Renoise Advertising

General Discussion
1

There has been talk around that “Renoize needs to advertis things good so make popular fun times with develop sofware post tracker remix”. I have something to add to this.

Recently my other software Reason released a new commercial dedicated to advertising their product to the unwashed masses. The result?
Not too many people seem to be happy with the way the product is being advertised. Many people complained about the line “If anyone tells you they’re making music for their own sake, it’s bullshit!”. Others complained about the simplistic representation of the features of the product, and still others complained about the ‘instant gratification’ angle the commercial tried to play off. There were also parallels to Apple’s “App for That” tagline.

I’m not too happy about the ad either, but mainly that’s because of the massive underrepresentation of the potential of the product and what makes it different from everything else. But in order to appeal to the ‘unwashed masses’, they had to pretty much explain the bare-bones of what goes into a modern music sequencing software.

I just feel that if Renoise dev would ever do something like this, however unlikely, they run the risk of trying to explain a complicated product in a few, easy-to-understand words, and therefore make a false representation of the capabilities of the product. If they advertise the product the way it is (“You can even alias slots in the Pattern matrix!”), it would only appeal to people already ‘in the loop’, and therefore miss the intended audience.

I still feel that Renoise is a niche software that people will find when they are ready for it. I found out the program itself from excavating Venetian Snares bios, and I was ready to put whatever I had into learning the new workflow. (Still working on that by the way) Trying to force it on a market that doesn’t even know what the EQ in their car is for isn’t really going to change its nature or its community. Hey, maybe that Reason commercial might bring in a couple aspiring producers and whatnot, but I don’t feel that there’s going to be a major shift in the community there, so why should that occur in this one?

2

There are already enough people doing something.
This youtube was an attempt of my own using something very familiar everybody knows and simply attempted to show how this kind of music can be produced in Renoise very easily… Markteting technical i found this quite a good way of reasoning how a technical complicated looking program can be made comprehensible: translate known stuff into simple accomplishment = win right?

Just look at the statistics:little over 12000 viewers since 2009, 25 yays and 7 nays, could get some reasoning from the negative commenters what was the purpose of the video. Small detail:the video was released around the day of decease of Michael Jackson.

If 12000 views were from top producers all over the world, i could pat myself on the back, but i doubt that ;)
The video was not promoted, I just was curious how far it would come based on keywords and the title alone. As you can see, it doesn’t generate much attention. And i don’t mention all the other good community stuff out there that shows how fairly simple it is to do stuff in Renoise.
I doubt using stuff from Skrillex, improve it and then slam it on YT with the title “What skrillex does, but then better” would work as well. Hey but we can create those fast BANGERS right

You mention it as “why don’t the devs publish” and imho it somehow implies that you haven’t done much effort to check out what is actually already online and see what kind of statistics have been gathered for these videos so far, regardless if the content is still actual or not: just simply gather the printed facts right there underneath the publishing and calculate if such topic was ever hot or not.

Reviews in CM, or on CDM are more helpful but have a temporary effect.
For good sales figures you need good marketing and a good marketing department, this is just the key. Microsoft didn’t sold many Windows licenses because their technology was top notch or people were advertising their product so well, they sold their product because they had a very powerful marketing department. Now i’m definitely not want to put the Windows quality on par to what Renoise has to offer, but just want to make something clear what does sell with better impact which is simply advertising on a lot of media and advertising to death. And then, demonstration videos will fasten up the selling process because people will only look for Renoise if the brand has been widely advertised.

But Marketing costs a lot of money and you must be really sure to get your investment returned and the current sales and upgrade plans must work out on the longer term.
Even if the Dev team could afford a good marketing campaign, they also should be capable to handle the impact of the results of it if the impact is major. the worst nightmare you can have is that you gain millions of new customers but the registration process is going hayware and you have to fix thousands of individual registration mess-ups. So you also need a good support department and that is already way beyond the scope of a small team and handful of volunteers.

Customer-wise, Renoise almost has the best licensing system that i have seen so far (the only thing better is a one-time payment and lifetime free updates license, but you don’t see this often). Profitable-wise, Renoise has one of the the worst licensing systems around.
I think a good marketing campaign could skyrocket the sales, but could also result in sales-disaster if not backed up properly with the right amount of people.

3

If Renoise team had marketing strategy for 2011 - this is good! But I think the have not strategy AT ALL, not right or wrong. NO STRATEGY AT ALL! And this is really strange.
I give you some examples about niche product. At 60s autocompany (maybe FIAT?) had no perspective in USA, cause they like big american cars. BUT! They created slogan - “FIAT-YOUR SECOND CAR” and sold more then they imagine.
Give me some key word like “Renoise is your second DAW” and crush the world)

EVERY product needs marketing. Renoise just need right marketing strategy or strategy at all)

Offtopic. look at this. unbelievable for synthesizer advertising:

I never heard of SUCH marketing for synthesizer

4

“Renoise - the DAW you want to Rewire your main DAW to, in order to produce those BANGER beats”

5

Renoise - “banging faster, banging louder, banging smarter”

6

One thing that I’ve wondered about is that we continue to describe our little software as a “tracker”.
A tracker, that you can use for tracking tracks. Sounds a bit like smurf-language, doesn’t it?

Sure, Renoise is a tracker - and among a few choices if you are looking for a tracker, so it’s cool in that sense.
But if someone was looking for a pure-bred sequencer, and entered some keywords into google, that isn’t
what I would write. I would probably write something like “best sequencer” *

I just tried, and it led me to a couple of DAW round-ups, containing the usual suspects: Cubase, Ableton Live et al.
Now, I’m not saying we could magically make the people who are doing those roundups select our little
software as a candidate, but I’m seriously wondering how people discover Renoise?

If it’s mainly word-of-mouth, that’s cool. It’s the best way to become discovered. But, with a little
effort and coordination, we could probably get better results from search engines and such. This would
include agreeing on a description that seem to fit the software, but without the reference to an obscure type
of musical notation (tracker) that we all know and care about.

  • back in 2003, I actually wrote “Fasttracker” and Renoise popped up as a search result,
    describing itself as a “FastTracker like Windows music tracker software”. But back then, I was transitioning
    away from FTII, like many others. So, back then that description was actually quite good :slight_smile:
7

Hey Danoise,

You can get lots of infos about users through services like Google Analytics. Maybe it has been implemented into the www.renoise.com site as a module. It could help you to get a few objective answers.

In the archive link you gave, you can see that the first Renoise site, allowed you to download lots of songs by genre. It was something interesting. Too bad that the last interface doesn’t really help you to play/download .xrns songs by genre.

Because : in the Renoise users you can find lots of different profiles, but they have common points, they have played a music that they really like, and understood that it has been done with Renoise, and they try to achieve a musical goal : Renoise is a “potential tool” for that.

  • the good “old” people from the commodore amiga 500 scene, that just followed the natural evolution of the tracker concept for years, that used FT2, IT2, ModPlug, NoiseTrekker, and they know Renoise, they use it like they used the first tracker, they particularly try the *DSPs / *meta devices / plugin hosting, because it’s what is truely “new” in the tracker concept. They are naturally good at making groovy computergame songs or chiptunes. And they finally add the *lofimat device a lot, to keep their 8bit sound intact. Renoise’s lofimat is a must have for all the 8bit fans.

  • some folks that are true musicians, that had some previous experiences with popular multitrack based daws, that are totally new to tracking, impressed by the hexa mode, the vertical paradigm, everything that they learned before isn’t helpfull, they try to make renoise work like their previous daw, for example, they use the sample editor to record what looks like “audio tracks” (in fact these are samples) and they record most of everything even live sequences in the sample editor, because they can “see” the sample waveform in the sample editor tab, and they’re used to this way of dealing with digital music. They ask themselves how to “naturally” put the samples in the pattern… The pattern logic, looks simply too “diffrerent” and they put their samples on the top of their (nearly empty) tracks, they change some faders positions in the mixer view, and that’s all… not sure that they check the manuals or that they had time to check deeply the absolute beginners video tutorials. Even with all those difficulties, those folks continue to use Renoise, because there’s something they’re following through it, a project, they’ve played something they found it really cool, they said to themselves : I want to do the same,

  • people that are attracted by : a musical genre they like a lot. They want to make the supreme breakcore or dnb performance, and they’ve seen Venetian’s Video on youtube and understood that the only way to make it is to use this software so, they discover the software ; it’s like learning any instrument like flute, guitar, piano, it requires some practice, and they make the effort, they’re immediately grab tons of loops, they use the beatslicer, they put the loops in the patterns, they cliçk on the “sync button” in the “instrument settings” tab, so that they work slowly at first, with their perfectly pattern-synced beats, they add the effects, and after that, they increase the BPM to 280 when the job’s done. They’ve seen Hitori’s works on youtube, they bought the last MIDI controler. They add some VSTs with pretty FX, they use the MIDI controler to add/remove/modulate some FX live, things like that. You can’t discover a complex tool like Renoise if you don’t follow a goal, a project, and if you don’t know that renoise will be the solution.

I think that there’s a common point, between all those users, it’s in the fact that one day, they see Renoise as THE tool that they need to achieve a specific musical goal. There are 2 moments in their experience with the software : before their project. During their project. Lots of people “know” Renoise, but they don’t use it, they “wait” to use it, that’s different. When you “wait” to use Renoise for sure you don’t register you don’t use it seriously. Because you don’t see how Renoise could help you to make the music you want to do.

The problem is in the fact that only a few popular artists officially showed their secret musical weapons. And the problem, is that tracking, is historically something used by old computergames and by the demoscene, so people can for now believe that Renoise is a tool for the computergame coders, or for the demoscene… until they see a video that shows how they can help them to build their favourite sound.

We should provide more genre-oriented Renoise video demosongs.

8

A sequencer, that you can use for sequencing sequences.

A mixer, that you can use for mixing mixes.

A performer, that you can use for performing performances.

A sizzling hot musical frying pan, that you can use for cooking up BANGERS!

9

The Props have been trying to attract the hipster wannabe producer types in their marketing since Reason 4. Their marketing videos seem to talk directly to the most stupid and ignorant people on the planet. At first I thought they were trying to be ironic, but then it became clear to me that this is the necessary marketing approach of a company that has nothing original and new to offer anymore.

Renoise on the other hand, truly offers something original and new to the music production world. But it has to stay focused in order to avoid getting bloated with features that other DAWs do much better. That’s why it could be a good idea to actually market Renoise more as a tool (a sampler, sample sequencer, precision control step-sequencer, etc) to be used in conjunction with other DAWs, rather than as a self-contained system on its way to get all the features found in other DAWs.

10

I don’t see why the word “underground” isn’t an attractive marketing term?

Then just attach the prefix ‘dub’ or suffix ‘step’ to every music genre you can think of and now you’re rich!

Make the hottest underground trapstep, breakstep, dubcore, electrostep, demostep, dubandbass bangers with the bangingest underground software. Genres so underground you’ve never heard of them before! You’ll be the most underground banger maker in your 'hood! All for 59.95! That’s right, less than 60 bucks. If you make a banger a day for a year that’s less than 17 cents a banger!

Maybe not such great ideas, but still, I don’t see why the word “underground” isn’t an attractive marketing term?

11

I can’t believe you forgot about bangstep, the most important genre of them all.

12

Gangbang step ;)

13

“Renoise: It’s a banger in the mouth!”

14

Next renoise video tutorial on youtube :

How to create a gangnam style track in 15mn with Renoise

When you play the final result, the video also features a cat & an iPhone. Why ? Don’t ask me why.

Simply, put gagnam style, put a cat, put an iPhone, in the video, you’ll get more visitors.

15

+1 for “underground” as marketing.

-1 for marketing renoise as a tool. I want my Renoise complete.

16

btw, cans I have the XRNS of the song you have in ur s1gnature!??!!?!111!oneONE pllllzzzzz

17

“Renoise: the only sequencer from Germany keeping it real”

18

Renoise, because your complicated life isnt complicated enough.

19

How much to have a “made with Renoise” badge put on all the She releases?

20

I would describe a tracker as a kinda evolved step sequencer. Checked out the “What is Renoise?”-text, the word sequencer isn’t even mentioned.