Independent Audio Plugin Developer Report

Hey everyone,

I’m lucky to have the opportunity this year to give a presentation at ADC in November about trying to get a start as an independent developer in the audio plugin domain, from the perspective of somebody who is currently trying to do just that.

As part of the talk, and for our community in general, I’d like to share a little bit of information about how other independent audio plugin developers and small plugin companies are doing. From my experience, this kind of information is really hard to come by, but it can be really useful for people already in the game and for anybody thinking about trying to get involved.

To do that, I’ve prepared a small, anonymous survey, borrowing in part from the 2018 Unity Game Studio Report, trying to get a general assessment of the state of the indie plugin developer community. I will prepare and share a report evaluating the results and present that with my talk at ADC, if I can get enough information for it to be significant (if I get like 3 total answers, maybe I’ll just consider other ideas :P).

Link: https://goo.gl/forms/3zBgV0nam14vp0nV2

Again, this survey is anonymous, and all questions are optional. Please share as much or as little information as you’re comfortable with. If you represent a successful small company in this field, please also know that people like me are looking up to you as examples to follow, and having your input in this kind of survey will be incredibly valuable. For that reason, if you can help me share the survey and spread the word, that would be amazing.

Thanks!
Nick

5 Likes

You should allow multiple answers to “If you’re expanding, what roles are you looking to fill?”, instead of having it a radio button :slight_smile: I, for example, would hire on more than one end.

2 Likes

Thank you to everyone who’s filled this out so far! And bump for those who haven’t :smiley:

@CrushedPixel yea great point, I’ll see if I can edit the form so that the next people to fill it out have that option. Thanks for the feedback!

Hey all,

Wanted to give this another bump. I’ve edited the form following the few suggestions.

I’d also be curious to know if you think it’s inappropriate to ask directly “what was your 2017 net revenue from product sales?” I considered that initially but decided against it because it’s a sensitive question and I didn’t want to turn anybody off. The questions in the survey currently give insight into that answer but are obviously indirect. Is that information something you’d be interested in having a clear, direct answer on? Is that information something you would volunteer while filling out the survey?

I’ll be sharing the form on Twitter and KVR momentarily. Thanks again!

yes, ask it! as long as its anonymous I don’t see the problem, and people don’t have to answer if they don’t want
perhaps not the exact revenue though :slight_smile:
but a few ranges like < 8k, 8k->16k, 16k->48k, 48k->96k, 96k->192k, 192k->384k, +

another thing:
the form is about “Independent Audio Plugin Developer Report”
but then you ask
How many people does your company employ, including freelancers and contractors?
So it’s unclear if you want answers from companies other than one-man ones

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Ok I’ve added that question. If you find it overly direct or too sensitive, let me know! :pray:

And yea, I understand the ambiguity around the “independent” / company size thing. In my opinion, really small companies are also independent. But more importantly, solo plugin developers can learn a lot from the small companies, and the small companies can learn a lot from solo plugin developers, so it’s not necessarily important (in my opinion) to make this distinction in the case of this survey.

so can/do we fill the whole form again? will you ignore the previous results to avoid duplicates?

Good question… I don’t think I have a way of identifying which form submissions came from the same person (because I don’t collect any identifying information). So if you fill it out again it will probably skew the answers. I believe, however, you could fill out just the 1 new question if you wanted to add your answer.

I would say don’t worry about it though. I hope to get enough survey answers in general that we can gather a good picture here

One last bump! We already have over 50 responses, which is amazing. Thanks so much to everyone who participated so far.

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