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CineStrings Core 2.0 is now LIVE on Native Access!

It sounds like the long and short of it is "it's never that simple."

You guys have made some mean sounding samples, you should be proud. I'm glad I had picked up and got use out of the CineSymphony series. Best of luck out there.
 
Cinesamples-SG said:
Hey all, apologies for the radio silence on this thread -- candidly, I've been struggling to figure out the best way to reply to this, but it's becoming apparent that staying away for fear of not being able to satisfy everyone with what I can say is not helpful. I'm going to try to navigate this response as carefully as possible, knowing that whatever I say can't make everyone happy, but in the spirit of trying to communicate openly I want to try to address this issue.

I know we (I) posted many times about the rest of the CineSymphony updates still being on the roadmap. I know they have been a highly anticipated thing, and a lot of people have been expecting these updates. I can't and won't say that the updates are definitely not happening at this point, but I also can't and won't say that they are. The reality is, our business objectives have changed, and Musio is the priority focus for our business going forward.

I know this isn't the news a lot of folks want to hear, and I know I'm hard pressed to provide an explanation based on the speculation and assumptions that have been happening on this thread thus far. Again, I'm trying to navigate this as carefully as possible, and I hope you all understand that there is a lot of complexity to this subject.

Some folks have asked why we don't move forward with the updates and charge a nominal fee for them. Others have stated that it "should" (a word my therapist forbids me from using) be "cheaper" to do these updates than to convert our efforts to Musio. Still others have suggested providing free access to libraries owned by customers of those Kontakt libraries to those users in Musio (and subsequently have had it pointed out by other users that it's not that simple, nor necessarily a better option).

First off, as I said, we don't know for sure that the CineSymphony updates are abandoned completely. I don't want to BS anybody, though, so I'll say, they are likely abandoned. Not 100%, but likely. The reality is, these updates for Kontakt libraries imply tens of thousands of dollars of investment. I know that may be hard to fathom, but it's true -- the CineStrings Core 2.0 update cost a lot of money and many months of effort by our production team, third-party scripters, and lots of money in Native Instruments fees and licensing. It was no small feat to get this update done, especially alongside the development and launch of Musio (which we did around the same time). Please understand, this update was provided for free to existing owners of the Kontakt library, and unfortunately, it did not catalyze sales of the updated library for new customers in the way that we needed it to be in order to justify updating the rest of the CineSymphony product line. That's as real as I can be.

I'll try to address the "whys" that have come up on this thread, and again, I'm here in the spirit of openness, knowing that the information I can provide puts me in a vulnerable place and isn't going to satisfy everyone.

- Why don't we do the updates and charge a nominal fee for existing customers?

The CineSymphony libraries are already NKS-encoded and the plan for the updates was to be free to existing owners. This means that anyone who already has these libraries registered in Native Access would be entitled to the updates for free (as we did with CineStrings Core 2.0). To re-encode the libraries, thus making them applicable for a new serial code, would cost thousands of dollars in NI re-encoding fees and new serial code inventory, and then ask thousands of customers to pay for a new serial code. We always planned for these updates to be free for existing owners, and that's what we did for CineStrings Core.

Part of our company overhaul in 2021-2022 involved upgrading many (approximately 13) of our products that were not originally encoded for Kontakt Player (and required the full Kontakt) to getting them encoded and charging an upgrade fee for these products was not met favorably by everybody. We had inventory cost from Native Instruments and had to charge upgrade fees for existing customers of Piano In Blue, Drums Of War, and the other legacy products we revamped as part of this. The upgrade fee was acceptable to most, and the reality of covering NI licensing costs was not substantial with new customers to accelerate our business. It was and is the truth, but we wish it wasn't a necessary part of this update. A lot of people lambasted us at the time for doing this as a "cash grab" but the reality is the fee we charged was barely a break-even fee, and in truth we realistically lost money on this endeavor, despite the intention being to have everyone in our legacy customer database get on board with the new Kontakt libraries.

So:

- Why don't we charge a nominal fee? It wouldn't cover the cost of doing the updates. That's reality. I know that's probably weird to hear, but it's true. I'm not going to disclose our financial details, don't bother asking, but I'm not lying about it. We went through this with the thirteen (thirteen) products that we updated to be NKS-compatible over the course of 2022.

- Why don't we provide the libraries that users own for Kontakt for free in Musio?

Why would you want that? Others have asked that, and it's a really great question -- why would you want that? The Kontakt versions of your libraries will continue to work, and it's been pointed out that the Musio versions of these libraries have diminished functionality and control -- so what are you missing? If you own many (many) of our Kontakt libraries, we've said all along that there is a discount for Musio 1 customers for this option -- I'll make it explicit here to save my team the email back-and-forht about what that offer is: it's $249 for Musio 1. If you own several of our Kontakt libraries and want to switch to Musio, that's the price (or $9.99/monthly or $99/year) -- (99 cents a month for the first three months through Decemeber 31st 2023), you can also get Musio 1 for $249 instead of $299 (MSRP $399). Keep in mind, all your Kontakt libraries will still continue to work.

- Why don't you just do the updates for the Kontakt libraries? Surely it must be cheaper than developing Musio to the point where it can do what Kontakt can do?

Updating the Kontakt libraries is a multiple-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars proposition. I'm not kidding, that's realistically what it costs to do these updates, and we don't have the same prospective costs for Musio as an in-house operation. Look, I'm trying to level with you all, and as anyone who's tried to monetize a product encoded with Native Instruments can confirm, it's a substantially different endeavor than working with a new payment processor and developing an independent business.

I know there's a lot of nuance to this issue, between what has been promised in Musio and what has been promised for Kontakt, and once more, I've tried to deal with this as openly as I can. I know this response isn't going to satisfy everyone, and there's a lot of discussion on this very thread that will foster further debate, and I'm hopeful that we can move forward with an open mindset.

The bottom line is, Musio is the future of our business. Native Instruments is a great platform and we have wonderul friends there, but the Kontakt platform is not the future of our business. Kontakt 7 has been lacking in developer tools and is not serving the needs of our business goals, and we have no intention of abandoning the platform, we will continue to sell our Kontakt libraries in that format, but we do not expect to develop new products in that format or have Kontakt supersede Musio as the future our business.

If you have questions about the future of Cinesamples and Musio, I'm here to answer them as best I can -- please understand, we don't have a crystal ball, and we pride ourselves on being a company that serves the most customers possible. As we move forward to the future, Musio is the business model that we intend to explore.
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Apologies in advance if this question was answered somewhere else before:

How do we get the $249 offer for Musio 1? You mention this if we own "many" of your Kontakt libraries:

"If you own many (many) of our Kontakt libraries, we've said all along that there is a discount for Musio 1 customers for this option -- I'll make it explicit here to save my team the email back-and-forht about what that offer is: it's $249 for Musio 1."

How many Cinesamples Kontakt libraries do we need to own to qualify for this?

Thank you.
 
jazzr said:
Apologies in advance if this question was answered somewhere else before:

How do we get the $249 offer for Musio 1? You mention this if we own "many" of your Kontakt libraries:

"If you own many (many) of our Kontakt libraries, we've said all along that there is a discount for Musio 1 customers for this option -- I'll make it explicit here to save my team the email back-and-forht about what that offer is: it's $249 for Musio 1."

How many Cinesamples Kontakt libraries do we need to own to qualify for this?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Good question! Get in touch with us at [email protected] and we'll look up your account to verify your purchases and send you a custom invoice for the further discounted price.
 
Im fine with abandoning the 2.0 updates for Kontakt, but could you guys atleast fix this one small bug, thats all i and others need in this thread? Thank you.

Cinebrass Core (Version 1_7_1) 6 Horn Legato Issue?

Started notice more "flavs". Especially the Trombones which seems t CPU spike alot and has hard dynamic fades. Iwent unde the hood again to try smooth the dynamic layers over eachother. I added some more Low and High pass filters and adjusted some of the current filters. Let me know if you think...
vi-control.net vi-control.net
 
Do I understand correctly, that developers are being actively discouraged from updating their products by being charged NI encoding fees for each new version?
 
JohnS said:
Do I understand correctly, that developers are being actively discouraged from updating their products by being charged NI encoding fees for each new version?
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Normal updates are free. (I think companies get one free update per product per year.)

The “extra NI costs” thing Steve was talking about earlier is situations where you might want to offer customers a *paid* upgrade and you want only people who pay the upgrade fee to have access to the upgraded version. But on Native Access, there’s only one version that can be available for a specific “product.” So if someone has a valid serial number for version 1, then they get whatever new version CineSamples has uploaded, whether they pay the upgrade fee or not. (If it’s a free upgrade, then of course this doesn’t matter.)

The only way to make it so only people who paid extra for the upgrade could download it would be to create a *new* product, so it could have a different download on Native Access. Which costs money, since you’d need a whole new set of serial numbers for that “new” product.
 
Mike Greene said:
Normal updates are free. (I think companies get one free update per product per year.)

The “extra NI costs” thing Steve was talking about earlier is situations where you might want to offer customers a *paid* upgrade and you want only people who pay the upgrade fee to have access to the upgraded version. But on Native Access, there’s only one version that can be available for a specific “product.” So if someone has a valid serial number for version 1, then they get whatever new version CineSamples has uploaded, whether they pay the upgrade fee or not. (If it’s a free upgrade, then of course this doesn’t matter.)

The only way to make it so only people who paid extra for the upgrade could download it would be to create a *new* product, so it could have a different download on Native Access. Which costs money, since you’d need a whole new set of serial numbers for that “new” product.
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Sure, I understand that. I was specifically interested about the additional charges within the same product/serial number. I understood that even if the change was simple to implement, it would incur significant costs for developer. Just one free update per year is not very agile for even moderately sophisticated product.

Of course it doesn't justify ignoring obvious bugs for years (not implying that CS product have them).
 
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JohnS said:
I was specifically interested about the additional charges within the same product/serial number.
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If it's the same product/serial number, then there aren't any additional charges from Native Instruments. NI does those for free. (Although limited to one or two per year.) Not just for simple bug fixes, but even if the changes are massive with additional samples and stuff, there's no charge by NI to do the re-encoding.

JohnS said:
I understood that even if the change was simple to implement, it would incur significant costs for developer.
Click to expand...
If you're not going to charge the customer for the update, then there are no NI costs. Easy peasy.

Steve was addressing a different scenario, though, where people suggested, "Why not charge a nominal fee for the update? That way it would be more worthwhile financially for Cinesamples to update the Kontakt versions."

So Steve explained why (in this post) charging a nominal fee sounds like a great idea, but is not actually as easy as it sounds. Since Cinesamples products are hosted on Native Access, there can't be two versions (old version and upgrade version) for the same "product." Native Access is a "One download option per product" situation.

So if Cinestrings 2.0 appears on your Native Access page, then there's just a single download for it. If Cinesamples uploaded a new version (say 2.1) onto Native Access (which is the typical thing to do), then *everybody* who has Cinestrings 2.0 could download this update. For free. So nobody's going to pay that "nominal charge."

To enforce the nominal charge, Cinesamples would have to create a brand new product for the upgrade version. That's where things get expensive, since it involves a whole new set of serial numbers for those upgrade customers. On Native Access, one product would be Cinestrings 2.0, the other would be Cinestrings 2.1. It would look really weird, but that's the only way to separate the people who paid for the upgrade.

I should clarify that all of this is only to clarify why charging a nominal fee wouldn't work, since that was the question at hand. Again, if they simply updated Cinestrings and didn't charge customers for it, which is the more common scenario, there would be no charge from NI for that. (I am NOT saying that's what Cinesamples should or shouldn't do, by the way. As Steve explained, it would be great to update everything, but resources are limited, so that's not always possible. I certainly have my own share of things that should be updated but aren't.)

* I'm aware that it isn't really my place to be answering here for Steve, by the way. (He's entirely capable, a nice guy, and writes well.) So my apologies for butting in. I do feel the need to interject, though, so that if there are misunderstandings from this thread about how encoding works, I don't want those misunderstandings to get carried into threads.
 
Mike Greene said:
Normal updates are free. (I think companies get one free update per product per year.)

The “extra NI costs” thing Steve was talking about earlier is situations where you might want to offer customers a *paid* upgrade and you want only people who pay the upgrade fee to have access to the upgraded version. But on Native Access, there’s only one version that can be available for a specific “product.” So if someone has a valid serial number for version 1, then they get whatever new version CineSamples has uploaded, whether they pay the upgrade fee or not. (If it’s a free upgrade, then of course this doesn’t matter.)

The only way to make it so only people who paid extra for the upgrade could download it would be to create a *new* product, so it could have a different download on Native Access. Which costs money, since you’d need a whole new set of serial numbers for that “new” product.
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And is there a way to leave NI structure, update and do it via Pulse Downloader where you skip part of these costs and limitations? K7 has the library option today for a reason.

Or are developers now bound to make libs solely compatible with K7 Player? Like NI mob saying *you now pay less but still need to use our K7 logistics". If you scale up to a drug trade, developers seems the producers and NI the Narco Boss that charges you to put you in the network under a quota so you can't leave the organization, NO ONE LEAVES!

Just wondering, can't you just get them pulled down from NI binding environment and leave them as unregistered ones? It"s clearly a pug they don't find cute anymore. Not even trim his nails, but others will lovely adopt the pug and no need for fancy smanshing golden house and blings. People just want to keep the dog that is not loved anymore by the owner since it got expensive. 💕

Just ideas not criticism, but a dog is forever commitment.
 
EanS said:
And is there a way to leave NI structure, update and do it via Pulse Downloader where you skip part of these costs and limitations? K7 has the library option today for a reason.
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Definitely, and in my own case, most of our stuff is on Native Access, but Realivox Ladies and Fingerpick are not, since I need the ability to have separate versions for those. (Ladies Lite and Ladies Complete, for instance.)

Native Access is really nice from a developer and tech support perspective. (As is Pulse, which I imagine I would be just as happy with.) Once it's all set up, it's so easy and our tech support costs went way down after hosting most of our stuff on NA. You don't want to jump ship on NA (or Pulse) unless you really have to, so I don't see Cinesamples doing that, especially as it seems they want to put the Kontakt world behind them.

Plus, our contracts are already signed for each product to either be on Native Access or not, and the per-license fee has that Native Access fee (an additional 1.5% of list price) factored in. So I'm not even sure how easy it is to get out of that part of the contract. It certainly wouldn't be cheap.
 
JohnS said:
Do I understand correctly, that developers are being actively discouraged from updating their products by being charged NI encoding fees for each new version?
Click to expand...
That would be such a shame if so. But would explain why companies like 8Dio stay out of this system. And one free update per year seems fair, but still slows down the number of updates a developer would have done otherwise. Just guessing.
 
jtsterays said:
Im fine with abandoning the 2.0 updates for Kontakt, but could you guys atleast fix this one small bug, thats all i and others need in this thread? Thank you.

Cinebrass Core (Version 1_7_1) 6 Horn Legato Issue?

Started notice more "flavs". Especially the Trombones which seems t CPU spike alot and has hard dynamic fades. Iwent unde the hood again to try smooth the dynamic layers over eachother. I added some more Low and High pass filters and adjusted some of the current filters. Let me know if you think...
vi-control.net vi-control.net
Click to expand...
Agreed
Also with they could add a CC1 + CC11 link option in Cinestrings Core
Many libraries have it
But Cinestrings Core don't
And this is a library I feel like actually could really use it
You sort of have to use expression a lot with this library
The dynamics doesn't go so quiet
It would make it faster to work with
 
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RandomName :D said:
Agreed
Also with they could add a CC1 + CC11 link option in Cinestrings Core
Many libraries have it
But Cinestrings Core don't
And this is a library I feel like actually could really use it
You sort of have to use expression a lot with this library
The dynamics doesn't go so quiet
It would make it faster to work with
Click to expand...
I think you can do that with @Land of Missing Parts 's new vibrato plugin.
 
I'm confused. If the future of CineSamples is Musio, and assuming CineSymphony is already making its way to Musio, can't CineSamples just release the updates for the rest of CineSymphony directly to Musio? Not now but, eventually? Sounds like a reasonable next step, as Musio won't have NI fees slapped all over it. Also, if that's the case, honestly i don't get the commotion on this thread at all 😶

Please enlighten me @Cinesamples-SG
 
Emanu1674 said:
I'm confused. If the future of CineSamples is Musio, and assuming CineSymphony is already making its way to Musio, can't CineSamples just release the updates for the rest of CineSymphony directly to Musio? Not now but, eventually? Sounds like a reasonable next step, as Musio won't have NI fees slapped all over it. Also, if that's the case, honestly i don't get the commotion on this thread at all 😶

Please enlighten me @Cinesamples-SG
Click to expand...
This thread is for the kontakt library
We would have to purchase Musio to get those updates
 
RandomName :D said:
This thread is for the kontakt library
We would have to purchase Musio to get those updates
Click to expand...
The PLAY version of EastWest libraries were all abandoned after they switched to Opus (thank god) and i don't remember people being upset like here, am i missing something? Is Musio such a bad deal?
 
Cinesamples-SG said:
Hey

- Why don't we provide the libraries that users own for Kontakt for free in Musio?

Why would you want that? Others have asked that, and it's a really great question -- why would you want that? The Kontakt versions of your libraries will continue to work, and it's been pointed out that the Musio versions of these libraries have diminished functionality and control -- so what are you missing?
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Well I don’t really want to pay for a product twice…Also having access to my Cinestrings core, winds brass and perc in Musio would come in handy on my mobile setup albeit not having the same functionality.

But Musio will develop the functionality in the future. I’m sure.

Cinesamples-SG said:
If you own many (many) of our Kontakt libraries, we've said all along that there is a discount for Musio 1 customers for this option -- I'll make it explicit here to save my team the email back-and-forht about what that offer is: it's $249 for Musio 1. If you own several of our Kontakt libraries and want to switch to Musio, that's the price (or $9.99/monthly or $99/year) -- (99 cents a month for the first three months through Decemeber 31st 2023), you can also get Musio 1 for $249 instead of $299 (MSRP $399). Keep in mind, all your Kontakt libraries will still continue to work.
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I’ve spent $1000’s of Cinestrings libraries and a $49 saving over someone who has zero investment is not, in my opinion enough incentive….

I'm guessing by 2030 we will own nothing and be happy….abandonware is real and the only things you can rely on is stuff you can actually touch and feel…

Strokes 56 Strat and King Of Tone Pedal….😂
 
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Emanu1674 said:
The PLAY version of EastWest libraries were all abandoned after they switched to Opus (thank god) and i don't remember people being upset like here, am i missing something? Is Musio such a bad deal?
Click to expand...
Initially misread this.

When EW went to Play from Kontakt, it was pretty unpopular among a lot of people, not least because of Play’s reliability issues and some features that didn’t materialise until Opus arrived.
 
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