I want a NI Marketplace
If you are like me...
- you have quite a few instruments from NI or partners that you have bought for a lot of money that you don't even have installed on your hard drive. They just did not do/sound like you hoped.
- there are a lot of instruments you would like to try, but they are too expensive to gamble on.
- you never ever buy a new product cause you know it it bound to turn up at a huge discount pretty soon.
- you would love to be able to trade in licenses for products for credits to be able to buy to other product.
- you would buy a lot more products if you could get some value back from trading in other products.
- To be able to trade licenses with other users.
That is why I would love to see a store function in NA Access.
Comments
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Hey, that sounds fun but most likely won't happen.
In the meantime, we do have a marketplace here 😊
Feel free to jump in:
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I am sure it will come on some platform sooner or later it is just up to NI to decide if they want to stick to their old model until some other player picks up the ball and puts them out of business or if they want to do it themselves and stay in the game.
Thank you, but I rather not deal with the hassle of private sales, I would much rather trade products in an official tool even if that certainly will come at some cost of lower value for trade ins.
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Reading that @Mutis it does not sound at all like a market place more like a speculation in a shift to a subscription model. The way it is now with a more or less yearly version with upgrade price we are pretty much into a subscription model right now, but it is a very unflexible model. I am not against a subscription model. I hope if they go that route that it will add more flexibility instead of this Komplete all or nothing pack. It is such a waste to have a lot of instruments that we don't use. It would make more sense to me to sell subscription to selected products. That would also show NI what products users are actually willing to pay for and what products that are unattractive and only tie up resources for maintenance.
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Hmm. Not sure that I get the concern here - while I do agree with some parts of your comments. I agree with this:
- I have quite a few instruments from NI or partners that you have bought for a lot of money that you don't even have installed on your hard drive. They just did not do/sound like you hoped.
As a Komplete 14 ULT user - yes - there is a ton of stuff that comes with the package that I may never install or may install a year from now - but it's nice to know it's there. However for me - the cost of my entire K14 ULT upgrade cost less than me cherry picking the items I do want like Kontakt 7, tons of new Expansions and so on. Whether I ever get around to installing (and liking) the entire suite is a moot point. And I have Komplete Kontrol over what goes on my hard drive. It's a win-win (for me)
As for the rest of these:
- There are a lot of instruments you would like to try, but they are too expensive to gamble on.
I sense that you are are burned that NI itself (and partners) do not do trials. I get that.
- You never ever buy a new product cause you know it it bound to turn up at a huge discount pretty soon.
This one is making an assumption. Not everything is subjected to a huge discount. Plus no one is twisting your arm to buy anything. This is how capitalism works. Buy and enjoy or buy and be disappointed. But don't buy waiting for a discount. That makes no sense to me whatsoever.
These ones do not compute (with me):
- You would love to be able to trade in licenses for products for credits to be able to buy to other product.
- You would buy a lot more products if you could get some value back from trading in other products.
- To be able to trade licenses with other users.
You seem to think that your purchase of a software license (of any product) suddenly equates it with a "credits" value and if you suddenly tire of it - you should be able to trade it away like a baseball card. I get the thinking but remember - the only thing you (and I) get is a "limited" use right to the product. We do not own it and I am certain that any vendor would cringe if one suddenly decides to sell a given license at a profit - where NI would not see a dime.
I say we count ourselves lucky that NI allows any license transfer at all. They could make us keep it forever. I also do not see how Native Instruments could be interested at all in running their own "buy and sell" to watch all their licensing change hands ad Infinium.
VP
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"I sense that you are are burned that NI itself (and partners) do not do trials. I get that."
That is one part of the problem.
"This one is making an assumption. Not everything is subjected to a huge discount. Plus no one is twisting your arm to buy anything. This is how capitalism works. Buy and enjoy or buy and be disappointed. But don't buy waiting for a discount. That makes no sense to me whatsoever."
Let me see if I can explain so it makes sense to you. Let's say we have a huge new cool instrument with a 100 gongplayer ensemble. That may be cool to try, or it may just be gimmicky and not fit your music. It is priced at 700 USD. Huge expense for most of us. But we know that around midsummer or coming Black Friday or next Christmas there is a big chance it will be sold for 349 USD. Some instruments ends up on sale pretty fast, other not so fast. So most of us hold of that purchase and wait for a sale. Biting the bullet on a pair of bad instruments I never ever buy anything at full price any more. Pretty sure I am not the only one. But If software instruments were possible to trade in for store credits for a slightly decreased value say 10% less per year owned or something I would buy a whole lot more stuff and a lot faster. Another way to go would be the reverse rent to own or subscription. As it is not the initial investment is often too high compared to the potential risk of buying a dud. BTW this is the way it works now, there is no law of nature saying that it is a good practise to buy stuff blindly on a gamble and have no trade in value. If you buy a real guitar you own that instrument and store are often willing to trade it in at a laser value for a Strat or a set up congas.
"You seem to think that your purchase of a software license (of any product) suddenly equates it with a "credits" value".
Simply put yes, in most cases a purchase of a products is attached with some value. This value was more apparent a few years back when software were sold in on a media in a box with a license card. But value can be transferred in other ways, skins, addons, games, stocks and NFTs are traded daily and totally digital. Accepting that certain software have no resale value lessens the value of the product as a whole. A product that retains some value have a potential to add more brand loyalty and more sales in general in most cases. Lower risk makes more people willing to invest.
As for NI allowing licence trades between users or not would benefit NI or not that depends upon how that business model is applied. Assuming that trades is handled in a NI store, they are in full rights to charge a transaction fee for moving the license. Having a secure and controlled environment for making such trades would definitely appeal to me.
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True, larger comporations often loose connection with their customer base in a bigger bureaucracy, but it is not always the case so we can always hope. I have raised my voice cause I would like to get more products, but also get a way to in some way redirect parts of wrong investments into other products. I am pretty sure if would be a win win if we end up buying more products and adding some extra cash in that trade in rather than staying away from buying more products due to having money tied up in unused products.
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By the way, NI provides DEMOs, so what's the problem?
And waiting 3/4 of year at most for Sale? Is that real problem? One could do a mental switch and set the release date to next Summer. Does that hurt much? What about a bit patience?
If one needs thing, no problem to buy it right away. If one just wants it... Is waiting for half year so much trouble? Mainly, if one knows that sales come regularly. And beside that some more may pop here and there.
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"Simply put yes, in most cases a purchase of a products is attached with some value."
Again - you are attempting to quantify a software license into some physical, tangible product that actually has some real-world value (Like a used Strat for example). A Kontakt license will never equate to a used Strat in terms of hard dollars, trade value or anything really. It can never appreciate in value and when the new version of Kontakt appears - that old license becomes essentially useless.
It is very important to remember - you do not own this product, its rights to or anything else. You have simply purchased a VERY limited right to install and use it. To be honest - it's not something you should even be able to sell, trade or otherwise deal in.
As far as "trading" that value to someone else - that's a fool's errand too as my idea of "value" may well be vastly different that yours. How would any "marketplace" assign value/credits/tokens to any VST or plugin or whatever. Software really only has "sell price" (with no actual value) while its current and in today's market - that is impossible to keep up with.
Finally - making money off a software transfer (money that NI would probably like to have) continues to boggle my mind and makes me wonder why any vendor would allow such a thing in the first place.
Would be very interested to hear exactly why NI allows license transfers and what they believe they get out it. Must be a good will thing or something.
Cheers
VP
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This is a good discussion as to how to upgrade vst instruments or clean house to keep the stuff one likes and trade/sell what one doesn't find value in. I found myself thinking the same thing with all the Waves products. I bought a bunch of their stuff years ago only to realize I only like about 5-10 plug-ins. On top of that at the time you could only use them on one machine. Then they came out with the second license, but it is only for one year....... I had enough and thought I wish I could trade the ones I don't want for the things I do........... As I said this was a good discussion because the thing is non of this stuff holds value. It isn't designed to hold value... One will always have to upgrade due to support from the vender or our current issue we are all dealing with and that is OS compatibility.
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It's a great discussion as long as everyone realizes what they are trying to "value".
Software is a crapshoot at the best of times and while it's easy to blame NI or Waves or whoever about things we bought that might not "click" with us - we made that choice to buy it and once that choice is made (due to typical licensing/EULAs etc) we all need to understand that depending on vendor - you may be stuck with it.
I am still not understanding how (here in 2023) anyone could not do some basic homework on a product they are looking at regardless of cost or perceived value.
There are so many resources available now (forums, vids, YouTube, social media etc) that one should be able to decide fairly quickly (and accurately) whether a product is sorta good, really good or on the avoid list.
I cannot remember a time in the last 5 years that I bought anything that I did not really get use out of (or felt like the value was not there). Maybe I spend more time doing homework than the next guy - but I do not feel like I need to start trading anything away from my stash.
Like anything else - it's Buyer "Aware" and Buyer "Beware".
Cheers!
VP
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@Vocalpoint, it seems you have a personal interest in this thread in that you keep emphasizing the buyer beware concept. I think the OP gets it as well as myself. As I said I had this thought years ago. To me this was interesting to see someone take the same point as I did years ago. I started buying NI products with Komplete 6. I know how many instruments have no support and got left behind, thus useless licenses.
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I am sure you get it and I get it but I am not so sure the OP gets it. We all buy stuff that loses its usefulness, shine or vibe and sure it would be nice to move that along to someone else - but not from within NA2.
I would rather see NI focus on some real-world optimization on making NA2 do what it's supposed to do - which is "accurately" manage my products from my NI account end to end - in a fast and flexible manner.
Things like Relocate ALL, custom folder structures for managing expansions, proper install/reinstall/UNINSTALL and MOVE - is what we all really need.
Jeez - they could also take 5 minutes and make Kontakt 7 actually appear as Installed when I open NA2 and click Installed->Kontakt. Right now - there is no sign of it whatsoever.
They could also make NA2 10 times better by not making us sit through whatever NA2 is wasting time doing when it displays that "Activating Products" message at startup.
Is it just me or shouldn't NA2 already know what's activated (since it installed/activated it for us in the first place) and leave this routine to run ONLY when something new is added to the product mix.
It's this kind of attention to detail that NA2 needs right now - not another marketplace. There are tons of places to sell your unwanted stuff that work just fine.
Cheers
VP
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@Vocalpoint, I hear you and I think the NI team is fully aware of all of those frustrations ......... I am still having some of those issues you've mentioned. I think there is a thread discussing how they plan to address that stuff. I think it comes down to us being patient. Believe me I'm dealing with the patience issue on other music related issues. I need a new desktop since my current computer is an intel 2015 iMac with 8 gb of memory. Thought I would get a 24/27 inch iMac with more than 16 GB of memory....as you know that didn't happen..... now here we are months away from March's event and new stuff. This will ultimately bring M2 stuff which may or may not work with the current software instruments.....blah blah blah....... But for me I'm just trying to be patient.....
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Ah - the adventures of being a Mac user :) I do not have those issues on PC/Windows. It's too easy to simply update a motherboard here and a CPU there while keeping all the other hard costs (Case, power supply, monitors etc) in full use.
Not sure how you guys/gals do it - dealing with the pain of having to switch everything out (at Apples unbelievable pricing) every 2-3 years.
Good luck with the new build (whatever you end up getting).
Cheers!
VP
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I get the same feeling. I sense a high level of negativity and a very defensive position to keep the status quo of the on VPs side. Any reasons seems to just be ignored if they don't defend the position that if a user buys something that is not great they should just shrug it off and be happy that it was another 500 bucks down the drain. Not all artist are millionaires happy to just dish out cash.
I have found out the hard way that it is actually better economical to buy real vintage synthesizers than virtual software versions. Not purely for the sound, but for the fact that it is easy to sell that Roland, Korg or whatever to another musician if it did not fit my mix.
And as for the value of a software licence with limited use. That is just the way the library makers have shifted things in recent years. In the beginning software was sold in boxes on discs with copy protection. And software you bought as a customer could be sold to another person. Piracy led us down the dongle/eula dark path, but to say that digital products can not have ha a trade and resale value is just false. Look at Crypto, NTF and even regular stock exchange. Corporate stocks are now only bits in the computers of NASDAC. Nobody questions that is is genuine corporate shares with value traded on NASDAC. Running software and licenses connected with NI's Access database does not seem much different to me and if the licences need stronger protection they could be made NFTs.
On a side not as you mention that most of us buys a Complete license to get access to a few of it parts. I wonder if NI have have made any investigations into what parts of gets a lot of use and what pieces that hardly nobody ever use. Maybe a swap system would show them more clearly where users want to spend more cash and what is actually just dead weight.
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