Message from Jack - Cinematic Strings dev

Blacklist!

Dear Jack,
I really appreciate how you treat customers. I mean you don't use any watermark protection for your library and that means a lot to me. Also you do not send threats and that's something. I would certainly buy your library right there and then just to support you, but here's the thing...I don't have $500 to buy a library.
Anyway I have just finished cleaning those samples with humming noise in it. It's about 25,000 samples for all positions. That's the only thing I could offer you.

Deeply sorry for your loss , I am sure that one day I could support you by paying $500 for your library. And I am sure that some of the people here would do it as well, in time.

Jack,

You have my deepest sympathies and humble me with your sincere words. I can;t afford a car, I get disrespect in this malicious music industry, and I also pour my soul into my work just like you guys do. If I cannot empathize for someone in the same situation as me, then I deserve none in return.

I don't expect anyone to follow in my footstep but your words certainly will have me thinking long and hard before i click on a link to download again. I sincerely hope that your sales will pick up.

ok CS2 has been on the net for less than a week (5 effin days!!!), and it has destroyed their business?!?!!! whatever.

and when the try before buy concept kicks into full swing, and that moneys starts coming in from sales, i guess the free advertisement these guys just got for their upcoming woodwinds library will have paid off.

quangly99

your sales will pick up

jack & alex, to the future! best of luck!

.

Congratulations for your determination. If you work well and persist, believe me, one day you have the results you deserve. Your product is beginning to be known, so at least you are reaching the very first must-have condition in order for it to be sold (i.e.: "promotion").

You have my sympathy, also for the fact that you came here and explained your situation in detail (let's think you are telling us the truth...), instead of flaming or using the usual and stupidly, non-sense "I'll call the cops" (just because nobody can stop the Net, as we all saw after the death of MegaUpload, FileServe, FileSonic, etc... others followed even strongly).

But, let me make you think about a crucial sentence of yours:

We haven't made a sale since CS2 was uploaded, and it's everywhere

If this is true, you have a SERIOUS internal security leakage!.

My --sincere-- best wishes!

[Oh... and I'm just a collector. Even ***if*** I have your product I guess I [would] never use it, even ***if*** it is on one of my hard disks. Hats off for you, anyway]

.

While I sympathize.. Im pretty sure you know that anything without unbreakable protection is going to be shared for free these days..

If you haven't made a single sale.. then you are charging too much, or there are comparable products available for less.

Piracy MUST be built into your business model in 2013. If not.. your going to fail.

best of luck.. from someone who is also continually pirated.

My Advice... make more, more diverse, but smaller, less time consuming and less expensive Libs.

I like to hear the hidden voices of the libs! The word is real hard for allmost all of music related jobs. There are so many stories that we will never know, and we must hear more.
The capitalism world do not value art, so we have to accept that, because the value is money, not art. So, why this kind of world can respect real musicians whe there are so many amateurs wannabe for free? The fact is that almost everyone that downloaded the libs will never use or even learn how to use the full potencial. So, almost everyone do not study music (and I call musicians someone who actually play very well and is capable to understand very well almost every style of music), do not make music, but collect a lot. Notice that almost every one today make music with no background (and obviouslly repeat things that are done before without even knowing what they really do) with a damn awfull music. If we dont hear the external voices, we do not hear music, we do not hear ourselfs, with no concience about nothing. So capitalism tranforms everyone in individual with no real connection with the real world. Poor people do poor music! So music is not about art, is about money that all involved want. But how about the ones that are idealistic? Usually die like Jesus Christ. Its a fact...
I have 2 degrees in piano and composition (serial music), study a LOT, my professors always come to my house to know better how i done my study. I think thats a shame study erudit music, so I study popular music and buyed my firt midi computer 33 years ago. I spend great amout of money with hardware and software a someday I discover that I have a hard desease. I forgot to say that I live in Brazil and here we pay almost 400% more than Europe or USA? That my ex-girlfriend stolen 25.000 dollars when I become sick? That I have great pain all day long in in allmost all organs and pieces of my body? That I spend 4500 usd with medicines (state give me the most) each week?
So, the audio companies wanna make a discont for me because I spend a lot of money with them and now I cant like before? I learn to hear, and I like this post. Jack gave disconts to unemployed, its a good start, but how to understand to third-world, the pesons that have people with deseases or sickness in the family? Of course if that came it will be a lot of liars, but lie is the common law right?
If Jack is hearing, its a good way always to stay in our center, do the best you can, do not expect that everyone will be fair, do not turn your life in a machine. listen you, your body, the ones that do not have voice, finelly, Be idealist without bitter.
I hope someone start to think, but its a long way, culture and habits are the harder thing to change in the human kind.
When we make a noise, we must hear a noise too, right?

life goes on, maan!

you had the power to make such a library, i would say you guys are fuckin pro! you could proceed and spread your product range, or especially develop sample sets on request for bigger companies.

SELECT SUM(jos_vm_orders.order_total) as totalrev
FROM jos_vm_orders WHERE jos_vm_orders.order_status = 'C';

Tell us that number cause I know it.

As lord gaga said ! if this wasnt available i wouldnt buy it also ! i use cubase 5 cause i cant afford to buy version 7 !

and i dont make any money at all from this ! i write music for me ! i also give free music to singers to write something on it ! im an undergraduate student and i have to spend about 150 euros per month !

but i have the same thinking ! if someday ill make money from my music the first thing i will do is to buy the ''weapons'' that i used because they deserved it and i will have support from them and i support them

i wish you the best with your very good product...

maybe one option could be separating your library into individual instruments and reducing the price ! maybe that will help you with your sales...

EHCanadian

SELECT SUM(jos_vm_orders.order_total) as totalrev
FROM jos_vm_orders WHERE jos_vm_orders.order_status = 'C';

Tell us that number cause I know it.

callin em out!

Nice lie Jack nobody feels sorry for you!!
My question is how many sales did you do BEFORE it went up on torrent sites?
And as many say here you are tyotally pro so that bullshit about living with his mother at age 29 you can tell to kids they might believe it,
Or is it beacuse he is g*y?

So hang on, he's 18 years old now > 3 years ago him and his friend started Cinematic Strings after they met in the Middle East (i.e. Palestinian territory, Hebron, West Bank)...

That means he was 15 years old, travelled to an extremely dangerous Middle Eastern place, which his parents had no problem with? And he has no money, but somebody paid for his airline ticket, accomodation and food somehow. Oh, and obviously somebody also paid that orchestra and studio to begin with - so he's not exactly Oliver Twist without a penny....

Yeah sorry Jack, but there's some shit here which you haven't buried properly in your story. I'm sure you're kind of a genuine person in many ways, but seriously, if you want sympathy then here's some advice; get your story absolutely water tight and straight first, and then there will be no question that you're being honest and people will sympathize with you.

p.s. At first you had my sympathy 100% but then totally lost me at Hebron - my views on Palestinians firing missiles into Israel whenever they randomly feel like it are much different to your views about feeling sorry for them.

p.p.s. You failed when you didn't let N.I. license your creation and you released it by yourself, with zero security measures in place. And hey, CS1/2 really ain't that great anyway, especially for $500... you must have been tripping when you came up with that stupid price.

If no new libraries will be created and "everything" has truly stopped, what's the point of blacklisting and removing this from websites? Sounds a little weird, but I do feel for him/them. I understand the frustration. However, the thing he's not realizing is, more people will buy than crack anyway, simply because, 1. many people don't trust cracks, 2. people like bugging customer service, 3. people like updates (as soon as they come out), 4. people like the perceived stability advantage over cracked stuff, and 5. people like the general perks (like most buyers receive with these products).

KingSchlongXVII, [QUOTE ]"(...)So hang on, he's 18 years old now 3 years ago him and his friend started Cinematic Strings after they met in the Middle East (i.e. Palestinian territory, Hebron, West Bank)...

That means he was 15 years old, travelled to an extremely dangerous Middle Eastern place, which his parents had no problem with? And he has no money, but somebody paid for his airline ticket, accomodation and food somehow. (...)" [END QUOTE]

No.

What he means is, they met at a protest [in Sidney?] _for_ Human Rights in the Middle East.

They didn't meet at a protest _in_ the Middle East.

Their site was exploited and their database was copied.

Their installer on CS1 was reversed and used open source code from davaguine and plan99 who
have writen audio related converting tools.

They made a killing on CS1 and fell a little short on CS2 sales but not by much. Still enough
to survive... Sure a few less ladies of the evening but still a good chunk.

This isn't post 2008 where everyone has a ton of cash to throw around.

EHCanadian,

OK, that makes them look less good.

This whole downloading sh*t is becoming a complete mindf*ck.

You know Devs if you want sympathy, perhaps you should be honest?

Just saying.

Making a bit of sense of this:

Jack is an 18 year old who does customer service for Cinematic Strings. He is a personal friend of Alex (the main member of Cinematic Strings), they met at a protest regarding human rights in the middle east, the protest was not in the middle east, just regarding the middle east.

Jack is not credited anywhere on the CS website that I can see. It is unknown how long he has been working for CS, maybe since CS1, or just since CS2 released.

<<This is the part that confuses me>>

Alex is 29 years old, has enough money to make and license a NI Kontakt Player Orchestral String library, yet he barely moved out of his parents house a couple months ago and drives a junker car? (Keep in mind that the original CS was released, what 4 years ago?)

I'm sorry to hear that their sales dropped over the past few days, but I wonder how many copies sold the week before.

As some have said above, many people who are willing to buy it, will buy it regardless of torrents. If you look around many people like to have bragging rights on what they own, that's one of the perks of owning something.

I would hope that paid musician's aren't actually downloading things without intent to pay for what they keep.

I'll leave with this:

"We give huge discounts to people without much money... students, unemployed etc."

Where does it say that ANYWHERE on the site? I'm unemployed, and have no car, would they have let me have it for $50?

You dont go into such adventure without capital how did you pay the musicians the hotel the restaurants ? Fourty person + staff = 50 people
And there is no such Jack in contact or wo we are etc etc

cinematic Strings, an enterprise headed by David Hearn and Alex Wallbank.
String Sections (total 40 players):
Twelve First violins.
Eight Second violins.
Seven Violas.
Seven Cellos.
Six Double basses.
Articulations:
Sustain non-vibrato.
Sustain vibrato (low position).
Sustain vibrato (high position).
Legato sustain.
Staccato.
Tremolo.
Trills (whole tone and semitone).
Pizzicato.
‘Snap’ pizzicato.

the librairy is 375.00
If it was 100 e Pros semi pros amateur music lovers Dj s tjey all will PAY for it
BUt theres a WORLD Global market and strings has got to be Expensive
If you Look at Windows WHO PAID For his copy of windows in 95 ???almost no one!!! and Gates is rich as fuck !! Be inventive sell oem versions in HDD even with a computer company or make a contract with A soundcard maker So WE buy your stuff as a package your stuff with Of ideas And WOULD never WRITE such a LETTER

LETTER and saying you re Pro Palestinian doesnt interest people

I was going to write a LONG post about this.
But i just remembered a funny thing.

Some years ago, Zero-G Phaedra maker posted on my fav audio tracker, asking moderators to remove his product.They did it.

First funny thing : he was on this tracker, leeching several products, for years !
Second funny thing : he probably used cracked softs to make HIS product

Several months later, mods authorized to share it again...

Since then, i don't trust anyone posting requests about removing products.
On the other side, ppl like Steven Slate company crawl the web to remove all links...and they even succeeded to remove them from my fav tracker (law suits, probably).

I don't care if mods remove products or not. As i'm not a power user making money with those products, i just don't care and use anything else, even freewares.
But when i will get money back...i will not buy those blacklisted products nether.

There may be a point that many downloaders of this library would never buy it.

But if people use it without paying they should at least be quiet and should not start a discussion about "honesty" with the producer/owner.

tramp,

Let him who is without sin .... just saying.

Also classic ad hominem.

As far as the request for removal to Saint goes, I'm OK with that.

Aeroflot,

In the US for film production a 40-piece will cost around 30,000 for a 6 hour day (SOURCE: Debbi Datz-Pyle in The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook)

Lets say they invested about 40,000-50,000 in making the lib. If they lowered the price to 99 they'd have to sell between 400-500 just to recover cost. And that's very rough math.

Gates, Adobe, etc. get most of their money from the corporate sector. You can't compare them with mom and pop shops.

Alraun,
i think your posts rounds it totally up. thats how i see it aswell.
i was looking a week before on cinematic strings 2 after a friend said - its sounding pretty. well im also a student and have hardly money to go out atleast one day with my friends. so it was definitely not in the cards to buy your product.
it sounds pretty good btw. ive used it to make me some source sounds for my drone im doing.

and im with the decision to make it blacklisted.

i think the problem is most of the people think - when their product is going to pirated - they will lose anything in sales.
look ive used NI Massive for like 4 years until i bought it finally. this will also happen with your kontakt library one day, when i get the money.
students discount must be around 50% or more thats possible for me to buy CS2. and even with that price im still hardly thinking.

i wish you good luck and ill think everytime, when i open the library at the team of CS2.

btw i have no car, my notebook is broken(my fan died and my HDD), my bicycle' axle bearing is overused. so you see we all poor.
and i have at this point no idea - how i should pay my next study-semester.
im working at the moment in the university - but its still enough.
you see both sides are poor.

Perhaps those small companies should try the "pay what you like" approach like in some restaurants - perhaps that would stimulate the sales more than those high price politics which drives away the people with less money.