Hey!

I'm new here so if i do something i shouldnt or dont post in appropriate ways/places please tell me and i'll make sure to change that.

I've been thinking more and more about writing a big blog article about the weird situation in dsp world were many companies, even big ones, have really pricey tools but still struggle to be that financially stable when trying to make non gimmicky products.

I think the vast majority of plugins companies dont really understand their userbase, ultimately harming their business model and pushing users toward cracks comming from predatory repacking platforms, while i'm convinced a few ajustments could make everyone happier. to sum up..

The idea is still nascent for me and i'm rn more trying to see who i could exchange view points with, get more insides, explanations and all, or maybe finding resources that make me realise everything is actually fine (if it's the case) and cancel this projet.
The end goal is to offer a pretty objective view on a situation not that many people seem to care about. Aiming at offering some sort of guidelines to help devs making better decisions to both manage to live from their creativity and offer a fair, better, and respectul experience with them for tools users.
On the other side to inform users of what the state of dsp economy is, why some companies can go suck a dick considering how they treat users and collaborators, and why others desperately need support, provided they take the necessary decisions to allow themselves to get supported properly.

I'm already in contact with many devs, from single person companies, to successful human sized ones like melda or kilohearts, to Native Instruments or Image Line veterans...
But i'm lacking the warez side! So i'm looking for crackers/packers to chat with on that side. I guess most would prefer to keep a low profile but if you ever are/know some, i'd be happy to have a few chats about your/their opinions, why you/they do warez, what are your/their values and moral compas, what do you/they understand from the users needs, frustrations or satisfactions...

that would be really helpful!

I'm mostly looking for oldheads who are still active, to get a better sense on how the audio market and warez response to it grew the last 20 years, ideally who have experience with products of various companies of all scales.
On the other i'm also looking for people who do warez at night, but are plugin devs the day. I know there's some and their opinions may be insanely valuable.
Tbh anyone willing to share this experience would be really nice, those are just the two profiles that feel like they could have bunch of stuff to say

Anyway, tell me what you think and if you ever have people i should reach out to! Feel free to shoot me a dm or whatever too

Have a nice day!

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2026 at 2:20 PM

you could as well guess some potential situations and reasons and you would be right.

i buy some thing, but i also install things i dont own. and of course i install the liberated versions even of product i own, as they are usually more hassle-free and do not expire.

more important than the reasons is the moral of the story.

my personal view is as simple as that:

- only because something is possible, it is not automatically right.
- only because something is illegal, it is not automatically wrong.

in other words: the responsibility to make the right decision always lies with the user. the rightholder or the cracker or the person who gave you something has nothing to do with your own actions.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by making up some situations, cause i'm not talking here about the individual reasons of each people if that's what you mean, more about the state of an economy we are in that pushes answers to it.
The question for me is not really about what is moral or not, it's about understanding why people dont feel like paying for plugins, and trying to find ways for them to feel ok with paying beside annoying users with bullshit copy protections. Basically finding the right price/business model for each business so that the people interested in them are more likely to feel like it's a fair traid, or a traid they can afford at all.

People are free to do whatever they want for me, questions is more to get a good view on how things are on a global scale in this industry and it's orbiters.

Maybe i'm misunderstanding something in what you said tho

 

Pay people better wages or lower taxes, because many can only afford the bare essentials and rely on pirated software, music, and PDFs to participate in technological progress. The warez scene pales in comparison to the massive fraud perpetrated by Microsoft and Apple.

 

For me it's extended trial and no buyers remorse, if I don't stick with a tool for some time, it's out, don't want to be pressured with sales, demo restrictions, introductory offerings based on all around hype and all that stuff. So there's no element where I'm gaslighting myself while avoiding buyers remorse, just buy stuff I actually use and find valuable.

 

that tbh!

tho i think plugin companies suffers from this maybe not as much as users but to a degree. as much as this is true, we wont fix capitalism yet, we can only try to make it just a bit nicer at tiny scales

 

i should have precised that i'm looking specifically for crackers/packers or people around this sphere, not users of cracks. Sorry for badly explaining that!

tho verry legit take, a bit the same for me here

 

You’re being a bit naive; you won’t find a single person here who’ll talk to you.
Please bear in mind that everything posted here is visible to the public and could potentially lead to criminal prosecution.

 

Sadly it's probably my only option. SAiNT pointed me here, people can always shoot me a dm or something. I even said i know people would better keep low profile. It's just a message in a bottle honestly

 

Predatory/exploitative/abusive monetisation: The product/developer is fair game.

Examples: subscriptions and tax-adjacent schemes (yearly paid "updates"), bundling with shovelware, installing additional software, mandatory tracking, lengthy/ridiculous EULAs (you own nothing, we can rug-pull you whenever we want), refusing to fix bugs, refusing to update plugins (within reason, not expecting compat updates for plugins first released in 1998), no option to create backups of the software, no offline installers, no offline authorisation with backup option.

Everything else I'll happily pay for.

 

@mleuc, bear in mind that there was a world before the Internet, and there is a world after the Internet. The Internet—and the World Wide Web—created a much larger market for everyone involved than existed previously. In principle, the Internet has generated more wealth and value creation for everyone. The flip side, of course, is cybercrime in all its forms.

 

if you want to know read the release notes on some r2r posts.
quote: we hate copy protection

 

before the internet we used to copy diskettes

 

I also didn't have the ballz to vote the OP

 

The reasons why people turn towards alternative solutions are very well publicly documented, commented on, and should be very obvious to anyone keeping an open eye and mind on the issue. I'm curious if you have done any basic research on the subject, before posting your question here.

Since it's no big secret, and nothing that hasn't been said a million times over, I'll try to give some reasons for you to ponder.
Most of these are not specific to the music/plugin industry itself, but rather a unfortunate symptom of what people refer to as "late-stage capitalism", "enshittification" and a whole host of other things.
And you will find the same symptoms and problems in virtually any industry today.

1. Subscriptions.

I hate them, you hate them, almost everyone hates them. And corporate profit statements love them.
Does it really need explaining? All right, since you're playing dumb, here we go: You never truly own the software, costs accumulate over the years to stupid amounts, software stops working if company goes out of business, software stops working if you ever decide to end your subscription, and all your projects where you used the software don't work any more. There are TONS more problems with subscriptions, but I believe this is enough for a start.

2. Dogshit overzealous copy protection, data harvesting, the need to be constantly online to re-verify your authorization.

Not everyone suffers from this, and I'm happy to give my money to people who use reasonable protection systems, but I'll be damned before I fork over money to some dipshit corpo hack, who's copy protection slows your whole system and plugin performance, just because they need to use 3405987457608 bit encryption, to try to stop people from stealing their software, and still fail. And not to mention having to have their whole "ecosystem" of spyware data harvesting bullshit perpetually running and installed on your machine, just to run all of this in the background, and offer amazing services like "we notify you when an update is available", while harvesting as much data as they can get away with and shoving ads in your face.

As someone already mentioned, even if you legally own something, it's just the smarter option to install the alternative solution, if available, to escape all of the bullshit that comes with the official solution.

3. Oversaturation of bullshit products, marketing hype, manipulation, straight out lies, lack of innovation.

This is pretty much everywhere, but especially in the music industry. Every single damn product is "THE NEXT BEST THING", "A GAME CHANGER", "NEVER BEFORE SEEN", "IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS", "A CHEAT CODE TO SUCCESS", "ALL THE TOP PRODUCERS USE THIS"...and so on...
And it's a software emulation of a synth/pedal/whatever, that existed 50 years ago already, has been emulated a 100 times already, by anyone and everyone, and there is most likely a free or open source version of it somewhere out there, but it's not wrapped in all the bullshit marketing and they didn't have a team of 20 people working on the UI for a year to make the turd presentable to wide audiences.
And then they pay a whole football team of producers and/or influencers to SOYFACE OMG THIS PLUGIN CHANGED MY LIFE, to shill the product to people who were born yesterday.



Not to mention how many people just sell fucking romplers, filled with sounds you can find anywhere, and probably for free, just to siphon money off newbies that don't yet know better. (but that's basically just how capitalism works).

4. Pricing.

Controversial topic, and also highly dependent on where you live, what your disposable income is. But the pricing on some things is just outrageous. It's commonly held that if you pay full price for most software, you're just being stupid. And reckless with money. Because the full prices really feel like an IQ test, or just bait for people with high disposable income. A lot of software goes on regular 50/70/90% sales, where the price becomes reasonable, but sometimes you don't want to wait months for the next sale, so instead of being stupid -> alternative solution.

If anyone wants to continue the list, or add to it, feel free.

I'm tired of the topic, but I vented a little, and now I can get back to making music.

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2026 at 4:32 PM