Sunsine Audio has announced an iOS preset and sample subscription service.
Their iOS Subscription system works like this: When a new preset/sample pack is released, an email will be sent out to subscribers, containing an attachment or immediate download link.
Additionally customers will receive exclusive content, either in the form of extra content for existing packs or entirely new products.
In addition, Sunsine Audio has announced it will begin distributing iOS presets and samples developed by other labels. The first product that will be available is Luftrum 8, an Animog preset pack.
The 3-month subscription is priced at $28.99. This is an interesting new option for iOS musicians, but we’d like to se Sunsine set clear expectations on their site about what subscribers will get with their three month subscription.
See the SunsineAudio site for details.
via Fletcher Kaufman
So the subscription price lands at roughly $10 a month. In user’s minds that will be a dollar value equal to about 1 – 4 iPad instruments. Given that most download packs from other people are only a buck or two, most users would expect 5 to 10 downloads a month from these guys for the money. Even if the products are top notch, I think they will have a hard time delivering with enough frequency to satisfy customers.
A few other issues come to mind:
1 – What if they deliver patches for synths the user doesn’t have? Wasted money?
2 – If someone signs up 6 months from now, do they get all the previous products too? If so, why not only sign up once a year?
3 – Does this carry a usage license that expires when the user stops paying the subscription?
I think it would have been more successful to spend about a year making as much content as they could, and selling it for only a buck or two a pop to go for volume sales and build a reputation. Then when they have a huge back catalog, make a subscription or bulk-purchasing model to leverage more sales out of the more reluctant customers, and offer a value to the current ones.