making commercial library

Hi!
(my first post here)

I have created a lot of sample-based instruments with my Kontakt 4, some of which are pretty nice looking and sounding in my opinion.. I'm currently thinking about possibility to release some patches as a commercial pack, either myself or via professional developer companies. My first though was: how can I lock Instrument edit view? I've spent many hours reading web and could not find the answer. My second thought was that, very much possibly, Kontakt player, which is attached to protected commercial packs, can be not the same as the one regular users like me use.. and again, no information on this subject available.. What should I know and where should I start learning these things?
Any advice, information or links are very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

 

To be able to lock the instrument edit view, you have to contact Native Instruments and ask about licencing the Kontakt Player engine for your library, and then you have the option of locking editing of your NKIs.

 

Thank you!

 

And be ready to break the bank(?)

 

Yep. It's not cheap!

 

How much does it cost, roughly? Is it a flat rate... a percentage deal... or something else?

 

Depends on the library size, I guess.

 

Library size... what like how many GB your sample library is?

 

Yeah, I think.

 

From what I remember the licensing fees are directly related to how many units you expect to sell.

1000 units was the minimum back in the day, but IDK if this has changed since?

The money had to be paid to NI upfront, and once you had used up all of your product licenses you simply buy more.

 

Wow that would be pretty rough on independents trying to come up with smaller batch innovative instruments.

I know it has been covered before but I can't find a comprehensive explanation. Does anyone know what the limitations are if you want to sell an instrument you have created but cannot afford the licensing? Is it just:

- cannot lock script
- cannot use more than one script
- instrument will not play for more than 15 minutes in kontakt player

 

UCAudio,
- You CAN still lock the scripts
- You CAN use more than one script.
- instrument will not play for more than 15 minutes in kontakt player

Also:
- you would have some form of simple copy-protection for your library,
which although crackable would probably prevent some casual file sharing.
- your customers would be able to have a pretty wallpaper in their libraries tab,
although this is apparently possible with a registry hack.

 

How about installing - you'd need to make a installer unpacking the samples to a user specified location/folder and the resource container folder to "mydocs/NI/kontakt/" ?

but how would you make kontakt know where the user placed the samples? Or should the user only be prompted to copy the complete folder (containing resource container, info, pics, scripts AND samples) to "mydocs/NI/kontakt/"?

Also; could you elaborate about the protection? you mean a encrypted unpacker or something?

 

Hi Durk,

You don't make an installer, you simply create the Kontakt instruments and send it off to NI to be encoded. So they take care of the encryption and installer.

Also, sorry but I wont discuss or elaborate about pirating NI stuff because:
a) it's illegal,
b) it's morally and ethically wrong,
c) it's incredibly disrespectful to discuss this on NIs own board,
d) it's against the forum rules.

I'm sure you could probably find information out there about this, but I do not condone this form of behaviour.

Also I prefer to support the developers that make these awesome tools available to us, so hopefully they can continue to do so.

I'm sure you can probably understand this.

Regards.

 

First off to clarify: I only work on legit software and do not appreciate being associated with pirated software in anyway, thank you.

I'm guessing things get lost in translation due to me not being a native English speaker.

I know that NI will take care of the player side of things. My question was about independent developers here.

Obviously i'm not interested in pirating - In fact I was merely inquiring about preventing pirating when distributing a kontakt instrument that wont be distributed via Player.

Still my question is the same - let me try to clarify;

When distributing a Kontakt instrument (k4+) WITHOUT Kontakt Player, how would a consumer install it?

 

Sorry I have misunderstood you then.

I was not accusing you of piracy, I was just stating my position on why I thought it was innappropriate to discuss that here.

Ok, basically you can't. Since there is no tool to encrypt the libraries for yourself, they would be open for anyone to view.

Your only alternative would be to somehow reverse NI's encryption method and then code a tool to do such things.

The scripts are still lockable, but only from casual file sharers. People who know what they are doing can still get access to these.

They wouldn't.

The only way to access the instruments would be through the file browser. Short of asking the customer to manually edit their registry settings.
Also, even though your library would appear in the library tab, the library can still be easilly copied by someone.

Anyway, hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I was mostly looking for info about good practices regarding distributing kontakt instruments without the player.

This means the end user would need to manually move folders - Like the resource folder etc.

To make the end user experience easier an unpacker would be a possible solution. I was wondering if people who have distributed k4+ instruments without the player could tell me some more about the subject.

 

If I were you I would just do something like this guy here:

http://www.forgottenkeys.co.uk/

You won't get rich, and those who want to pirate your stuff still will, but I imagine most people would pay a small fee for single instruments. His requires the full version of Kontakt though.

I like his stuff and own most of them. I like to support the little guy.

maybe you could even partner with someone like him to distrubute yours.

Good luck and keep us posted. I would be willing to buy some of your stuff if it's cheap like this guys stuff.

 

Hi Durk,

I don't know of any sound library developer that actually provides an installer for their Kontakt instruments.
That's not to say that there might not be someone out there who is doing it. But I've yet to come across anyone who is.

I'd also recommend going the non-player route if I were you too.

 

Cheers guys,

@OP: sorry for hijacking you thread

@Ben_horwood: Hmm, so the end user is expected to place the folders in the mydocs/NI/Kontakt folder so the resource container will be found.

Well it would save me some time.

@a1mixman: cheers, always nice to see independent dev's. I have distribution sorted tho. But thanks for the headsup.