Avicii using pirated software, and he died.
Keep in mind.

 

im contemplating going the other way with it actually although it carries a significant risk to make said move.........
while not yet making money i will be developing a public persona ie producing my own and eventually others music, rather than hide the fact that i am using software on an extended fully functional demo mode i am contemplating issuing an official thank you to the companies for providing their software on fully functional demo version and listing the software i use with a disclaimer stating that said software will be paid for once the artist in question begins to actually make money off his music until then said artist will provide free word of mouth as well as public advertisement/ promotion of the product - that can go two ways A: the publicity however big or small is good for selling products and it will be worded as if the company came up with the idea - possibly providing a new marketing model - these companies spend a grip on marketing so word of mouth for the low cost of a pirated copy of software is actually pretty damned cheap at the price ,,,,,,fact is they could actually drop a grip of advertisement costs and rely on word of mouth more since word of mouth sells the best. Endorsements are only so effective because everybody knows the endorser gets paid for their endorsement, word of mouth is someone you actually associate with telling you - man unify is a bad ass synth dude listen to the crazy ass sh$t this thing does, plus its a vst host - for 99$ you can't beat it! - that type of promotion is well worth it if you can purchase it lol (matter of fact i strongly opposed a request on another site for a release of unify on the basis that the company offered excellent value for the product you receive which means they chose to sacrifice some good amount of profit in order to provide a reasonable price - i believe firmly that the developers deserve to get paid for their work which is why i would rather at least provide some return by letting people know what products i actually use to make the racket i make
or they could be dicks about the entire thing but then that would make them out to be dicks wouldn't it? shrug dont know just weighing risk vs reward in this particular case.......its kind of a toss up on the entire thing