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Resale/License transfer LIST

thereus said:
Does anyone know where Soundiron stand?
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From their help page:

LICENSE TRANSFER AND RESALE POLICY​

We can arrange for license transfers between users on a case-by-case basis. This process includes a re-licensing fee and requires both the original owner and recipient to contact us directly for verification and authorization prior to exchanging the license. Users may not transfer data directly. We will handle delivery of a new license via download through our system upon approval of transfer. Soundiron reserves the right to deny license transfer requests for any reason, at its own discretion.
 
I logged on intending to pose a question regarding sample library licences and whether there were any resale options. Surprisingly, reading this thread, there are more than I thought, though sadly it seems, not Spitfire nor Orchestral Tools.

I’m still fairly new to this aspect of music making and I’m enjoying the journey and learning all the time. However as a guitar player by trade it is frustrating that you can not properly try a sample library to check if it fits with what you want to do and if not, sell it on and try something else, in the same way that I can do with amps and especially effects pedals.

You can watch/ read/ listen to as many official walkthroughs and user demos as you like, but until you play it yourself, incorporated with your own gear you will never really know if it will work for you.

I’m confident buying a pedal, knowing that I can recoup at least a proportion of the cost if it doesn’t work out. Sadly not the case with many sample libraries and it therefore represents a significant financial risk to invest in certain products. I certainly have a couple which are fine libraries, but not really for me. They sit on my hard drive doing very little.

I appreciate the developers have to protect their interests, but it could be that they'd actually sell more product if it were easier to sell on libraries, as prospective buyers- certainly me- would be more comfortable taking the plunge knowing there was a safety net if it didn’t work out.

I do see that many developers do seem to make it easy to sell on/ transfer licences and bravo to them. How about everyone else?
 
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There's obviously a lot that goes on behind the scenes that neither I nor most other customers fully understand or have insight in (royalties, future-proofing business plans, piracy, safety etc.). It's understandable that developers have no way to check if non-player Kontakt libraries are still being used by the 1st owner after transfer. It's also understandable if every Stings and Lady Gagas of this world just buy second hand licenses of eachother that the whole product becomes worthless to the developer at some point. But that begs the question: if this couldn't be achieved without going bankrupt, why are there developers that are doing it? If it was all about loosing money, you would expect that big players like Spectrasonics or Spitfire would be the only ones that can afford it. While in fact, it's the opposite.

Specifically in response to Eric's old answer: It's not like every sample loop you make have the potential of being used on the next *insert popular artist here* single. Treating a sample as a traditional recording session make very little sense. Sure, if for whatever reason you became the only drummer and producer that could deliver drum tracks to people, then maybe. But that's not something you should base your business on. So comparing those scenarios seems a little odd to me. Certainly seems like most don't think of it like this.

Doing audio and video demos, no matter how dry and naked, can only tell you so much about a library. As composers, musicians, engineers etc. it all has to do about how the tools we use fit us, and that really can't be determined before you have it in front of you, in your system, in your workflow, through your signal chain, under your fingertips. Again, you would expect that the big players would be at the forefront on this, handing out trials or tasters etc., and again, it's the opposite. Although there were more sides to that debate that are unrelated to this, the HZ Strings controversy wouldn't have blown up like it did if Spitfire made sure that the customer got what they we're expecting, or more precisely: expected what they got.

When communicating with big developers, that says that they offer great support and in videos present themselves as understanding and caring personal friends of customers, it can end up feeling as slow and difficult as emailing your local tax office. While contacting the small developer that probably barely can afford their own e-mail system can feel as cosy as messaging a tech-saavy version of your grandmother. Why is that, and how does that hold up to the argument that resell hurts the business when they offer lifetime support (especially since they neither loose nor gain anything by offering support to a new owner, unless the original owner had one foot in the grave)?

One of the arguments mentioned is the time and money costs for managing transfers. Is this was such a huge deal that they give it out to be, no one would do it. For any license situation. Yet, we see it everywhere, and not only in the music and audio market. What is the reason for this? The most obvious guess: the developers haven't made a proper system that does this efficiently enough, and probably won't until they actually consider doing resales. So if this is the case, the argument is kind of pointless. There might be something about the license for audio specifically that could make this a manually labor intensive process, but again, considering that developers with far smaller teams and staff make it work, I very much doubt that.

Also marketing and sales. Criticizing Spitfire's marketing is almost a trend at this point, but IMO it's not unjustified. Why is it that the developer that offer no try-outs, no resales, dressed-up radio ready audio demos (although great video demos, to be fair) and relatively high prices, are the same that does heavy marketing with lots of over-hype, time limited products and a very Waves-ish pressure to remind you that NOW is the best time to buy (where "buy" is replaced with "investing", "taking part of something big" or "join this new journey"), before the honest reviews and reports on lots of bugs that don't get repaired for years (if ever) comes out?

The best argument I've seen is the fact that resale policy can be exploited. Dealing with lots of fraudulent support tickets, while trying to filter out the valid ones, is something I don't have the first clue about how works with sample libraries (or how frequent it is). I hate to repeat myself, but again, developers out there still have a resale policy, and some don't. What are some of them doing to survive exploits, and what stops the others?

I'm not afraid to be proven wrong to the point of humiliation, but I think I'm presenting some real questions in this post that people have, and that haven't become more understandable over the years that this thread has lasted. I'm aware this thread is old and probably ready for the grave, but is anyone willing to shed a light on why there is a disconnect between the larger developers explanations of "behind the scenes", and the reality of what we're seeing in the broader sample library market?

(I'm not attacking any developers. I love what they develop and own products from many of them, and despite my issues with some of them that I share here, will probably keep buying)
 
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Petter Rong said:
I'm aware this thread is old and probably ready for the grave, but is anyone willing to shed a light on why there is a disconnect between the larger developers explanations of "behind the scenes", and the reality of what we're seeing in the broader sample library market?
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This thread is definitely not "ready for the grave". I do care a lot when I make a purchase about this matter. I am not an impulse buyer: I only buy what I can resell, even if I do not end up reselling the vast majoritu of what I buy. Exception: if something is so cheap that I do not care (for example, I bought Anthology from 8DIO for 40EUR or something like that).

I do this because I think it is really unfair that most developers do not allow resale, and I am not interested in supporting their business model (and there are lots of developers to choose from anyway).

As to why the "disconnect" that you mention: the reason is that we customers allow them to get away with it, which IMO we shouldn´t. And the amount of digital goods that we buy and use is only going to increase, so I think we should care.

Just my opinion.
 
veranad said:
This thread is definitely not "ready for the grave".
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I based that comment on the fact that it has mostly gone months or years between posts, with some of them saying that a new and updated thread should be started (maybe there is one, I have no idea), and the information available here seems rather sparse, making me think that this thread has one foot in the grave already, and we're only doing light CPR at the moment

veranad said:
I do this because I think it is really unfair that most developers do not allow resale, and I am not interested in supporting their business model (and there are lots of developers to choose from anyway).
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As you have every right to do. But to me, choosing sample libraries are very different than choosing your milk or your bread. Or what supermarket you go to. I've never owned a sample library where I've thought "already have that". Sure, all the string libraries have legatos and pizzicatos and whatnot, but none of them sound the same. If they did, they would probably be DOA. If you gave me two glasses of milk I've been drinking forever, I couldn't guarantee I could tell the difference. Not even if I could point out if one was better than the other. Put up a blind test with CSS vs SSS vs CineStrings vs Century Strings, I bet I could describe and name them after a few notes

I would really like developers to put in a better effort to make resale easy, or at least possible, but it's not what I base my purchases on.

veranad said:
As to why the "disconnect" that you mention: the reason is that we customers allow them to get away with it, which IMO we shouldn´t. And the amount of digital goods that we buy and use is only going to increase, so I think we should care.
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I was hoping for a more specific answer to the points I brought up. It seems a bit too easy to me to just discard everything they say and maybe even boycott them. I don't think that's in my best interest, nor fair to any developer
 
I know some care about the ability to resell. But any time I see it requires something north of 10-15 bucks I don't think it's worth it. Cause most are going to want you to sell it much cheaper than companies on sale price and with large fees practically eats up your profit.
 
I wanted to subscribe to EW Composer Cloud but I recently purchased HOOPUS - I contacted EW about some sort of discount or the ability to return or sell HOOPUS upon my paying for a 1-year subscription to CC but that request went nowhere
 
If a Best Service product is purchased through an official third-party merchant like Time+Space or Audio Plugin Deals can it still be resold? I wouldn't expect buying from Audio Plugin Deals to count as "second-hand"....
 
X-Bassist said:
Not sure I agree. If you add up all the plugins and instruments I have, it would add up to 100’s of companies I’m paying each month. Now let’s say I could get that down to my favorite 30 companies, say averaging $20/month, that’s $7200 a year. Not terrible, but every year, as long as I want my sessions to work.

Right now I own them all for as long as I want, no extra money involved. Maybe I’ve spent that much in the last couple of years (or a little more). But I’m done. I’ve got enough to write for years.

Now for those starting out who want to test the waters, and are unwilling to wait for sales (or have a big gig lined up) perfectly understandable that a monthly fee would work. I just can’t see doing it across so many companies for years and years. East West, Spitfire, Project Sam, Cinesamples, Performance samples, Fluffy Audio,.... Did we mention plugins? Slate, Fab Filter, Sound Toys, Waves, Kush Audio, .... It would force you to stick to less companies or pay outragous montly fees. Yet I find many companies who are great at one thing (or one area) and not great at others (or they don’t offer every product needed).

I’d hate to see my monthly bill. More than all my other expenses combined... and I live in Los Angeles! ;)
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If I was paying the typical subscription fees for just 6 companies I would not have been able to purchase well over 9/10ths of what I've placed in my arsenal. I feel like a car mechanics shop, with tools that usually are tucked away. One day a customer comes in and I can barely remember if I have the specific part or solution for that car. But If I was tied to those 6 brands then that customer would also be tied to only certain mechanics - who might also be constrained in their skills and experience. Subscription models are forcing round pegs to re-design themselves into squarer and squarer holes.
 
"Heavyocity* (usually not, but products partnered with Native Instruments are transferable via NI support)"

This is not right. I bought NOVO in 2017 via the NI website, more exactly the registration code for NOVO. When I asked NI if I can resell/trasnfer this license to somebody else they send me to Heaviocity and their they say: NO, you can not transfer this license.

So here I'm sitting with software worth 500€, don't use it because to complex en not able to sell it at half the price to somebody who can use it.

Capitalism@work.
 
Guido Pannekoek said:
"Heavyocity* (usually not, but products partnered with Native Instruments are transferable via NI support)"

This is not right. I bought NOVO in 2017 via the NI website, more exactly the registration code for NOVO. When I asked NI if I can resell/trasnfer this license to somebody else they send me to Heaviocity and their they say: NO, you can not transf

So here I'm sitting with software worth 500€, don't use it because to complex en not able to sell it at half the price to somebody who can use it.

Capitalism@work.
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Their Komplete products, the ones that were made and sold through NI and not in a campaign partnershit are transferrable, which is what I assume the mentioned comment is referring to. Whenever NI is doing a campaign, it usually very clear that they are doing a spotlight campaign related to NKS-supported stuff and not a co-op partnership release of a product. On the NI website it says clearly, under the FAQ for non-transferrable licenses, that one of the non-transferrable licenses are: "

Your product is a third party product – transfers are handled by our partners​

If you want to remove a third-party license from your NI account or transfer it to another user, you have to contact the manufacturer of the library directly. Most manufacturers make the deregistration themselves. If you are referred to Native Instruments, please obtain a written approval from the manufacturer (as pdf-document). We need this document to legitimize the release of the license of a third-party product."

(https://support.native-instruments....-Transfer-Why-Is-My-Product-Not-Transferable-)
And as you said, Heavyocity does not do license transfers for their products. I think even if you bought one of the originally NI/Heavyocity co-op releases from the Heavocity website, like Damage and Evolve, you would still not be able to transfer them as they are part of the Heavyocity no-transfer-license at that point. I think there's more at work than just cynical capitalism. Licensing isn't free, and comes with huge risks that unfortunately a lot of developers that don't have access or funds to licensing systems have experienced. Obviously any company is ultimately interested in making money, but I think we should refrain from speculating in intentions that we know nothing of. I know that's not what you said directly, but capitalism itself isn't the problem here. In fact, if not for capitalism, most developers wouldn't even exist.
 
Petter Rong said:
Their Komplete products, the ones that were made and sold through NI and not in a campaign partnershit are transferrable, which is what I assume the mentioned comment is referring to. Whenever NI is doing a campaign, it usually very clear that they are doing a spotlight campaign related to NKS-supported stuff and not a co-op partnership release of a product. On the NI website it says clearly, under the FAQ for non-transferrable licenses, that one of the non-transferrable licenses are: "

Your product is a third party product – transfers are handled by our partners​

If you want to remove a third-party license from your NI account or transfer it to another user, you have to contact the manufacturer of the library directly. Most manufacturers make the deregistration themselves. If you are referred to Native Instruments, please obtain a written approval from the manufacturer (as pdf-document). We need this document to legitimize the release of the license of a third-party product."

(https://support.native-instruments....-Transfer-Why-Is-My-Product-Not-Transferable-)
And as you said, Heavyocity does not do license transfers for their products. I think even if you bought one of the originally NI/Heavyocity co-op releases from the Heavocity website, like Damage and Evolve, you would still not be able to transfer them as they are part of the Heavyocity no-transfer-license at that point. I think there's more at work than just cynical capitalism. Licensing isn't free, and comes with huge risks that unfortunately a lot of developers that don't have access or funds to licensing systems have experienced. Obviously any company is ultimately interested in making money, but I think we should refrain from speculating in intentions that we know nothing of. I know that's not what you said directly, but capitalism itself isn't the problem here. In fact, if not for capitalism, most developers wouldn't even exist.
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Whatever I buy, a bike, a PC, clothes, a toothbrush, a cd, socks, a car,... I can choose to resell it or give it away.

If some companies do a license transfer for free, others ask a fee and some don't allow a resell than the latter are greedy because their logica is that if somebody wants their product than he has to pay the full price or half price is a sale but we cannot permit somebody to has our product to resale /her/his/X license to someone else because in the case of NOVO that's 250€/500€ that we don't recieve. That's greed, plain and simple.

Imagine you cannot resell your car, give away your cd's, can not donate your clothes to an organization that's works with people in poverty because the makers don't allow you to do that. People would boycott this companies and makers immediatly. But for some people that make VST libraries this is not the case. People just swallow it and find it completely normal that a license can not be transferred/reselled. I call it capitalism@work. Or greed.
 
Apples and oranges. I know what you're getting at, but physical items are a totally different from software licenses. You don't actually own any software at all, in contrast to physical items you bought. You have been licensed to use it. Files aren't generally hard to get hold of, and if they are, someone has done lot of investment to prevent you from getting them, or at least from using them in any meaningful way. And that investment is way larger than the measley 250/500 euros you lost because you were expecting something less complex (which you can hardly blame Heavyocity for, seeing that every part of the library is heavily covered in walkthroughs). And what a developer would loose would be way higher than that again. Not every developer can afford this step.

It's the legality of using the files that's at issue. You are allowed to sell your physical item because there are laws that govern every part of that, from the moment it's manifactured to it's final resting place in the landfill. And a lot of those laws are still being discussed to consider both the seller and buyer in every step. Laws that would set a hard rule for license transfers would most likely cripple the developer community, hence why they don't exist, IMO. When you buy anything, you agree to the terms. The terms for physical items can indeed have some restrictions as well, but the nature of licenses (which is not only limited to software) makes it a totally different kind of product that you can't compare.

The only part I can sort of agree with you here, is that there has to be greed involved on the part of those that have invented a licensing system, and it costs crazy amounts for a developer to even consider using that solution. The only solution is that someone invents an affordable licensing system, but of course those that do or has done so would naturally just charge more because they can.
 
Petter Rong said:
The only part I can sort of agree with you here, is that there has to be greed involved on the part of those that have invented a licensing system, and it costs crazy amounts for a developer to even consider using that solution. The only solution is that someone invents an affordable licensing system, but of course those that do or has done so would naturally just charge more because they can.
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There are companies that do license transfers for free, others ask a fee. So in your logic they have another kind of licencing because it does not seem licensing costs them that much as the companies that do not allow license transfers. And that's the whole point you keep on missing.

But ok, it's me that is to stupid to understand why NI doesn't ask money for a license transfer, Soniccouture asks a 25€ fee and Heaviocity and others don't allow licensetransfers. It's all about the expensive licensing developpers have to pay...
 
Guido Pannekoek said:
There are companies that do license transfers for free, others ask a fee. So in your logic they have another kind of licencing because it does not seem licensing costs them that much as the companies that do not allow license transfers. And that's the whole point you keep on missing.

But ok, it's me that is to stupid to understand why NI doesn't ask money for a license transfer, Soniccouture asks a 25€ fee and Heaviocity and others don't allow licensetransfers. It's all about the expensive licensing developpers have to pay...
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I get the point that there seem to be inconsistencies in how some developers can afford while others can't. I pointed out the same confusion in an earlier comment. Some of them can afford automatic systems, some of them can't. Some of them actually doesn't care, or say that they "trust" their customers (which basically means they can afford the potential losses). NI have been doing the licensing stuff in-house for ages, so for everything they do themselves, they can afford at this point to have it all free. Keep in mind they are one of, if not the, largest plugin and sample library developer in the world at the moment (especially after partnership with iZotope and Plugin Alliance). Not only that, but everything that will be registered in Kontakt with serials, goes through NI licensing, and it's not free. It's the reason why most Kontakt instrument developers simply don't have license transfers at all, as they have absolutely no security other than your word on compliance with the EULA and some form of watermarked files to ensure you're not distributing the files, which anyone that owns full Kontakt can use without any licensing, keys, serials or anything, without ever being caught. Even those that can afford NI licensing for the most part, will have smaller libraries that are not NI registered because the price of admission is ultimately not worth it. Soniccouture probably deals with this manually, which means a person has to look at the ticket and manually do the transfer, hence the fee. iLok also sells their service, which means fees all around. There are a lot of in-house low-key licensing systems, that are easily cracked. Some even the big players used in the beginning, but have since moved to iLok or similar. Those that have licensing, but not license transfers, I'm not entirely sure about the details of the arrangements with NI, but I would guess that it doesn't go through the normal NI automatic proceedings, and that they don't see the long term benefit of setting up such a system.

After considering a bit more on your comments, for those big players, like Heavyocity or Spitfire, I would have to partially agree that, especially after having been so long in the game, they should have invested in some kind of process, fee or not, to allow transfer. And by not doing that, they are showing that they don't want people to be able to resell their libraries and that they might not bee worth the asking price or deliver according to the hype-marketing. And as much as I love Spectrasonics products, Eric Persings comments here were of high snobbery caliber IMO and reflects a seriously outdated view on software licenses.

I think we fundamentally agree here (other than the comparison of physical products and software licenses), just that we look at it from different angles.
 
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