dore_m I keep wondering how to monetize some of my work, but think its not worth the significant effort of making a youtube channel, posting on message boards, meeting the "influencers".
The piano VI software market is pretty saturated. We see over 100 "professional" piano VIs in the database, plus lots of others, like those on PianoBook. That said only a few Piano VIs stand-out. Even with a new superb piano VI, I think the marketing side requires a lot of time, effort, and money.
The music industry and professional studios have imploded over the past two decades so that reduces the pool of buyers.
Cheap storage has been around long enough that a lot of VIs have been running good quality samples at 44.1/16 or better with lots of layers.
VSL's platform seems ideal, catering to high-end industry players. That can't be an easy market to break into.
Kontakt seems like an attractive platform. But the software agreement is complex and you still need to market the VI. Can Kontakt support good pedaling behaviour? And Kontakt had been doing some serious reorg so I'm not sure how healthy that ecosystem really is.
Not to discourage you as I think there still are profitable niches here and there. I sense Garritan, PianoTeq, and some of the Kontakt pianos have enjoyed a fantastic run. We see in the forums that there are plenty of classical pianists, producers, movie composers, etc. always in the market for better and new sounds. If you can get some traction in PianoWorld, vi-control, KVR etc. . .
