cost $4,500. An extra 1,000 licenses for only $2k more is worth it IMO.)

StefanoM said:
These are exactly my reasons too.

In the future maybe I will do the moving too, but for now, I see few reasons at least for my libraries.
Click to expand...
I think this is smart, because you can get a feel for how many copies you can actually sell as well as whether you even want to stay in this business. (Creating libraries is fun, but selling is a lot harder than people think.)

Another factor is that when you're releasing your first libraries, if your main publicity platforms are VI-Control and similar sites, then you're dealing with a crowd that predominantly owns Kontakt, understands how to download rar files, etc. That's why 90% of our first Blue customers bought the Kontakt version, since VI-C was our home base.

Similarly, when we did the pre-release for Sunset Strings, it required full Kontakt for those first few months, and it was the easiest release we ever did! Almost no one complained that they needed the KPlayer version, everyone understood how to unpack rar files, everyone already knew how to open a track in Cubase/Logic/ProTools ... our tech support box was nearly empty, even though it was selling great.

To be clear, I'm glad the official release is KPlayer. 10 years in, we have a pretty broad customer base now (pros and rookies alike), so it's definitely worth it. But if I were a new company, especially a one-man company where I have very limited time and I don't want to spend my day doing tech support, or learning NKS or all the other stuff NI requires, then to me, it's worth sacrificing a few sales in favor of keeping my plate a little cleaner.
 
Last edited:
Mike Greene said:
Similarly, when we did the pre-release for Sunset Strings, it required full Kontakt for those first few months, and it was the easiest release we ever did.... everyone already knew how to open a track in Cubase/Logic/ProTools ...
Click to expand...
That's unbelievable that that's a technical question you guys get asked lol. Tech support must be hell.
 
Getsumen said:
That's unbelievable that that's a technical question you guys get asked lol. Tech support must be hell.
Click to expand...
Don't even get me started. I've been asked "How do I use this in Logic?" on Facebook dozens of times. Maybe even a hundred times (for all DAWs combined.) I'm seriously planning to make videos for each DAW explaining how to open a track, load Kontakt, then load a Realitone library.

Fortunately, we have a really smart guy who handles tech support, so it's not so bad. In fact, the more dumb questions he gets asked, the richer he gets, so everybody's happy. :grin:

Another really common one - People who don't know how to use the Octave Up/Down keys on their keyboards. I have a folder of png images for a bunch of keyboards, showing where those buttons are, ready to go when I get these questions.

Or with our RealiBanjo and Fingerpick pattern players (play chords in the green keys, then RealiBanjo plays patterns, following your chords), there are people who have no idea what qualifies as a "chord." One guy insisted RealiBanjo wouldn't recognize his C Major chord. Turns out he was playing C, C# and D. Yep ... C Major! Not just him, either, so that's when I added an addendum to the manual, spelling out what notes make up each chord.

There are some serious advantages to focusing entirely on VI-Control. The skill level here, hobbyist or pro, makes life so much easier. I'm a greedy mofo, though, so I keep venturing into those Facebook waters. And our tech support guy's bank account thanks me for it. :grin:
 
Mike Greene said:
Don't even get me started. I've been asked "How do I use this in Logic?" on Facebook dozens of times. Maybe even a hundred (for all DAWs combined.) I'm seriously planning to make videos for each DAW explaining how to open a track, load Kontakt, then load a Realitone library.

Fortunately, we have a really smart guy who handles tech support, so it's not so bad. In fact, the more dumb questions he gets asked, the richer he gets, so everybody's happy. :grin:

Another really common one - People who don't know how to use the Octave Up/Down keys on the keyboards. I have a folder of png images for a bunch of keyboards, showing where those buttons are.

Or with our RealiBanjo and Fingerpick pattern players (play chords in the green keys, then RealiBanjo plays patterns, following your chords), there are people who have no idea what qualifies as a "chord." One guy insisted RealiBanjo wouldn't recognize his C Major chord. Turns out he was playing C, C# and D. Yep ... C Major! Not just him, either, so that's when I added an addendum to the manual, spelling out what notes make up each chord.

There are some serious advantages to focusing entirely on VI-Control. The skill level here, hobbyist or pro, makes life so much easier. I'm a greedy mofo, though, so I keep venturing into those Facebook waters. And our tech support guy's bank account thanks me for it. :grin:
Click to expand...
Wow... I never realized it was this bad. That's totally nuts. Especially the chord thing.
 
Mike Greene said:
Don't even get me started. I've been asked "How do I use this in Logic?" on Facebook dozens of times. Maybe even a hundred (for all DAWs combined.) I'm seriously planning to make videos for each DAW explaining how to open a track, load Kontakt, then load a Realitone library.

Fortunately, we have a really smart guy who handles tech support, so it's not so bad. In fact, the more dumb questions he gets asked, the richer he gets, so everybody's happy. :grin:

Another really common one - People who don't know how to use the Octave Up/Down keys on the keyboards. Or with our RealiBanjo and Fingerpick pattern players (play chords in the green keys, then RealiBanjo plays patterns, following your chords), there are people who have no idea what qualifies as a "chord." One guys insisted RealiBanjo wouldn't recognize his C Major chord. Turns out he was playing C, C# and D. Yep ... C Major! Not just him, either, so that's when I added an addendum to the manual, spelling out what notes make up each chord.

There are some serious advantages to focusing entirely on VI-Control. The skill level here, hobbyist or pro, makes life so much easier. I'm a greedy mofo, though, so I keep venturing into those Facebook waters. And our tech support guy's bank account thanks me for it. :grin:
Click to expand...
A "composing for dummies" type of class isn't a bad idea, actually. We take for granted stuff that is completely foreign to newbies, and it seems like most tutorials these days cater to the mid level composer. I mean, there's no reason people should be reaching out to your tech support for those kinds of questions except for the fact that perhaps there's not a great resource for complete newbies.

I've been doing this since the days of Cakewalk, Gigastudio, Soundfonts, and Soundblasters...and the Kontakt interface was still very user un-friendly when I first started using it. Tiny fonts, terrible layout, and if the libraries aren't in that player tab, where ARE they? What the heck is the difference between a MIDI track and an Instrument track? (that one still bugs me).
 
Mike Greene said:
Don't even get me started. I've been asked "How do I use this in Logic?" on Facebook dozens of times. Maybe even a hundred times (for all DAWs combined.) I'm seriously planning to make videos for each DAW explaining how to open a track, load Kontakt, then load a Realitone library.

Fortunately, we have a really smart guy who handles tech support, so it's not so bad. In fact, the more dumb questions he gets asked, the richer he gets, so everybody's happy. :grin:

Another really common one - People who don't know how to use the Octave Up/Down keys on their keyboards. I have a folder of png images for a bunch of keyboards, showing where those buttons are, ready to go when I get these questions.

Or with our RealiBanjo and Fingerpick pattern players (play chords in the green keys, then RealiBanjo plays patterns, following your chords), there are people who have no idea what qualifies as a "chord." One guy insisted RealiBanjo wouldn't recognize his C Major chord. Turns out he was playing C, C# and D. Yep ... C Major! Not just him, either, so that's when I added an addendum to the manual, spelling out what notes make up each chord.

There are some serious advantages to focusing entirely on VI-Control. The skill level here, hobbyist or pro, makes life so much easier. I'm a greedy mofo, though, so I keep venturing into those Facebook waters. And our tech support guy's bank account thanks me for it. :grin:
Click to expand...
I had a customer asking me how to "install the plugin in Logic" - he hadn't even realised it required Kontakt, let alone knew what Kontakt is, despite the 2 warnings in bold letters I have on the site - one of them right next to the buy button. At this point I'm seriously considering going Player just so I don't have to deal with the "why does it say demo mode?" emails. It's not that I get a ton of them, it's just that sinking feeling of potentially having to pay out a refund - every single sale matters to a one person dev, you know...
 
Samplelogic lately has been re-selling their KP libraries in full K version at lower price, i guess there must be a reason...
 
These prices appear extremely reasonable, with the downside that you have to order the number of licenses and estimate how many you expect to sell.

I collect royalties from video-game sales on Steam, a very popular game distribution platform on PC, and can tell you that Steam takes a whopping 30% cut on every sale. Now I know 5% isn't "nothing", but ..
 
Karl Feuerstake said:
These prices appear extremely reasonable, with the downside that you have to order the number of licenses and estimate how many you expect to sell.

I collect royalties from video-game sales on Steam, a very popular game distribution platform on PC, and can tell you that Steam takes a whopping 30% cut on every sale. Now I know 5% isn't "nothing", but ..
Click to expand...
Well, you're also locked into whatever price tier you go with from the beginning, so if your library becomes a smash hit, you still have to pay NI the initial percentage for additional licenses. And as someone else mentioned the potential gain in user base is only about 10% unless you're making EDM libraries. Now add in the fact that these days you only have sales when you're running a sale, so you're selling your library at a reduced price, but you still bought a license calculated from the full price - that means the actual licensing fee is much, much higher. Now add in the fees for hosting and payment processing, which for me is about 4% per sale, and it quickly becomes apparent why it's simply not worth it.

As mentioned above, earlier today someone email and asked why my harmonium library wasn't available for the Player. So here are some numbers: It took me about 6 months to make, it sells for $49, but full price sales account for less than 5% of my sales, so the real price is $29 which is my usual sales price for this library. It has sold less than 500 copies in it's lifetime, and I suspect it will never get above 1000 sales. So best case scenario I'm looking at an 8% licensing fee to make it Kontakt Player, and hopefully sell another 500 copies. Will doing that guarantee that it will fly out the door? I suspect not, in fact I'm pretty sure that any positive impact on sales will be eaten up by the fees I have to pay, especially given the real (sales) price of the library.

And yes, 30% is a lot, but Kontakt Hub, now Loot Audio takes 40% of all my sales there - and I was told that's a good deal because they normally take 50. Now imagine trying to sell a Kontakt Player library through Loot...

So to summarise, if you want to support indie devs, get the full version of Kontakt and buy directly from them.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom