The demo version of my preset pack, Ear Candy, has a variety of sfx, transition effects, soundscapes, sequences and more: Ear Candy Vital Presets (Demo)
Please note that it requires version 1.5 or later.
My other packs, including the full version of Ear Candy found here: https://ericbowman.gumroad.com/
I hope you enjoy it!
You need to stop promoting Vital as free. Yes there is a free version but you should be promoting the paid versions to support the developer.
The fact that you’re trying to make money off of Vital while promoting it as free is hypocritical and quite frankly I find it repugnant.
Hm I didn’t think there is a general sentiment like that? It’s not obvious at least to me.
What’d be wrong if promoting Vital would go “there’s a powerful free version and consider buying the paid one to help the developer”? And personally I think when people popularize a free+paid thing as “there’s a free thing” even without mentioning every time there’s also an option to support devs by bying a paid version or subbing to Patreon or anything else—I think it still likely to do good. As at least it’s promotion, and happily the audience won’t all be ignorant of contemporary ways of paying creators.
(For myself I only shared free patches and said to others like just “check out Vital” without any additions is it free or paid, though I did that in a generally Vital-aware environment so that probably didn’t make much change anyway.)
I don’t care if it’s a "general sentiment’ or not. It’s my opinion and no one will change it.
The “general sentiment” on the internet is everyone else’s work should be free but you should be paid for your work.
I find that attitude despicable.
At any rate if anyone wants to encourage the continued development and support of Vital then they should be promoting the paid versions especially if they think they should make money off of the product.
End of discussion.
Not sure, I see it that problematic as @teksonik.
After all, it was the decision by Matt to give away a fully functional Vital version for free and even make the source code (although an older version?) public. If that’s not free, what else?
The dilemma seems to be now that Vital Pro only gets you more presets, but since so many people also give away presets for free, you might not see the point if you only look for your own gain and do not consider supporting the developers. Btw. I did buy the Pro version, although I’m not using the presets that come with it - for that reason. Maybe that’s what should be mentioned: Please also consider supporting Vital itself.
All in all, I’m a bit sad about a big missed opportunity there: I can imagine that Vital could have much more commercial success if there were a true marketplace for the presets, together with a solid and curated preset structuring and tagging system (like u-he or Arturia). Everyone could upload their preset banks there (given they follow certain quality criteria like properly tagging and assigning macros?). Vital dev takes a share of 10-20% of sale price - which I think is fair since they provide the synth and the marketplace. Vital synth could then connect with store and download / update the soundsets automatically.
That could be a win for everyone, as selling your presets on your own pages / gumroad will never have the audience reach as an official marketplace. And building this on top of a free synth lowers the entry barrier to basically nothing.
I know there is a preset store on the Vital page and it even has nice previews, but it’s not really working as a marketplace like I have in mind. It also didn’t get much more content than initially.
I can see why you might find that “hypocritical” and “repugnant”, but here’s how I see it.
People are welcome to upgrade. I’m simply telling them that they only need the free version to use the pack. I would imagine I’ve made Matt Tytel more money by making free tutorials, free preset packs, hundreds of free presets fulfilling requests for specific sounds in online forums, and 2 paid packs. If more people download the free version of Vital, and discover they like it, they’re more likely to buy the paid version. Many of the most financially successful video games advertise as free-to-play to get people “in the door”. Then players can buy upgrades if they enjoy it. It’s a successful business model for software and it benefits both consumer and creator.
Synths like Serum are still more popular, not because they’re better, but because there’s way more content already made for them. Both preset packs and tutorials. There’s not going to be as much quality content if people don’t make any money off of Vital content.
I’ve made hundreds of presets for people online for free on discord servers and reddit, and I always use Vital since everyone has access to it. That doesn’t limit them from buying the paid version. It gets them one step closer, because they’ve downloaded the free version and now they know how capable Vital is. I use a similar business model for my preset packs. Get the free version, and pay for the full version, if you so choose.
I’ll mention the option for upgrading Vital in my preset pack page, though that option seems abundantly clear when downloading the free version.
Thanks for your feedback.
I had the same idea. I bought the domains synthpresetsplus.com and synthesizerpresets.com and I’m hoping to build that sometime soon. It will be for all software synths, not just Vital.
That’s a good point, but I can see how Vital could catch up here quickly if an “ecosystem” grows around it. And having a free, but unlimited Vital which can load all patches in principle is actually a much better foundation than with Serum, which is quite a high entry barrier from price.
I see, we really had similar ideas, although I had no intention on acting on it. If you support many synths, I wonder how you handle the different strategies regarding their monetization? I’m afraid that Vital might rely more on preset sales on their own shop than other synths which you need to pay to get a working version at all. Also I can imagine that creating a true marketplace where money goes back to the content providers will not be an easy feat. There’s a reason why only few companies pulled this off and most go with a regular shop approach.
Could you share a link to that? I’ve watched all your youtube videos and got your preset pack, too. It’s really good learning material.
I’m not as active as I used to be, but I made a lot of presets for people on https://www.reddit.com/r/synthrecipes and Jazen Sounds’ Discord: Jazen Sounds