A Couple Of Issues I'd Like To Bring Up

Off-Topic
1

First of all, I’d like to point out that the “renoise 1.5 news” on the front page of renoise.com is from May. That’s 2 months ago. News != two months old… ;)

Just throwin’ that out there! Give us a little update… throw us a bone… :)

The other thing I want to bring up is a little tricky. I don’t know if there’s any right way to say this so I’m just going to blunder my way through it and maybe we’ll discuss until we get to an interesting point, or something, we’ll see.

Renoise is really good.

I think that, given the right marketing, it could compete with any given production/composition tool out there. I know nothing of DJ tools, and Renoise isn’t trying to be that anyway, so I won’t go there. But as a production tool, it’s pretty full featured.

However, it seems to me that historically in the PC/music scene, regardless of how great a piece of ware is, the development team INEVITABLY drops off the face of the planet.

What would have to happen to keep Renoise going (as in, regular updates, keeping up with technology, etc.) for 5 years? 10? 15? Obviously, the developers would have to be making a living off it.

I don’t know really, but stuff like AcidLoops and such doesn’t do much for me. The thought of spending $10,000 on a studio setup where I have something other than my computer as my brain and my 8-channel soundcard pumping out no less than 50% of the sound doesn’t do much for me either. In a perfect world I’d never have to adapt again and this stuff would be a viable production tool for as long as I’m interested in producing. :lol:

Just something I wanted to throw out there out of curiosity. I have no idea where the discussion will head but would like to hear opinions (particularly from the development team).

What would it take for the Renoise team to continue developing the software for > 5 years? > 10 years?

2

Maybe it’s the dumbest thing I have ever said, but the renoise team must ask more money… They deserve it!

And by the way… the newest news on the news page is from the third month! Thats even worse: NEWS IS NOT 4 MONTHS OLD!
:blink:

3

well, I think the problem is that in our scene is not much money. I mean, I do music for nearly 12 years now and I did not earn much money with my music in that time (partly because I couldnt and partly because I dont want to). And I guess most people here on the board are people to which 50€ is a substantial amount of money, something they can’t throw away in a blink of an eye.

thats the difference imho, all those people having 12.000 € setups can easily spent 500 € more, and in my opinion renoise is worth 500€ because its a complete production-environment, just like cubase/logic/reason/fruity loops, its just different and aimed at a very specific group of musicians (and I think renoise is worth 500 €, just nobody could pay it.). Also, I often hear from original trackers switching to cubase/logic, but I never ever heard of someone who started with cubase and then switched to a tracker, dunno why.

also, I think that at the moment the income of the dev-team with renoise is rather low and will stay that way, most people who tried renoise an loved it have registered, maybe a few will do when 1.5 comes out, but I guess the big mass of paying users is already reached, and since we all have free updates for a long long time there wont be much money coming in in the next months …
I really hope this wont mean that renoise development will stop sometime, but to be honest I am kinda prepared that it might happen sometime in the (far) future.

however, maybe it might be a good idea to make renoise a VST or include that rewire support, there seems to be a huge need for step-sequencers lately (kvr is full with that), maybe that would be a nice push.

4

Hmmm. The current pricing shows the Renoise developers to be very internet-savvy.

The demo is fully featured except for two tiny things you’ll only really need if you complete a track, and the price is so affordable that even usual crack users will be tempted to pay and reward the developers rather than just write it off as $SILLY and boot up a P2P network instead.

The only way I can see the pricing usefully going up is to increase the frequency of paying for upgrades, not in targeting new users.

edit by It-Alien: post assigned to actual author

5

That’s probably because they become used to easy, visual working with MIDI and sample data. Trackers are much more complicated, especially at a first glance.

I started with FT2, then went to Cakewalk/Sonar and now got back in the tracker world. Not entirely, however as there are certain features, that make me use Sonar from time to time, like MIDI recording accuracy, which is waay beyond Renoise at the moment as are Sonar’s MIDI processing capabilities (quantize!). Also, the ease of working with long samples still beats Renoise.

That’s the answer to the question - the devs can make a living out of Renoise implementing those and other features needed and considered standard among music production professionals. If Renoise is ever to earn serious money to the developpers, it has to get to that group of users - that is adapt to their needs and ways of working.

Problem is that to be considered serious by the pros, Renoise still requires a lot of work in terms of basic features that have already been suggested and are already on the to-do list - high resolution player, arranger (capable of working with long samples as well) and pianoroll, improvements in the what-you-hear-is-what-you-get department - to name just a few.

Hopefully, the dev team will have enough determination to get through the implementation of those features - as before that it will be hard in my opinion to convince the music producers that they should pay $500 for Renoise. For that money, they have to be able to do all that they can do in let’s say Sonar and as easy as in Sonar plus the editing capabilites only a tracker can provide - like the easiness of low level sample mangling.

–P/\ULiE PHONiCK

6

I think that when people see a software bundle, they also check the price. If it’s very cheap (like renoise is today), they also think in the first place that the functionalities are cheap.

I don’t really know much about marketing strategies. I just have my thoughts and I really NOT want renoise to be expensive. Renoise was in the first place for scene purpose, not for producers with the big dollars.

But!! when a higher price is better for the future of renoise, I am glad to pay it.

EXACTLY the same here… :slight_smile:

7

you are wrong if you think a low price prevents people who using cracked versions totally. if cracked software is available people don’t realize it to buy this software. is a question of honest use and serious users.

of course the price is a fact to get more registred honest users - but illegal users will always be there

i think all devs working on renoise in spare-time … it’s not so simply to start a commercial company from zero … maybe if Renoise gets an popularity of famous software with thousands of registred users then the devs thinking about a worth full time job named RENOISE.

don’t know … and in germany you must pay high tax for your income and it’s really not so simple to be self-em’ployed

i think in the next time there will be no changes in release-speed or the price of renoise. max. 80€ i would pay coz there is software for free or cheaper with a comparable number features … a higher price would be a mistake maybe (except if MED, PSYCLE, MADTRACKER, AERO import is available in Renoise ;) )

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Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that it’ll stop it totally. There are people out there cracking and looking for cracks for $5 shareware for crying out loud. <_<

9

Hey Robert, we are all waiting for your next disturbing provocation! :)

By the way, after an high number of short-time updates, Aero appears to be stuck. Maybe noone has bought it? :rolleyes:

10

Renoise going for 15 years? :rolleyes:

ProTracker was used for less time… and look at the huge amount of excellent mods we have today. And FastTracker? It was used for even less… and look at what it managed to do…

Now Renoise is here, and by no doubt it’s the only tracker deserving to be considered “the next step”. Maybe we should celebrate the arrival of every single release we have and we can work with… more than focusing on the release date of the nextcoming or being concerned about “the future” of trackers
;)
In 10-15 years we’ll see incredible computer technology evolutions…
Protracker died a lot of time ago… but as you see, the idea is still here.
Why so? Because a lot of people used that tracker at its best… and doing so they all created something “thick” in history that the “future” wasn’t able to forget or even ignore.
It’s not only about money… it’s about “people attention” too.
About “ideas”.
The Devs… well they look like they are there to code every change untill those 15 years are over and Renoise will be wet-wired into our cortex.
Now the Renoisers should make it clear that being a Renoiser does not consists of just waiting for the nextcoming features
:lol:
Now what. You concerned about the future of Renoise?
The best way you can help the Devs, Renoise and yourself… is using Renoise at its best, is to keep composing one incredibly great tune after the other… untill there will be so many good productions around from all the Renoisers… that the music world itself will have no choice but to consider such tendence.
:)

11

I started making music three years ago with Cubase, swapped to Logic after a year and now use a combination of Renoise and Logic.

12

AMEN :) … good words

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As it is today Renoise price is good, not to low and not to high. You can’t take a higher price right now and I think they should keep this price for as long as possible. I´m quite sure that the development of Aero stopped/slowed? Because not enough people registered. I think the price together with a very unfinished program scared people away.

I started tracking when I read a tracking tutorial in some Amiga magazine way back. It opened my eyes for how easy it was.

Video tutorials is a huge thing in the 3d community but does not yet seam to have reached the music community.

If we can get a demo version of Renoise,together with some free vsti and
some beginners video tutorials that show how to track and use a vsti with lfo and automation and 2-3 nice mp3:s that were done with Renoise on to a ordinary PC magazine I think there will be a lot of users comming to Renoise.

14

Why not make a 150€ ‘Pro’ license of Renoise? It will be targeting people that has a lot of money, or make money by using renoise. It wont have any benefits from a normal registration. I think its a fair price to pay if you make money of it, or just wanna support the developers.
It makes a lot of goodwill amongt the users if they can more or less choose by them selves what licence to buy.
And… for a norwegian dude like me, 150€ is like nothing really, but for a guy in a low-cost country there is no way in hell he can pay that kinda money.

Have faith in people I say :)

15

Then you could better make a ‘donate’ thingy, were people can decide for their own how much they invest! :)

16

well, making up another paypal button shouldnt be too hard. question is if anybody uses it.

17

Why not :)

18

Really, which one??

19

other third-gen. trackers … ok not really ;)

20

Sounds very logical.

However, I’m not sceptic when it comes to how long Renoise is gonna run globally, I think it could go on for even longer than 15 years. The ideas and directions behind the “small” trackerprograms on Amiga (that started out in the 80’s) was not the same as Renoise, not even the “average” trackers as FT2 had the same ideas although it was indeed an improvment from the Protracker, etc.

What I mean is that people making songs on the “small” trackers was aware of that the sound quality could no way in heaven be comparable to the commercial electronic songs back then. But people could take advantage of the prerequisitations to 120%, and that is a talent of its own but thats not my point.

If you ask me the commercial music (electronic, pop, or anything) in the 80’s sounded much better than 90’s and todays. Maybe we have improved hardware, techniques, etc today but I just can’t hear that much difference in sound quality if I compare a song made today and one made 20 years ago. Maybe that’s because I think the music “shadowing” the real sound quality? I’d still go for the 80’s sound quality as long as the good music is there, rather than better sound quality but with less good music.

However all this is not iether my point with this post - my point is that (better to end this post now before I’m confusing too much) not until now we actually have the possibilities to create “commercial sound quality” with just a simple software (together with deverse plug-ins) - by ourselves, in our home, in just a few seconds, etc. That’s why I think this thing will last much longer…