Just wondering. Seems like money for nothing if they do, maybe i should get in on the action.
I’m pretty sure the ones who are good at it and hustle do make a little money.
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Some do, most dont. It’s a digital file that anyone can share. Catch 22. Stay small enough you can trust your few customers you can get a very small amount, get big enough you actually have customers it goes online for free. But even beyond piracy it’s just a massively oversaturated market and always will be. Not worth my time imo
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lol
I make a bit of money from sample packs. Maybe a couple hundred in the week that I release a pack, and then it varies wildly, especially if I get slack and don’t release/promote anything for a while.
It’s not really “money for nothing” though. For me, it’s sometimes 20+ hours of work to record, edit, compile and package a sample pack, possibly even more if it’s a pack of synth presets. Coupled with Gumroad premium account fees it doesn’t amount to much in terms of hourly rate.
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sound packs & presets for hardware — rather yes.
for software – they’ll eventually be pirated (so i wouldn’t, but YMMV)
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Samples from Uranus i think do.
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I sold sample packs for software samplers for years. Those packs made me a consistent income, despite being pirated almost immediately. It wasn’t enough money to live on, but as @pselodux says, the initial releases would sell in decent numbers, with sales after that trickling to a slower, steady pace. I did pretty much no advertising and never kept a mailing list, so never spammed customers. My ‘license’ was realistic - I merely asked that the customer not share their private URL, but suggested that it was okay to share with band mates and collaborators. I think this was appreciated in an industry that can be somewhat draconian about such things.
The trick is to offer something different. For me, that meant original sounds made with gear to which my customers might not have access. It is a lot of work, but if you make sounds that you want to use in your own productions, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Eventually, I shuttered the thing. Not because it was losing money or anything… I simply didn’t have the time to keep pumping out new products. I’ve considered doing it again (I have two very nice unreleased sample packs for Elektron machines sitting on my hard drive), but other things have kept me too busy.
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…some do…some don’t…
old friend of mine has just finished a prominent artist signature sonic miracle box for ableton…available this autumn…at abletons website…
that’s money…i can tell u…
but there, u really gotto know how and have ur sonic shit together…
and in smaller business…it can count also…dataline just released some retro special sample pack, suited for the rytm…
but basically…it makes only sense with sense behind it…
in 9 out of 10…that’s simply not the case…
so, if u don’t wanna become the one million’st midi pack guy…
u better have a truu idea to come up with for real…
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You mean samples from Mars? Hehe. Wasn’t sure if you were making a joke there 
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if you are just getting into it and you’re going to self release then it’s going to take time. you have to build a following somewhat. if you have a big foot print on social media or have some notoriety you’ll have a better time. still, there’s a lot of people doing it who basically do full time blogging, youtube, etc etc. .and are always on line promoting and stuff.
i’ve released 2 sample libraries that are pretty large collections of one hits for percussive type sounds and weird shit. the first one was many years ago and was released by Samplephonics. I still get a royalty from it every quarter. this is always a nice surprise. But it’s not how i make a living. it’s just some extra cash.
the 2nd one i self released via bandcamp and it’s not nearly as popular as the first one simply because it doesn’t have a large promotional machine behind it that does marketing etc and includes in subscription deals and sales etc. but it’s of similar/same quality and style and has more samples in it. it’s just hard to get people to pay attention unless half your time is spent getting people to pay attention.
that being said… https://www.pluginguru.com/ does really well w/his preset packs. he’s a pro though and has been doing it forever. used to make sounds for korg hardware synths in the 80s and 90s and all that. he’ does it full time. has a monster site. does youtube videos etc. i met him a few times here in portland and talked about it all w/him and at the time he was doing really well. he had hired another sound designer to work with him on specific packs. that guy then got hired away by spectrasonics and moved down to cali to work on sound design for them doing omnisphere stuff i think. so, there is kind of a career path if you’re good at it and lucky and meet people etc.
if you’re going to try to pay your bills doing it then it needs to be your everything. if you just want to dabble in it then you can make a few extra bucks here and there which is nice. but don’t plan on financing a 3 week vacation to hawaii. but ya never know.
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ah, forgot about that. social is like kryptonite to me, so i guess it might be hard to do a DIY thing.