Ad Attack!

Convincing :) I agree now.

I’m fine with these! Nearly not noticeable at all compared to KVR. ;)

Shit man… perhaps we DO need a piano roll :wacko:

How is showing ads on a forum to generate revenue “not ethical”? As far as I can tell Renoise is a business. Making money is perhaps the only ethical thing a business should do. (Although it’s probably way off topic to get into a business ethics discussion on this thread! :))

More on topic, I see the forum theme I’m using is nowadays called “renoise-no-ads”. I think it’s the default, I don’t remember changing it. Is this stuff still work-in-progress or will this change?

This, my friends, is why we have such things as slave labour, toxic waste dumps, dangerous food additives, illegal weapons trade, and corporate funded genocide.

(not that I’m disputing that the ads here are no big deal at all, but generally speaking…)

So if I understood correctly: if I murder someone because it’s fun, I’m bad, if I murder someone to make a buck, I’m doing the only ethical thing I should do? (really, what or who isn’t a “business”??)

Sounds like you’re running AdBlock? Try disabling it, worked for me :wink:

I don’t mind the ads, even when I can see them. And yes, lets have a donation option, too!

BYTE-Smasher and Johann, without derailing the thread much more, I feel I must expand on my volatile catchphrase. All businesses operate in states. It usually goes without saying that they follow the laws in those states.

Operating illegally has nothing to do with business ethics; I speak of business ethics in the context of natural business. Businesses do not involve in murder and illegal weapons trade - if you believe they do, then we are not talking about the same thing.

Finally, when a business makes profit, that means it is providing jobs and paying taxes, which means the benefit of their operations trickles back into the system of the state. That is what I mean.

Sure but international business often don’t observe laws in other nations even though they deal with/occupy/affect those nations.

Perhaps not directly they don’t… but they most definitely turn a blind eye to the practices of others they do business with in different countries. If your cheap silver supplier in Taiwan is so cheap because they trade opiates and sex slaves on the side, should you be held responsible? Ever hear of blood diamonds? Look em up. They were part of “ethical business practices” for years.

Most definitely. One has to hope though, that the profit isn’t being made on the at the horrible expense of someone or something else, whether deliberately or not. The fact is, that recent profit increase may be due to buying from a cheaper supplier in another country… a supplier that may have unethical environmental practices… may pay their employees laughable wages… and may even resort to theft. These are all ethical issues that many companies choose to ignore, and other people pay the price as a result. You may say that businesses don’t involve murder, but how many people across the world die each year because their employer doesn’t pay them enough to survive? How much of the money you make comes from stepping on someone else?

All that asside, I was simply trying to make the point that businesses have alot more on their plate ethically than just making money.

I do have to say though, that these discrete ads don’t violate good business ethics imo… and I kind of like having some ads that are in context with what I’m browsing. Call it nuts, but having production tools advertised on the site is kinda nifty. And it’s helping the devs out so what do I care? :D

Peptide Nucleic Acid and Industrial Laser Systems though? … man, Google needs some better AI :P

In other news, might I suggest that Renoise start selling ad-space to scene sites? CTGMusic.com does this and they seem to benefit from it. That way, at least we’re keeping it in the community ;)

I see no ads, nowhere?! Where are these ads? [After a few seconds of searching I see these are theme related. Nevermind]

If you want to make money on Adsense, you have to create click through content. Community forums are notoriously bad at generating Adsense revenue. Regulars reading forums they consider “theirs” won’t click on ads.

High traffic information portals are where the the Adsense money comes from. People “looking for something” will click on ads relevant to what they are looking for.

I know a site (or two) that makes money on ads, I know several more that don’t. Forums, unless they are information related (a health forum, or cooking forum, a car parts forum) don’t make a significant amount of money.

Keep the ads if you want though, no harm, no foul.

It’s almost 6 years ago I registered, that’s a long run and I wonder when Renoise 2.0 comes out, that’s gonna take a year or two more, right!? Seriously you can put Adds anywhere you like, or release 1.9.1 as 2.0.

That goes far beyond the “ad” topic, but I understand your fears, so let me explain my point of view:

We for sure didn’t started this ad thing because we start to “run out” or fear we’ll die soon. Ads are just one part of Renoise being a “commercial” application. This doesn’t necessarily has to conflict with “staying pure to the purposes of making the best software ever for a dying tracking community”, as you said.
In contrary: this and other commercial tools helped Renoise to be what it is now and to stay alive. This /allows/ us to do the best software ever for a tracking community.
The ads will hopefully help to make even more progress with very little to no effort from our side. If they do not, then I see no reason to keep them and try out other stuff instead…

About Renoise being commercial (or not?)

Renoise is a commercial application - you have to buy it. You can download a fully functional Demo of it, OK, but its still a Demo and not Freeware. The website is full of "buy me"s, so that should be obvious to everyone.

Now why is it commercial? Because I (and others who are or used to be in the Renoise team) believe that this is the best way to keep Renoise alive and to make progress with it - thats it. I don’t think that we could deliver that many features at that quality level if Renoise would be open source or just free. At least I have never seen a soft which managed to do this over a long time.

Why not accepting donations instead?

The main reason which I often repeated here: Because I don’t want that people /think/ they can buy parts of the program this way. Everyone in the community here has more or less an equal piece of the Renoise cake right now. Lets assume somebody would donate 5000 euros, do you really think that I would not listen to his suggestions more than to others? I definitely would want to, just to thank him.

Further I don’t want that people can buy 'thank you’s. I want that people donate stuff to this community exactly as you and others do and did in the past:
You are regularly writing in depth articles, promote Renoise where you can. Mick Rip started the Renoise Loop project, BeatSlaughter & Conner BW made XRNS stuff usable, others designed features in every detail so that all we had to do is implementing them. These are just some of many examples, but exactly what I want from this community as a “donation” instead of money. Adding a “donate” button would IMHO be too easy - would avoid that people start to think about what else they can do for Renoise. And these kind of “free” donations still result in money for us: You help to make Renoise even better, which makes more new people using and buying it.

So adding a donate money button would IMHO sell us more out than these little ads.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that there might be ads on the page which would support this project.
But I tend to see the aim of these ads as an issue:

Have I been wrong when I was assuming that Renoise is not a profit-oriented project?
Okay, in the post above you mentioned that Renoise is commercial. But in which way?
Do you belive like other companies that you have to grow commercially to make Renoise (not the trackerscene) survive?
So is it less for the software than for the financial motivation?

I appreciate that you ask everyone for her/his opinion which is not usual for truly commercial projects.
And I state again that I really do not have a problem with the ads. Put them here to have financial support. I support the idea.
The only fear I have is that you might loose the focus on the software (what you said would be fun and motivative to you) and have a greater focus on the income.

Don’t read this post as an offense, read it as care.

very good reply, taktik.

I feel somehow “guilty” for some unhappiness, since the idea of putting Google advertisings here is mine.

We all, not only the team, put massive energies everyday in this forum in order to give people help and feedback in minutes.

Why do we do this, all for free? We don’t do it for free actually: we get paid, in the sense that an happy newbie is a new user, and a new user means that our beloved project will continue to exist.

What I had in mind was to create a positive loop in which more users on the forum turned into more funds for the project, in a “gain with no pain” way, and it actually surprised me that there has been negative feedback at all.

The ideal stage would be reached when if even Renoise developement would stop somewhen for any reason, the forum could pay the mantainment of the website.

Can you imagine resources such as KVRAudio, SourceForge and many others without advertisement? Wouldn’t it be better if 100% of registration fees would be invested into taktik everyday life instead of partly being used to mantain the website? Don’t you think to these things each time you browse through this forum? I, though being a registered user since 1.0, think at this, and I think unregistered regular users of Renoise, who didn’t register for whatever reason, think of it even more.

That said, you are still free to ignore/filter/disable ads on this forum.

Personally, i find taktik’s refuse to accept donation touching.

Wouldn’t you prefer that the whole team could be supported in Renoise’s income so they could spend all their time developing it? I know I would ;) … I’m pretty sure it’s less about getting rich, and more about putting added revenue back into the project ^_^

Impressions count, sure. But a forum creates thousands of impressions from just a dozen or so unique visitors.

Maybe your stats show that the forums have information that anonymous users find via search engines, and the ads would be a good exit for them.

More realistically, In:Depth would be the place to put ads.

If you want a business model for ads, look at the Madtracker plug-in repository, that’s generic information that users can use without being Madtracker users.

However, in a recent thread “Do you pay for your VST?” the overwhelming answer is “maybe”. This is why a “car parts” directory would be more profitable. Competition between vendors selling hardware that aficionados can’t necessarily get for free.

Money in advertisements require competing advertisers who sell products that make money. It’s the difference between pennies, hundreds of dollars, and thousands of dollars.

Put ads also on frontpage.

Buzz is free. It was/is revolutionary. It sort of “hit” at the right moment in time.

Renoise, IMO, has the ability to reach or even surpass Buzz (in popularity) mainly due to the fact that it’s commercial software. Although, it’s not (yet) as powerful as Buzz, it will get there.

Money, even if it slowly trickles in, is a great motivator. Either for financial gain or for sheer motivation. “Hey, people have been sending me money…I’d better keep working on this!”
I would rather Taktik and the crew spend all their time on Renoise and be able to support their families.

Porting Renoise to Linux was a very clever move! Renoise has suddenly taken over as the most accessible music making tool on Linux.

This will really make people angry but I think the Renoise crew shoots themselves in the foot by packing too many features in minor updates. :) Put out a major update (1.0) every two or three years. I registered two accounts at 1.8 and if history is correct, I won’t “have” to register again until 201x! :P

Sell merchandise: shirts, mugs, hats, etc.

I am curious if this would be a possibility:
Could Renoise have a platinum edition which bundles VSTs? (Or maybe collaborate with 3rd party VST vendors to convert their plugins into native Renoise machines?)

Also, the idea of taktik, to advertise renoise to other place is a good idea. But ads isn’t the only way.

More coverage from the specialized press (CM, etc…) and popular music making website would be also great for the next big renoise release, it would provide more interest from the public.

Because there is still a huge part of music makers who don’t use the internet to search for novelties but instead read the specialized press.

I even have some friends who still don’t know that ableton 7 is out, but will for sure know it when they’ll read the next CM issue.