Propellerhead has announced that the new Instrument Development Toolkit (IDT) for Rack Extensions is now available. The free developer kit is designed to make it easy for sample library producers and instrument designers to build and sell Rack Extensions.
“With the Instrument Development Toolkit, it’s easy to build powerful Rack Extension instruments for Reason, even without prior coding experience,” says Propellerhead’s Mats Karlöf. “Developers can easily create Rack Extensions that sound incredible and work flawlessly within Reason.”
The new Instrument Development Toolkit makes it possible for developers to build professional sample-based instruments, without writing C++ code. Current Kontakt and NN-XT instrument designers can also import their libraries into IDT, greatly accelerating the process of developing instruments.
IDT’s vast built-in effect library, full-featured sampler engine, flexibility and powerful scripting language are designed to streamline instrument creation.
The Instrument Development Toolkit is now available for free download.
Note: Due to legal requirements of their agreement, only companies can qualify as developers for Rack Extensions, ReWire, REX2, and Remote. There are no costs involved. Propellerhead Software will administer the authorization, copyrights, logos, and trademarks.
If you’re a developer, let us know what you think of the new Toolkit!
This is wonderful. 🙂
What does this mean “only companies” can register? What the hell is a company in Sweden? Or anywhere in the globe? I have to create an LLC to sell a sample pack? They make it sound like some big boon to indie devs and then say “oh sorry, corporations only!”. Cool, man…
Propellerhead can’t take on the liability for developers that steal samples, package them and release them as a Rack Extension.
You know that there would be dudes that do that sort of stuff to try and make a buck.
Well, ok if that is the case then why are they advertising this to the general public instead of just sending a press release to the five biggest sample library corporations? Seems stupid to market this to indie devs and then kick ’em in the balls when they go to sign up with a “haha sucka! corporations only!”. Makes no sense. Also, I find this theory of legal liability for somebody else’s product a bit shabby. Is Github on the hook if someone uploads a bunch of stolen code as their own? Or uploads something like that icloud hack the other day?
If you are an indie dev I suspect you should be a registered business correct. If not how serious are you? Applying for the SDK is very simple really. There are a lot of indie devs already making Rack Extensions a lot of them actually came about because of REs.
Not necessarily. I only develop as a hobby and file as self-employed. The cheapest place to set up an LLC in the US is Arizona and even that is $125/year. In California it’s ~$800, and even in Delaware it’s $200. Plus there’s a bunch of administration so you probably need to pay a lawyer or accountant for all but the most basic recordkeeping, or risk expensive fines.
It’s not worth hundreds of dollars a year just to get my feet wet, especially when VST and other SDKs are given away free for the asking.
“The cheapest place to set up an LLC in the US is Arizona ”
this is incorrect. Delaware is much cheaper. ($90)
Makes sense, but who wants to create a company just to find out if they like working with Propellerheads’ SDK? It’d be smartert o let anyone download it, but you can only distribute to other people if it’s signed by Propellerheads, in which case you need to set up a company for them to publish something (but at least you already have a product ready to go).
Here is why I think they only want real companies developing – When Apple opened the SDK for the iPhone (now iOS) for everyone, they got a lot of really crappy apps being submitted. Apple then has to go through and qualify every single app submitted and that takes a lot of people who’s only job is to sit and go through all submitted apps. Propellerhead is a much smaller company than Apple and by requiring that only real companies submit rack extensions, they keep the number if submissions down and at the same time, they keep the quality high. It’s one thing to code-up a rack extension, its another thing to make one that people are going to want to buy and one that looks polished and professional (real artwork, etc.)
Just my 2 cents,
– Dave
Just stumbled upon this and though I agree with Dave on all points, wanted to chime in.
I’m a full-time developer of Android and iOS apps, former full-time musician and just recently became interested in developing for this platform. From what I’ve seen so far, the requirements are MUCH less complicated, in all respects, than either mobile platform. The code syntax is ridiculously easy to pick up and the provided libraries actually do most of the work.
As for the pain of creating a business entity… most (even the cheapest, freelance) developers have already established a company for billing purposes, filing as a Sole Proprietorship, which Propellerhead accepts (check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship).
I understand the frustration of not being able to take a “test drive”, but Propellerhead is protecting their product(s). They have every right to do so and that’s all we need to know, because no one is forcing us to spend our time developing Rack Extensions for them. At the end of the day, if you aren’t serious about developing, testing, then selling a software product, no one will want to download it – not even for a free trial.