The Sound Board

Native Instruments have updated their licensing terms, and have made a few big changes to encourage more indie developers to go Kontakt Player. The catch - it has to be Kontakt 7. So over time, expect less non-Player libraries and you'll need to start using Kontakt 7 Player at least. Here's the bigger changes:

• If you release your product for Kontakt 7, there is no encoding fee involved. (this is $1,000 normally)

• In case you release a free product for Kontakt 7, we don't charge any encoding fee and also supply the first 25,000 NFR serial numbers to you for free. After that, there is a 0.20 €/S fee per serial. Your free Kontakt 7 products need to be deployed with Native Access. (this is $2,500 normally)

• To especially support indie developers and smaller companies, new partners now have time to pay the serial order invoices for their first 3 products within 90 days, instead of the standard 30 days

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... licensing/

I think for us end users this is a good thing. It's a whole lot easier to use, download, catalog and sort Player libraries within NA than 3rd party non-Player ones.

The problem is... to get it certified you have to make so much adjustments so it fits with the player. Non-trivial amounts of scripting. All the keylights, all the controlls. Pictues, audio demos for every patch etc. We are talking about days of unpaid labor here, so they can marked it.

Is it worth my time? No.

They should pay me, so they can sell their hardware. Not the other way around.

Malachistos is right. I challenge anyone to do all the additional NKS work required in under a week. (I took me several weeks the first time, although I'm admittedly slow.)

Also, the encoding fee is only a part of the upfront cost. Unless you're only going to order 100 licenses in your first order (which permanently cements that higher fee for all license reorders for that product, so be careful with that decision), then that first license order will likely be well over $1,000.

That's not to say their license fees are unreasonable. IMO they're a good deal, so I don't have a problem with them, even if they charge me the encoding fee. But this move isn't about "helping small developers." It's about selling more NKS hardware, and even more about incentivizing developers to move to K7. (A lot of us stay on K6 for compatibility purposes, much to NI's annoyance.)

Oh no! There are developers annoying the ruling class at NI?

I have to hope enough developers resist to encourage them to reconsider this move.

I've got nothing against NI, nor do I think they shouldn't be allowed to sell their hardware, but pushing musicians to upgrade software is unreasonable. There are people still using Kontakt 5 (I think K4 has finally gone away). This is NOT about features, it is about compatability with older versions of operating systems.

For the most part NI has done a good job of protecting backwards compatibility, certainly more so than others, but that isn't enough for some who have projects using older software, or who need a couple more gigs to pay for the upgrade.

For me it is all about maintaining a stable system.

For Kontakt 6:
MacOS 10.12, 10.13, 10.14 or 10.15
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10

For Kontakt 7:
macOS 11, 12 or 13 - support for 10.xx was dropped
Windows 10 or 11 - support for Windows 7 & 8 was dropped

I’m still on Mojave and am perennially pissed off at being forced to update a practically perfect working system, to the point that I am willing to not purchase new tools that insist I update. Of course, the day eventually comes where I Simply Must Have Something. Hasn’t happened yet.