On paying for users' presets

I realised this kind of endeavor has the additional aspect of IRs associated with presets too.
If the designer wants to make two versions (stock & 3rd party), yet again that is extra work.
-
Funnily, I hope the people who used to bug Cliff for wanting to pay for firmware are not the ones now screaming against commercial Preset Packs :D
-
What's not been said either is that a lot of people value something more when it's not free, or rather expensive. If these presets weren't too cheap, some people who otherwise did not much else than gathering them might then feel obligated to actually start understanding, recording, etc. (I still count myself among those :D) You are more likely to dig in to a course you paid $250 for than downloading the torrent.
 
Yup, you're right about that....you'd more likely value it if you had to pay for it.

I disagree with having to pay for firmware all the time. I don't pay for any firmware that should have been there in the first place. I think if you have a great product, people will buy it, and it is YOUR duty as a designer to keep your product on top of the market and keep your customers happy. That's the ideal, but what we've settled for is paying oddles of cash for another sim or model pack. I think it's rubbish. If I buy a product, it's supposed to work well right out the box, not after you spend twice as much to get the firmware it should have come with in the first place. In the event of a MAJOR update, (for eg, 80% of the amp sims, fx, cabs etc are totally remodeled and a slew of new features are implemented that change the operation of the unit completely) I think you should have to pay for that. If it's just a couple new amps and bugfixes, why should you have to pay thru your nose for that? I believe that a GOOD company will try to keep their customer base satisfied, and attract new customers with their dedication to their customers. Cliff and co. are doing GREAT at that so far.

If microsoft used to charge for every single update that you have to download from them on an almost DAILY basis to fix their crap, do you think you'd have $$$ to buy an axe fx? No, you'd be selling your house to keep paying for updates.
 
I'm in the laissez-faire camp: let the market decide what it will bear, because the market will decide that anyway. As an extreme example, is it okay to sell crystal meth? In a practical sense, it doesn't really matter; there is a market for crystal meth and a highly profitable business model, and no amount of legislation or enforcement is able to stop it. If there is a market and a workable business model for preset sales, the two will find each other.

Having said that, I can see the points of both sides of the argument. The presets a person develops are intellectual property, regardless of whether they can be defended as such in court. They are the product of their creators' thought and time, and those creators are entitled to seek compensation for them if they choose to do so. Some people have chosen to share their property freely with us. This is testimony to their generous spirit, but it doesn't obligate others to do so.

Some folks like Scott have shared their property along with narrative that adds greatly to the value of the property. I have personally benefited from their generosity, and I am grateful to them. I have a motive to want to keep getting that value for free, but my desire doesn't obligate them in any way.

Everyone who knows how to fish was taught how to fish by someone. But that doesn't diminish fishing as a legitimate way to make a buck.

It's been said that no one should charge for presets becuase they're just a collection of parameters, but all software is just a collection of parameters. The firmware that came with my Ultra is just a snapshot of an initial state of the finite state machine that is the Axe-FX. By the above argument, all software should be free. But those who make their living writing code would disagree. And without presets, the Axe-FX would be a silent box.

So let the market decide what happens — we are powerless to prevent that. There's been some great discussion on this topic, and well-behaved discussion at that. Bravo to all who contributed to that.
 
This kind of erks me too. There is a guy on the boss forum selling presets for 15 bucks a pop. 400 for all 100 of his "top I'll the line" gt10 presets. Augh..... its pretty disgusting actually. Haven't listened to the samples at all but he has some customer testimonials on his site saying how amazingly close the presets sounded to van halen, Boston, deftones, etc. He sud on his page that he uses a 64 band spectrum analyzer to help copy the tones. I guess the proof is in the pudding, like I said, I couldn't bring myself to listen at all because I didn't want to end being a thread bashing asshole. Anyway, I love all the axe clips I have heard, can't say after owning a gt10 for 3 years that it could come anywhere close to sounding as close as an axe or even an eleven rack for that matter. I personally wouldn't pay for presets of any kind be it gt, pod, axe, 11 rack or any other modeller. Too many factors, guitar, pickups, amp, cab, frfr etc. Of course, I'm too busy chasing my own tones to give 2 shits about eddies brown tone from 1978....


T
 
Scott Peterson said:
The problems with 'designing' presets for sale is NOT that you do it, but IF you piggyback on and hijack the work of others to do it, then I have nothing but disgust for the person doing that.

[...]

I personally approach forums as communities and treat them as such. To me you are either building or helping to build community, or you are trying to use it in some negative manner just to take and not give back. I'm old school in that my approach is the 'leave it better than you found it' sort of - perhaps - idealistic approach.
Click to expand...
Disclaimer:
At a fundamental level, I'm a dude who makes his living helping people get what they need/want out of computers.
  • I see nothing wrong with someone getting comped for helping people get what they want out of an AxeFX. That's no doubt shaped by my day job but that's how I roll.
  • While "packaging" others' choice presets or free IRs might be of value to the consumer, it's a lousy thing to do to the people who contributed their time creating them in the first place.
  • I see the "forum" issue as somewhat distinct from the "selling" issue. Having dealt with me as the primary IT guy for TGP, Scott knows all too well that I have nothing but contempt for people who want to leech off a community for personal profit. A lot of it derives from the point above, where some schmuck makes a buck off the kindness of others. Not cool in my book. On the other hand, if someone were to set up a web site and charge for his own presets or get comped for AxeFX tone consults, bully for him! I expect that someone with for-pay presets would get lambasted for copying, rightfully or not (remember the early uproar over RedWires?) but that's a different matter altogether.
 
These are all just different opinions. My opinion is that I wouldn't pay for patches. Still there's no law against doing such a thing and there are even more stupid products out there making profit. So I see no point in sharing opinions in this thread. I'm pretty sure they won't affect the end result. Carry on... just my 2 cents.
 
Ill pay for a sick nevermore patch, but if it doesnt sound good, I want my money back!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom