Not intended to be offensive, John. Just basic marketing. Look, do you honestly think the larger companies spend a FORTUNE on making their demos professional, if there was no effectiveness in it..? That they just ENJOY pi$$ing away money for no good reason?
Are you a gigging musician? Have you got a website where potential employers can hear you play, or see a video of you working the crowd? Or do you have a demo tape in the hands of an agent or two? Most of us do. Somehow, the idea that an agent or club shouldn't HAVE to listen to us before they decide to hire us seems absurd. Word of mouth only gets you so far. Sooner or later, you have to make a band demo...
What makes your product any different? Why are YOUR Performances the sole exception to the fact that advertizing sells, and the first rule of advertizing is, let the customer SEE the product (or hear it, in your case)..?
"Relying on demos is a waste of time" is probably right? Give me a break! There is NO-ONE in the industry that agrees with this. Or do you just think that EVERYBODY else is wrong, and only Bill is right? That's quite a limb you are out on. I would say, try to find some examples of really successful products that have NO advertizing (or pictures of the product or examples of the product the consumer can quickly compare).... No? Maybe you are wrong, then?
Look, I don't care one way or the other whether you make the demos or not. All I have tried to do is point out that it wouldn't be anywhere NEAR as expensive as you think, and that no other product, soundware or not, tries to persuade people to try it without providing ANY example. You started out trying to SELL these, and now you are giving them away with a suggested donation. Tell me again about you being right about marketing, and everybody else is wrong...
All I would like to see, to be frank, is you be successful. I have often posted in the past about how few there are making styles and setups for us any more, and that I would like to see things like protected memory areas and things like this to bring a degree of copy protection back to software creators, and help them make a decent living from it, which will only make more and more do it. Which only benefits us all. To see you deliberately ignoring proven marketing techniques is just frustrating, as I would like to see you succeed.
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An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!