Developer loyalty

[Thomas Mavian]

While the expression "customer loyalty" is quite common there is also what I'd like to call "company loyalty", and in this case perhaps "developer loyalty ".

In June 2015 I bought in a sale Nomad Factorys Analog Trackbox for $9.99. A channelstrip. Yesterday I got an email from them telling me they just released version 4 of the Blue Tube Bundle where Analog Trackbox is places.

Ok, time to upgrade i thought, what will it cost me?

Turns out that I'm getting the update for free. The whole bundle that is, a total of 19 plugins. Because I'm a loyal customer. Well, truth be told I have a few others.

Now, sure. I have more compressors and EQs than I'd like to admit and would be totally OK to only getting the Analog Trackbox for free. Nonetheless I find it very generous of them.

I often use their take on the Pultec, just because it is all three at once and it's more convenient using that than for example UAs Pultec which takes up three insert slots. Do they sound the same? I don't care.

Long winding about nothing. Just wanted to share.

Any other developer that you can think of with a similar philosophy on customer loyalty?

[Lawrence]

I think I got the initial version of Omnisphere as an upgrade from Atmosphere and the upgrade from Trilogy to Trilian for free from Spectrasonics, which might be the biggest updates I’ve had from a company.

There have been a lot of others though, generous inexpensive or free updates from other companies.

[Mike Greene]

I think I got the initial version of Omnisphere as an upgrade from Atmosphere and the upgrade from Trilogy to Trilian for free from Spectrasonics, which might be the biggest updates I’ve had from a company.

I think we had to pay for those? At least I did. It was really cheap, though, at $149 for Omnisphere. (I can't find the Trillian email, so I don't remember how much that was.)

[Lawrence]

I think I got the initial version of Omnisphere as an upgrade from Atmosphere and the upgrade from Trilogy to Trilian for free from Spectrasonics, which might be the biggest updates I’ve had from a company.

I think we had to pay for those? At least I did. It was really cheap, though, at $149 for Omnisphere. (I can't find the Trillian email, so I don't remember how much that was.)

Possible. Free or really cheap.

Or maybe they liked me better?

My memory is that the upgrades were free if you had all three instruments (including. Stylus) which I did. On the other hand, my memory is not exactly elephant-ish.

[Guy Rowland]

Any other developer that you can think of with a similar philosophy on customer loyalty?

Good on Nomad!

Arturia have a good line in keeping customers happy. Pigments is now v7 and every update (most being substantial) are free. Upgrades to their collections are often tempting - there is a new one right now for FX collection 6 for 99 euros and I only own a couple of their effects.

[Thomas Mavian]

Any other developer that you can think of with a similar philosophy on customer loyalty?

Good on Nomad!

Arturia have a good line in keeping customers happy. Pigments is now v7 and every update (most being substantial) are free. Upgrades to their collections are often tempting - there is a new one right now for FX collection 6 for 99 euros and I only own a couple of their effects.

Oh yes of course, Pigments! Love that one. Updates are quite frequent as well.

And Universal Audio of course. Even if their "updates" are not so much updates as keeping up with evolving tech, VST3 for example.

Actually, VSL is quite good as well. Adding lyrical legato to the Elite Strings, compressing samples to almost half the size.

There are some that shine brighter than others.I'd leave it at that

[Jaap]

Likewise with UVI and Falcon, they keep updating it with awesome features for free

[Luke]

Alex Wallbank/Cinematic Studio Series shines on this. Yes, it takes a looooong time for updates to drop, but they are substantial and genuinely prolong the useful life span of the libraries. I've often wondered how the model can be sustainable, especially with employees.

[scherzo]

Unpopular opinion probably, but I feel like I've generally been taken very good care of by most of the big players in the orchestral library space. Spitfire, OT, VSL. Most of the stuff I use I bought ages ago, and it has since had many updates, fixes, added new content, gone through platform changes, player changes, product range consolidations et cetera - and in most cases all for free, or for a rather modest and reasonable upgrade fee.

No complaints, really - I'm quite a happy camper here in general actually.

[Guy Rowland]

Unpopular opinion probably, but I feel like I've generally been taken very good care of by most of the big players in the orchestral library space. Spitfire, OT, VSL. Most of the stuff I use I bought ages ago, and it has since had many updates, fixes, added new content, gone through platform changes, player changes, product range consolidations et cetera - and in most cases all for free, or for a rather modest and reasonable upgrade fee.

No complaints, really - I'm quite a happy camper here in general actually.

Glad you mentioned Spitfire here. I know the Splice thing felt like the end of the world for many, but my own experience with Spitfire had been pretty poor in the "good ol' days". I never survived the move from Sable to SCS and not fixing a damn thing about it, for cash. Whereas I see what they've done with Mural / SSO and it is spectacular.

Recently they sent me an email saying "hey we're looking again at SCS and we know you're a long time customer, do you want to talk to us"? And I thought "yes I do". It was a zoom call, and the woman running it was superb. She knew her stuff, was enthusiastic and not corporate, the whole tone from the word go felt like "we know we kinda screwed up there, we want to get it right this time". And absolutely fair play to them, this is their own initiative to make this incredible material they already have work the best it can possibly be rather than doing yet another flawed new library from scratch and actively engaging with customers all the while.

Oh, and have to say much the same about East West. That's an even bigger transformation. They used to be ogres, now they're dahlings!

We never had it so good....

[scherzo]

Interesting! Now that you mention it, I was a bit miffed when Sable became Spitfire Chamber Strings because I had to (well, I guess no one forced me) pay a small upgrade fee because SCS contains Sable Ensembles which I didn't have, and also didn't want and never used. It's a minor complaint though in the big scheme of things. I'm happily surprised they're still releasing new patches and recorded material for SSO - not only that, but most of it is very good too. And free. Hoping SCS will get some of that love too eventually. Still a very unique library.

I was never sure what to make of the Splice thing. I have soured a bit on Spitfire in general for other reasons though - my experience with the Air Reverb thing has not been a good one, for example.

EW is a strange one. I never used their libraries back in the days because, well, Play was a bit of an abomination. Opus on the other hand is very good, and the recorded material was always nice. They've had this weird thing where upgrades are often more expensive than buying a new fresh license which upsets a lot of people, but personally I don't really mind - the sales are so frequent and so good that it's often stupidly cheap anyway, and ultimately I only care about what I have to pay, not whether my receipt says "Spaces 2" or "Spaces 1 -> 2 Upgrade" or whatever it is. Probably doesn't qualify as a good loyalty program though.