Selling sample packs - Is it worthwhile?

[Bass_Jacka]

I've been toying with the idea of putting together my own sample packs/preset packs , some free, some paid. Is it actually worth doing?

I get great enjoyment from making different sounds, drums, synths etc. and thought it may be a good idea to put it to good use (other than producing tracks of course).

Is it possible to make decent money from doing this? I know most people would prefer to buy sample packs etc. from reputable companies, but if I were to sell them for a fraction of the price the well known ones go for maybe people would buy them? Even if I were to sell them for under a fiver per pack, if enough people buy them, could bring in a regular flow of cash?

[bennyfroobs]

buying samples is for suckers, you can find ones that are just as good strewn across the internet, or even better you can find your own or record your own

i always enjoy some free sample packs though :p

i would say its probs not profitable unless ur some bigshot producer selling stuff to chumps on loopmasters or w/e

[Shum]

Certainly more worthwhile than actually selling tunes in terms of $$$.

[alphacat]

I think part of the problem is that the market is kind of saturated at this point: viable 15 years ago, maybe, but not now.

A lot of sample houses bang out waaaay overproduced sounds on a factory schedule, like a new one every other week - because they know they're getting jacked by illegal copying, and because most of the people naive enough to buy 'em are kids/n00bs without a lot of mixdown skills (which is why they're overproduced to start with.)

So if yer gonna try this on as a biz venture, it seems there are 2 obvious (but totally opposite) approaches:

1) Do the overproduced factory ting mentioned above, but do it really really well so that you at least stand out for the right reasons;
2) Address an overlooked/underrepped niche in the biz - maybe a signature sound, piece of unique gear, or some other 'trademark' - but do it really really well so that you at least stand out for the right reasons.

[skimpi]

i have never bought samples lol

[admiral c]

yeah not sure about this one lad, plenty of samples already

[wub]

I agree with alphacat's post. You've got route options, either overproduced mass market stuff (Vengeance, for example), or having a signature/niche sound that isn't addressed all that well. Goldbaby would be an example of this...his samples aren't compressed to fuck, he's got a USP (vintage/rare drum machines recorded to tape) and he doesn't charge a lot for his packs.

If you're just making pads and stuff, then yeah, as it's been said above there are a lot of people doing this. Why would anyone 'buy' your packs when they the piracy of the more established/better produced names is so widespread?

[Bass_Jacka]

Thanks for the input people! Mucho appreciated!

I agree that not all producers 'buy' sample packs, and as has been said, mainly noobs buy them. However, people still clearly buy them; whether they're respected producers or amateur bedroom producers - people still buy them.

When I look at the sample packs on the market today, most of them cost a bloody fortune and are likely out of the question for young amateur producers, or 'keen noobs'!

Obviously piracy is widespread in the music industry, same as it is with anything that comes in digital format, but there'll always be people who would rather actually buy something than pirate it - and some people wouldn't even know how to get hold of pirated products (even though it's very easy these days).

Basically my logic behind it is;

There must be hundreds of thousands of people learning to produce at home now, with software and hardware being relatively affordable and the endless amounts of tutorials etc. online. Many of these new amateur producers are going to be of the 'I want to sound like 'X' producer as quickly as possible!' So if I could exploit this impatience and eagerness to crack it as a producer, and at the same time make the sample/preset packs actually affordable to your average teenage amateur producer (i.e. under £5), maybe it could be a viable idea.

I'm not saying that they'll be the same quality as goldbaby or loopmasters et al, but to be fair when you preview a sample pack, quite often the preview samples are the best ones in the pack and the rest are just fillers - that's what I find anyway. So if I could make packs of an average standard, with a few sick samples that would act as the 'preview' samples, maybe they would sell. Not in vast quantities, but to make a profit I'd only need a fraction of the amateur producers out there to buy my packs.

[wub]

So you've got to ask yourself two questions;

1) Why would people buy yours as opposed to pirating a bigger/more established name brand?

2) What are you offering that no-one else is?

The second one is the more important, IMO. If you're not bringing anything new to the table, then why should people use you instead of someone they've heard of.

[alphacat]

While there are definitely hundreds of thousands if not millions of people learning to produce at home on computers right now, I think assuming that even a majority of them come from 1st world households with disposable cash is probably incorrect. £5 might be chump change for you but in some place like Albania, Kyrgyzstan, whatever - it's not.

Many of these new amateur producers are going to be of the 'I want to sound like 'X' producer as quickly as possible!' So if I could exploit this impatience and eagerness to crack it as a producer

See, I think this is problematic (and this is only my opinion, not saying everyone will agree) - the word "exploitation." Music is supposed to be fun and draw us together and all that PLUR shit. Exploiting a youngster's naive enthusiasm is just... icky. Bad karma. Granted, there are already eight billion motherfuckers doing this very thing right now - but wouldn't it be better to be part of the solution? Like, selling sample packs that are designed to teach someone something, like maybe a song construction kit that's been pre-EQ'd so all the parts already more or less sit nicely with each other and then explaining why & how that works? I dunno.

Niches for exploiting naivete are a dime a dozen but opportunities to teach someone something valuable and maybe even improve your own life by contributing to the education of people whose music you'll be digging in 5 years - that's priceless.

Otherwise you're just jumping in the capitalist cesspool of music marketing that's lowered the bar already. My 2 cents, of course.

And +1 to what Wub said too. Do it big and do it right or don't do it at all.

[Ataxia]

This is kindof a tangent off of OP's original post, but I've got a capable microphone, and I've been thinking of recording some samples of things around the house (rimshots, shakers, guitar, etc)...

Would it be acceptable to just upload a .zip of an organized collection of .mp3 samples?

I'm gonna try to get off my arse and do this on the weekend and I would love to share with DSF members.

[Bass_Jacka]

This is kindof a tangent off of OP's original post, but I've got a capable microphone, and I've been thinking of recording some samples of things around the house (rimshots, shakers, guitar, etc)...

Would it be acceptable to just upload a .zip of an organized collection of .mp3 samples?

I'm gonna try to get off my arse and do this on the weekend and I would love to share with DSF members.

Hello mate! I wouldn't mind hearing these samples once you've collated them. Personally, I'd rather have the samples in wav. format.

Always keen to get my hands on some new samples, let us know once you've uploaded mate.

[Bass_Jacka]

While there are definitely hundreds of thousands if not millions of people learning to produce at home on computers right now, I think assuming that even a majority of them come from 1st world households with disposable cash is probably incorrect. £5 might be chump change for you but in some place like Albania, Kyrgyzstan, whatever - it's not.

Agreed, £5 could be quite expensive to people in the 'less advantaged' parts of the world, but £5 was a figure I used just for explanatory purposes. They could probably be sold for half that, which in my opinion could entice people to buy them. A couple of quid is a minimal fee to pay for samples when compared to the well-known packs out there. I know there are plenty of sample packs already out there for sales, and I know there are many sample packs you can get for free - but there aren't really any cheap sample packs out there. I see this as possibly a small gap in the market.

See, I think this is problematic (and this is only my opinion, not saying everyone will agree) - the word "exploitation." Music is supposed to be fun and draw us together and all that PLUR shit. Exploiting a youngster's naive enthusiasm is just... icky. Bad karma. Granted, there are already eight billion motherfuckers doing this very thing right now - but wouldn't it be better to be part of the solution? Like, selling sample packs that are designed to teach someone something, like maybe a song construction kit that's been pre-EQ'd so all the parts already more or less sit nicely with each other and then explaining why & how that works? I dunno.

Niches for exploiting naivete are a dime a dozen but opportunities to teach someone something valuable and maybe even improve your own life by contributing to the education of people whose music you'll be digging in 5 years - that's priceless.

Otherwise you're just jumping in the capitalist cesspool of music marketing that's lowered the bar already. My 2 cents, of course..

Your idea of some sort of sample pack that would teach people about music production is a decent one in my opinion. However, I'm not a teacher and as crass as it may sound, I'm not really interested in teaching people. Giving the odd bit of advice on DSF is about as far as my teaching goes lol.

I understand that to a lot of people, such as yourself, exploiting peoples naiveté for monetary gain as a shitty thing to do, but I am a salesman by nature and a salesman by trade. Finding naivetés and subtly exploiting them for monetary gain is what I do, and it's how I make sure my partner and child have a roof over their heads, food in the stomachs and clothes on their backs.

I wouldn't intend on ripping anyone off, the sample packs I propose to sell would be of a decent quality, and if the people buying them are unaware of the fact that you can get sample packs of the same quality elsewhere for free, that's their problem not mine

This was just a thought I had in my overlong quest for more wealth! haha! Definitely not an idea to point blank con people.

[wub]

You sound like an utter shyster.

[Bass_Jacka]

You sound like an utter shyster.

Hahah never been called a shyster before, been called worse though.

There's not many people out there who sell things out of the goodness of their hearts and to do good in the world. The majority of things are sold for one reason only; profit!

Just looking for a means of making another income, that's all.

[wub]

Fair enough, at least you're honest.

Taking a slightly more business focussed approach then, it's like everything else - you've got to provide something cheaper than everyone else, or you've got to address a niche that isn't being addressed right now.

For the price thing, TBH I think with sample packs you're always going to get undercut somewhere. So if it were me, I'd focus on a niche that maybe isn't being addressed right now.

I've got my own niche sample pack lined up that I'm working on right now that will be released via Bandcamp around March/April of next year...something that I've done research on and can't find any examples of it being already out there in the market. So we'll see

[alphacat]

^ Spoiler: it's a vocoded accordion pack for moombahton.

[SunkLo]

Pre-orders orrr....?

[Sharmaji]

having been involved in a few sample pack projects, from super-indie up to super corporate:

in general, financially no, it's not worthwhile.

if you were going to put together something of extreme value--slate digital drums, the vienna instruments, etc-- then yes, you could build your career on that.

that takes a ton of vision and focus-- and not a few $$. but the rewards are obvious.

if you want some big ups, by all means, share-- this IS the interwebs.

[fragments]

I think the number one thing to think about online is driving traffic to wherever you are selling these. If you slap up a Joomla site with a shopping cart connected to paypal and call it done, no way in fucking hell is that going to be worth the effort you put in. And there are more and more people spamming their 5 dollar sample packs. You really need to go in some new direction (I have no clue what that is, or what the product is). A pack of samples, project files and examples with both video support and a PDF tutorial guide to making the sounds is interesting. If you make all the sounds royalty free after purchase you can go after two demographics--those looking for higher quality tutorials (so, you'll have to make it better than 99% of the free stuff out there) and people looking for samples. Though honestly I'm not sure that is even quite a hot enough idea.

I honestly have payed for samples in ages myself, but I certainly blew a load of cash on them 4 or 5 years ago when I really got into production. But honestly after buying a few gold baby packs and purchasing Maschine...I'm pretty much set on samples forever.

I think we would all like to make a few bucks with our music so we can invest in new gear, I've never thought of something that was effortless and profitable enough to be worth the time. I feel like making it a viable business would either require one to reduce their time at the day job or quit entirely OR give up all their music time to make their home business work.