Novation has announced a freebie for members of its Sound Collective community: the availability of Tracktion’s BioTek for free and a discount off BioTek 2.
BioTek will be available for download from 31 January to 4 April, and the discount on BioTek 2 runs from 31 January to 4 May. Sound Collective is free for anyone that has registered a Novation product.
BioTek is a powerful, innovative virtual instrument that combines synthesis and sample playback across four morphable layers, within an intuitive single-screen interface.
Features:
- Four virtual analogue/sample playback oscillators
- 4-operator FM, oscillator sync, PWM, ring modulation and waveshaping
- Two multimode filters with a wide range of modes and slopes, plus EQ and distortion
- 200 modulation routings and 32 modifier routings
- Four envelopes and eight Flow LFOs, each with eight parallel sub LFOs • Four serial effects
- Sample and MIDI file import
For more information about Novation’s Sound Collective, see the Sound Collective webpage.
Probably useful to know that it applies to Focusrite users as well. Noticed it on my Fr account and it took me a second to remember that Novation is part of the family.
I have a Focusrite interface, and a launchpad pro… and it wants you to set up an account for “Tracktion” as well. I don’t want “Tracktion”, so I’m going to give this a miss. Tired of being marketed to.
Good point about being marketed to!
These offers do typically require you to register for an account or, at least, share something about an existing account. And they do end up sending frequent emails. So there’s a significant difference between truly “free as in free beer” plugins and “free if you register for our mailing list”. Even if you can opt out (and/or use an account that you don’t use for anything useful), it’s not the same type of relationship as just downloading a fully-functioning plugin for free. (It’s also different from “free as in free speech” which often ends up being like “free as in free puppy” because you need to take care of them.)
As far as I can tell, the Novation/Focusrite “Sound/Plugin Collective” plugins are all of the “free with registration” type.
Sites like Synthtopia could warn us about those “freebies” which require registration.
Didn’t notice it this time because I already had a Tracktion account (their Waveform DAW came for free with the ROLI Lightpad, including Melodyne Essential). Since creating my account, Tracktion has been fairly consistent about sending me irrelevant emails. With their DAW, they’re also somewhat sneaky in getting you to install demo versions of their plugins without really telling you they’re demos until you try to use them.
Among enjoyable things with iOS plugins and other musicking apps is the fact that the deal is almost always really clear: a free app is often really free (you can tell right away if it requires in-app purchases) and you get high-quality apps at a low cost with no “small print”. Ad-supported apps are rare in this scene and those with shady business models get flagged quickly by the community. Some developers complain that Apple doesn’t provide them with any data about users but it also means that we, users, are setting up our own relationships with these devs. Those apps are also much easier to install, update, and access.
Some people are quick to yell at me that things are so much better on the desktop because of this or that reason. But my experience on iOS tends to be much more pleasant than on the desktop, these days.
To each their own.
(And, yes, I do accumulate all sorts of free or no-cost desktop plugins that I end up never using.)
Sorry, but the story tells you the offer is for members of this Sound Collective. If you don’t want to be part of it, this isn’t for you.
Most companies that have grown beyond a dozen or two employees (and plenty of small ones) send e-mail all the time. It’s a mistake to do that, because it devalues the messages, but it is common and it can usually easily be turned off. Complaining that a marketing campaign with an app offered involves signing on for more marketing, however, is like complaining that the sun sets every evening. Marketing requires money, and for the marketing person or people to be paid, more marketing gets done, to sell stuff to make money. Free software, on any platform, that does not come with press releases and tie-ins and the like, does not generally announce its existence to you. It requires that you find it on your own, or that someone points you to it.
If you want the Biotek offer – especially if you’re on the list(s) already, and already get the messages – a good app is there to use. If not, no one forces you to join this thing that markets music apps. Of course, we’re still being “marketed to” all the time. If you use a computer, the battle is already lost.