Contemplations on the Art of Music Production

Piracy – Why Shouldn’t You?

There’s a request I keep getting regularly. It comes in different shapes and forms but the gist is always the same. Here’s an example of an email I received:

“I began with the program Logic pro X. But i have a problem: I want to get some plug ins for this program, i’d like to get it for free, because buying it is too expensive for me at the moment,
so i like to download it, but it’s so hard to find it…

I need the following plug ins:

[followed by a list of paid plugins]”

Now, ethics aside, there is something quite big at play here that I want to address. Something that is especially difficult to understand when you’re first starting out in music.

The above email reminds me of myself when I was younger. I admit I used to download loads of pirated plugins back then. It was so easy and there was not much peer pressure against it – quite the contrary. So trust me when I say this comes from personal experience.

Piracy a trap. You’ll be much better off using legit software. If you are serious about your craft, start investing into it. Even if it takes time to save up money.

Buying your tools forces you to develop your workflow. It forces you to figure out what you really need and makes you plan how everything fits in and plays together. Over the course of a few years you will see improvement which would not take place had you not began investing in your tools.

It is much easier to get work done with a limited set of great quality tools that work well, as opposed to a whole bunch of cracked software that is often unstable and may even come with malware.

Paying for your tools makes you value them more. This is basic human psychology. You are more likely to put time into learning your tools properly when it’s something you’ve personally invested in. With pirate software you skip and fast forward through things, only to lose focus and end up back to zero.

You will feel better for doing the right thing. Confidence is something a lot of us struggle with especially when first starting out. Staying clear of piracy helps.

The cumulative results of all of the benefits listed above?

You will see much faster improvement in your skills. You will make better music and advance your craft. You will begin to discover your own voice. I promise. I wish I had realised those things sooner.

In the recent times I’ve began to get back to making music with hardware equipment. It is the exact same dynamic at play there. Being invested into a limited set of tools with a limited (but well thought out) set of features can be so rewarding.

Mindless confusion or mindful progress. The choice is yours to make.


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Comments

26 responses to “Piracy – Why Shouldn’t You?”

  1. Vladimir Naumov Avatar
    Vladimir Naumov

    This is so true!

  2. Joseph Whittle Avatar
    Joseph Whittle

    This is all true – plus you don’t need to pay for *every* piece of software. There are plenty of high quality free VSTs around, and keep your eyes peeled for software deals from people like soundtoys. You don’t need to run out and spend thousands of bucks.

    1. heavymetalmixer Avatar
      heavymetalmixer

      I’m actually a free plugin collector, more than 6 GB in free plugins, with out a single sample xD.

  3. garyg2 Avatar
    garyg2

    Yep, all true.

  4. txtist Avatar
    txtist

    i may never use Ableton Live or Cycling74 Max/Msp in a professional capacity, but as a student I noticed those developers offered students a great discount, as did Avid (Protools, Sibelius), Native Instruments (Komplete) and even Sound Toys (aax/vst plugins) and of course Adobe (Creative Suite 6).
    If you’re poor (as I am) you need not resort to being a creep… just get a “dot edu” e-mail and try it out

    1. heavymetalmixer Avatar
      heavymetalmixer

      Or you could use Reaper in evaluation mode, is completely legal, though when you have enough money you should buy the license.

      1. Ilpo Karkkainen Avatar

        Reaper is very affordable too, most of us will probably qualify for the discounted license which is only 60 USD.

  5. Lz Sentelle Avatar
    Lz Sentelle

    Really excellent post, and so true.

  6. Chris Vandeviver Avatar

    Totally agree. First, you don’t want to be at the mercy of unlicensed plugins when they break, or your DAW updates. Your sessions could be ruined if anything changes, and you can’t contact the company who made the plugin to help you fix things. Second, plugin companies are always cranking out deals. I only shop at Audiodeluxe. Black Friday through New Years is prime time for sales!

    1. Ilpo Karkkainen Avatar

      Yup there is that too!

  7. Todd Dickinson Avatar
    Todd Dickinson

    Man, you are so on point with this post… Sitting around with a bunch of stolen software, while trying to create something that you would love for people to think enough of that they’d purchase it, is self defeating.

    Great, great article!

    1. Tremor Avatar
      Tremor

      Dude, all the producers have cracked software, buying it don’t make you a better producer

  8. JussSomeBloke Avatar
    JussSomeBloke

    I was the same at the start. I had a huge collection of cracked software. I collected every VST I could find. Even my DAW was cracked. If I wasn’t worrying about viruses ( and I got a few ), I was loading tracks where the VST no longer worked because the crack was only good for that particular version. I couldn’t upgrade without hassle.
    I downloaded cracked software because I had no money, and because I thought “well, no-one is gonna know”, but the thing is, I knew, and I was damaging my own conscience.
    I finally got a steady job, and set out to buy every single plugin I had downloaded and loved. The creators of that software put just as much blood, sweat and tears into their creations as I was putting into my music, and not only was it right that they should get paid for their effort and their expertise, but also, once I started selling my music, I knew it wasn’t right to make money using stolen software. I was trying to make money from my music, but at the same time denying the software developers the same luxury. I now have 2 DAWs and over 1400 VST plugins on my system. A lot of them are free, but I’ve now bought things like NI Komplete 10, and loads of synths and effects.
    I feel so much better. My conscience is clear. Im talking the time to learn everything I buy because , as you rightly said, it has much more value when you know you sacrificed something to buy it.
    I am very much anti-piracy now, and I see just how much harm it does to the industry.

    1. Ilpo Karkkainen Avatar

      Thanks for sharing your story and being honest!

  9. Janek Bagieta Avatar
    Janek Bagieta

    I agree with most points, but not completely. Here’s what I think. While I am slowly but consistently building my set of tools, if it weren’t for being able to have some plugins (or DAW for that matter) for free, I wouldn’t even start. I am a student, I have to pay a lot of money for looking for a cure for my rare disease, and I don’t even make any money with my music.

    That granted, I’ve decided to eventually buy the software that I value and use. And over the course of few months I came across a few paid VSTs that if I have paid for them upfront, or even took a trial (and bought afterwards), the money would be wasted because of very important negatively working feature that I didn’t know of, that I didn’t know that I don’t want this feature this way – simply because I am not yet qualified to judge whether I prefer this feature this particular way or not. I don’t have that much experience in using these plugins and manipulating audio in general to really judge from the straight-go whether a particular feature is well thought-out.

    So, in my opinion one should rather crack and try 10 EQ plugins and trial them as much as he needs to, know them in and out, then buy the ones he likes, rather than buying a product that he’ll later regret.

    A bit side topic:
    I have a similar feeling about nowaday’s computer games, but then when it comes to games I’m a very demanding player – I just find a lot of modern AAA titles lacking in substance; developers mindlessly creating more and more “features” that are supposed to cover lack of substance and real playability. Too often I’ve found myself getting immersed in the very first moments, then the game tries to hold me solely on one or two “features” that aren’t well thought-out and become boring before the first half of the game passes, although the game tries to introduce “new” but really the same stuff over the course of the story. Think weapon cartridges in Call of Duty, then extended cartridge, then double cartridge etc… Call of Duty is an extreme example, but this problem applies to a lot of stuff, not just games in general.

    This article on Wikipedia explains it neatly:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

    Okay, rant over.

    Cheers and thanks for email and opportunity for discussion.

  10. Jerry Atrick Avatar
    Jerry Atrick

    Good words. So true. A few good plug-ins that you know how to use is ultimately less expensive in $ and time compared to malware risk, upgrade hassle and unproductive time spent using so many plugins of unknown quality or which are just not right for your application that it breeds confusion and compromise in your end work. And, without being compensated, who would continue to develop software?

  11. AntoxaGray Avatar
    AntoxaGray

    There’s bunch of wishful thinking here. If you want to improve skills, improve skills. Buying legit software have nothing to do with it.

    I know skilled pirated and unskilled legit users, aswell as skilled legit users and unskilled pirates. Therefore, buying vs pirating is irrelevant at how good you will be at it. The last reason can be deleted.

  12. Fuckyou article Avatar
    Fuckyou article

    It is much easier to get work done with a limited set of great quality tools HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    tell that to a craftsman
    who the fuck wrote this shit,do you even produce music of just shitty articles?

    1. Jason C Avatar
      Jason C

      he has never made a single piece of music in his life. I dont own like a shelf’s worth of 12″ records by him or anything

    2. Tremor Avatar
      Tremor

      Lol, NI komplet is like $800, if you can’t afford it then pirate it. They tried to make producing music a rich man’s game, I say go get them pirated tools

  13. Tom Hamlish Avatar
    Tom Hamlish

    Doesn’t make sense at all. You can still do great with cracked stuff. Don’t try to be politically right and escalate the problem.

    I see plugin piracy is not even a moral problem. If some kids downloaded the cracked plugins and made a hit (perhaps not immediately, but after they are able to learn how to use the plugins properly), I’m sure they’ll come back and buy those plugins. They won’t afford those plugins anyway so why not let them use. I believe that cracking has made the tools available to more ppl and a portion of them eventually become professional producers/engineers and come back and support those developers. If they are not serious with their music, even in a world with no piracy, they won’t buy the legit version anyway, making no profit for the plugin maker what so ever. Software makers most of the time have exaggerated how piracy made them loss money but actually they have benefit from it in the long run. Piracy has created a prosperous music making industry. Those who become professionals will for sure buy legit stuff just because that the most convenient way. It’s not comparable with stealing things from supermarket which would cost an actual loss for the market. Downloading cracked software most of the time won’t cause a loss, because again, they won’t buy legit with or without piracy.

    I myself is a good example. I am a big plugin buyer right now. Spent tons on plugins, Vsts and stuff. I never would have become what I am if those softwares weren’t available by cracking. Now I don’t even care looking at cracks simply because the cost for legit ones are really nothing to me now. And I would love to pick up the phone and complain to the makers whenever problem arise. Downloading from the official website is much faster. I don’t want to solve the problem during the cracking because that’s a waist of time with which I can earn much more than the plugin. But, what about those kids who don’t have money buying these stuff and they are passionate about music making? Should they give up? If they “stole” the plugins, what loss will the plugin company have? Nothing really. Some plugin maker spent too much on pirate prevention. Not only haven’t they successfully stopped pirating, they cause big trouble for legit users. At the end of the day it’s the legit users that’s paying for those nonsense.

    Also, for stealing in general. If everybody can make a decent living, who care about stealing? OK, stealing is wrong, should those who can’t afford food starve to death? Who caused the poverty? Those who make big load of money by manipulating the stock market, real estate, they are not stealing everyone else’s hard work? Now they start judging how stealing food from super market is morally wrong. How hypocritical.

  14. Tremor Avatar
    Tremor

    This is just BS, the bottom line is this, you’re epithet a music periodic oor not, you either have the gift of making music or you don’t. Buying Legit software won’t make you an artist.

    Thi article is null and void, buying those expensive plug-ins will nat make you broke. By me buying the software mean that when I make that killer track it’s going to be purchased enough for me to make my money back.

    I’m an electrician, all to tools I have bought have paid for themselves by now. If you’re a painter then most likely one or two paintings would repay all my material costs.

    So far in 15 years I’ve been making musuch I have not sold enough music to pay for the $15,000 plus I have invested over the years, I haven’t even made enough money to pay just for the computer let aone cubase. So what you’re saying here is spend all my money, make music, sign up to a low level label and make $3.50 off it, that won’t even pay for the electricity to run my pc for a week. I say everyone should try art and if you can get the pirated software to see if you’re an artist then go for it, when you start playing out as a dj and earning ridiculous amounts of money then yeah, go spend that cash, but until then, use pirated soframe to just see if you’re an artist or not, and not everybody is an artist I’m afraid to say.

    1. DJ Ash-X Avatar
      DJ Ash-X

      I started out getting pirated versions of software in early 2000’s but for the past 2 decades have just ended up purchasing it. Only reason is it takes time to crack the software and now all the pirated software comes with viruses. But regardless of cracked or not, making a decision to purchase a software has me thinking twice on whether or not a plug-in or software is useful. And now everthing comes with a trial period to see if it fits your workflow or if it brings value to you. I prefer that route as I have experienced that limitations really help with creativity and I can use the cost of plug-ins to really limit my toolkit until I deperately need it. I was using Ableton Live 10 Lite license which came with hardware I bought for almost 2 years, until I couldn’t handle the limitation of 8 tracks anymore. Then I upgraded by paying Ableton which was $$$. It was painful in the beginning but the satisfaction was much greater and limited my scope to really have to learn that software in and out. For me, paying for something forces you to learn all the bells and whistles. I truly believe that limitation help with creativity and most plug-ins are so similar it is ridiculous.

      1. Ilpo Kärkkäinen Avatar
        Ilpo Kärkkäinen

        Well said. I completely agree. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

  15. Music Equalizer Avatar
    Music Equalizer

    There is insane captilism in the market. There shouldnt have to be a $700 price tag on a plugin for talented muscians. This is a rich mans game article. I think a lot of the devs and engineers need to get off their soap box. They contribute to manipulating the market making it hard even for an entry level person to create something God himself gave them the gift to do. And most who slam on people who pirate their software are mostly people who have no real talent or skill in music, come from a lifestyle of wealth, dont tell the full truth, or are making statements such as this to appease the devs of the software they use with a boot licking impression.

    Music isant a rich man or womans game, music is a God endowed gift that should be cherrished. The industry has made it more about money rather than the music. As many have stated here before, most of the best composers, producers you know started with crack software and bought the copies as soon as they had the return well over if they had bought it starting out. Whats the worry? Are people mad because they couldnt find stable copies of something that they themselves couldnt get? You can spend thousands on gear and plug-ins but the soul fact is what are you getting back from it? Social accpetance? The regulation needs to stop. Let people make great music because its not anyones place to dictate who is allowed to create based off of “how much you invested.”

    The only thing that garuntees your greatness in music, the only investment that can garuntee any of it, is Time itself.

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