Have you try to sell your kontakt instruments or patches

Hello,

After having spent many hours perfecting my instruments in kontakt I wonder if it would sell?

the very low prices for instruments ready for use, without gigas and gigas to download.


But what are the constraints?

I would like to know the steps with native instruments.

In different situations:

I am the owner of my samples.


I do not own my samples, but I bought the instrument and the samples are not part of a protected library.


I do not own my samples and I do not know the owner.


I must pay royalties to native instruments?


What steps should I take to market my patches or Instruments?

Thanks to help me ,you have some tips ?

sorry for my english , i'm french ....

 

It's complicated.

I'm not clear on whether you made the samples yourself or not (your post above says both that you did and you didn't).

If you made the samples yourself, you could sell your library/libraries yourself, on your own web site, as open Kontakt patches. There would be no copy protection, but you would also owe no costs.

If you want to license the Kontakt Player, Native Instruments will encrypt your patches and add copy protection to them. There is a significant fee if you choose to do this, as you are now becoming partners with them in commercial development of Kontakt Player libraries.

 

thanks,

these high costs is how to have a price range ?

€ 5, € 50, € 500, more?

it takes into account the size of the file ?, me my nki files are shaped monolith of 500 Megabytes .

Once my protected files in file nks?

not know from where come after the samples? I speak on samples of instruments such as piano, guitar, etc. ...but no loops.

if i use samplit ? samples becomes my samples ?

sorry to ask these questions, progress is to be made on programs .nki rather than on samples.

 

You would need to contact Native Instruments directly for pricing questions.

From a legal perspective, the samples would need to be your own. You can't use other people's samples to develop a commercial library, unless you have permission or a license from the creator/owner of the samples.

 

David, with "using" you mean selling them, right? If I understand EULA's correctly you can make presets referring to samples you don't own as long as you don't provide these samples.

 

I'm reasonably sure you can make your own patches that refer to samples you don't own. If it's for your own use, it should be absolutely allowable.

Whether you can sell those patches, I'm not really sure -- you'd have to check the EULA for that. There is a bit of a potential conflict there; a sample manufacturer could argue that a third party who makes *bad* patches could hurt the reputation of the original sample manufacturer.

However, I'm not sure what the legal text says in regards to this. If this is something you plan to do commercially, you should certainly look into the legalities with a lawyer.

 

People using these presets already have the original presets coming with the samples, so that shouldn't be a problem. Unless the original presets are even worse

 

We're speculating on the legality here. I'll leave it to those who might be serious about commercially selling such a library to seek their own legal advice.

 

You're right, of course. A lawyer should look over all these EULA's

 

After how can you tell if a sample.wav is part of a particular library ?

if i use Samplit ,i have a new sample .there is a Sample traceability ?

 

Experts with oscilloscopes and spectral graphs and charts allege that one sound file is identical or has originated from another which may or may not result in the outlay of lots of money in legal fees and/or compensation.

Basically - unless you've created the sample or have a license that says the sample can be used in the way you propose - assume it's not OK to use it.

 

In most EULA's it's written you can't sell loops and samples created with the samples, so even if it's not traceable, it's illegal.

 

ok thanks

 

Yet many of these samples the Eula protect, are themselves samples of another manufactures instrument, usually using a different (but obvious) name.

I think this is a minefield where no two people will agree and as soon as you involve different countries, well the local laws etc make it even worse.


Legal arguments aside,

I think people should use their moral judgment. If you use a sample (or samples) and from that sample create a completely different sound that has taken you time and skill to do, and you sample the result, and its completely indistinguishable from any of the original samples, then selling it in my opinion is fine.

But just combining a couple of samples or adding a bit of echo etc, wouldn't be.

 

DSInstruments, did you contact a legal advisor yet?
I've been playing with the same idea, I'm almost done with programming the Factory Library August Foerster samples in a way that makes it on par with NI's Classical Piano's.

Hoping to avoid paying for legal council I decided to ask NI first and they say no. It "touches" their rights and therefore they could prohibit selling it they say. I don't see a difference with making and selling a preset for Massive though, also uses their waves and means competition for any future Massive expansion packs they make. I'm not selling their samples... and only reselling their samples and making a sample/sound library with them is against the EULA.

I guess they want to get paid for a preset that refers to their samples. So first I pay for Kontakt, my customer pays for Kontakt and then my customer needs to pay them again to buy my preset, because of course I would need to add my costs to the product price. Sounds like a silly system.

 

I think your perspective may be different. Massive is a tool with which you can build any kind of sound you want using the code they provide.

An existing Kontakt library, like the August Foerster, required someone to go and do all that piano sampling, and all those sounds are someone's intellectual property. I don't know whether NI did the sampling themselves or if they licensed the samples from someone else, but whichever the case, they reserve the right to restrict someone else from altering their programming and profiting from it.

To put it another way, Massive is a program which offers tools which can be used to make sounds. Kontakt is a program that offers tools but also requires raw samples to be created/provided before you can make patches.

If you wish to create a piano library, nothing's stopping you from finding an acoustic piano and sampling it then programming it. But if NI doesn't wish to license the usage of their sounds for a commercial endeavor (and, if they originally licensed those samples from someone else, it might be a re-re-license which they might be contractually prohibited from anyway), they have the right to do so.

Bottom line: go sample your own piano.

 

And do all that work double? Personally it makes me sad to see all these half-finished products

The piano I sampled is really nice but recorded in a living room and only in 4 velocity layers. We don't all have access to silent rooms for 5 working days with 4-5 high end mics you know. Or to an August Foerster like this. You say it with so much ease

And yeah, NI makes it as complicated as you say. The samples and the programming are intellectual property - of course - but I wouldn't be selling either, and I'm not altering programming, I'm programming from scratch.

If you disagree that samples are like Massive waveforms, another example then: Chuck Monte, he profited from electric piano's someone else built with his "dyno-my-piano", altering them. Did Rhodes prohibit him from making money with that?

Or, if someone would hire me to make the NI sound libraries he bought better, is that against the EULA?

 

If NI hires you, the work you do for them is *their* property.

I don't mean to "say it with so much ease." I'm trying to communicate that those samples belong to (or were assigned to) NI, and if your desire is to develop a commercial library, NI doesn't owe you anything. Be an entrepreneur, raise the funds, and make a product you own from scratch.

I don't speak for NI, but they are under no obligation to let you take their samples, tweak the programming, and then profit from re-selling them. You can do so for your own use, of course, but not commercially.

 

I don't believe there is anything wrong with writing a script and programming an instrument that references samples, but does not include them as part of the purchase. That, in my opinion, would be your way forward, ie, it is a prerequisite that your customer has already purchased the original library. But, as always, check with NI or the original producers before doing anything.

 

I told NI exactly that: that my product would come without samples, that they're only presets, that my customer needs to buy the NI library from NI, but they claim referencing to their samples is bad on its own.

David, you're saying that I take and re-sell samples and want to develop a library. I don't take samples and I don't sell them, only a preset. And presets make no sound library, a sound library is a collection of sounds. A preset is no sound, it is a setting of a software instrument. And I suck at entrepeneurship

It looks like some of the stuff (my AR drums multi for example) in the user library is illegal in the eyes of NI, if NI customers are not allowed to make their presets for NI products available or use other people's presets

I already chatted with a legal councellor, she thinks NI is acting dumb on two levels; I'm not harming the company, it's not even competition, and if my product was a success it would boost the sales, a win/win situation. But first I'd need to talk to a specialized councellor.