What it costs, and why it stays that way

The rule

A new device launches at its list price, and the list price is never discounted: no launch offer, no Black Friday, no summer sale, no weekend deal, no discount code in a newsletter. A list price can go up when a device has grown into more than it was at launch — never down, and never for a few days. When it changes, the changelog says so on the day, and anyone who already bought keeps every update at the price they paid. If you buy on a Tuesday in March you pay what everybody pays. The one thing that is not a discount is a bundle, and there is a section below about why.

That costs us money in November and we know it. The industry discounts between 50 and 70 % on Black Friday. The trade is worth it: a list price that means something, and no reason for you to wait.

The prices

In US dollars, before tax. One payment each, all future updates included.

Bundles

A bundle looks like a discount and we would rather say out loud why it is not one. A bundle is its own product. It has its own price, and buying it does not make any single device cheaper — CAIRN stays $49 the day the bundle appears and the day after. Nobody who bought a device separately paid too much for it.

What you are paying for is scope, not a sale: six paid devices instead of one, in one transaction, with one serial per device arriving in one email. The complete bundle is $99 against $234 for the same six bought one at a time. Oscillate DJ comes with PHONOLITH included — the same idea: PHONOLITH stays $19 on its own.

Two rules keep it from turning into the thing this page argues against. The bundle price is fixed the same way a device price is — it does not drop in November. And a bundle names its devices. It is not a season pass: what is listed on the bundle page is what you get, and a device we build next year is a new decision, not a debt we already owe you. If a bundle ever does include future devices, it will say so on that page in those words, before you pay.

Updates

All future updates included. No subscription, no upgrade fees. Not "free within version 1", not "free for a year" — every update to a device you have, for as long as we offer that device. If a device gets better, the people who already bought it get the better device. If a new operating system breaks it, fixing that is our job, not a reason to sell you the same thing again. Should a device ever be rebuilt from scratch into a genuinely different product, that is a new product with a new name — not an update, and you can ignore it.

Every version is listed with what changed in the changelog, one list per device. When an update is out, we send one short mail to everyone who owns the device, and the download under My licenses is always the newest version.

Your licence, and what happens if we disappear

A serial here is not a key stored on a server. It is a calculation over your email address: the device does the same arithmetic on your machine and either the numbers match or they do not. That has three consequences worth stating plainly.

That last one is the point. Plugin companies close, get bought, switch their licensing. When their servers go off, the plugins go with them. Nothing here needs a server to run, so there is nothing to switch off. The one thing a plugin hears from us besides update notes: whether a licence was refunded — then that serial is switched off. A plugin that never goes online keeps working. Lose the serial and My licenses sends it again; lose the email address and write to us, we move it.

Why there is no demo

There used to be one, and we took it out. At these prices a trial clock costs you more than the device does: download, install, play for two minutes, hit the wall, go back to the website, buy, install again. That is twenty minutes of your evening to save a decision you could make in one.

So instead of a crippled version, we put the things you would actually use to decide where you can see them for free: the full interface at full resolution, the manual and an audio or video example. That goes for every paid plugin. That is why every sale is final once the download starts — and why we fix it, or refund you, if a plugin does not run on a supported system.

What is free, and what free means

TARN, OSCILLATE CUE and TALUS are all complete devices and cost an email address — nothing held back, no expiry, no nag screen, no feature reserved for a version that costs money. It is the honest way to find out whether the things this label builds are for you. The demo on the OSCILLATE CUE page is the whole device running in your browser, and the download by mail is the same device, unlocked from the start.

Refunds and tax

Prices on this site are in US dollars before tax. VAT or sales tax for your country is added at checkout, where you see the total before you pay. Sales run through our online reseller Link (a Stripe company) as merchant of record, which means your invoice, your VAT and your refund are handled by a company that does that for a living. The download starts right after payment, so the purchase is final; if a plugin does not run on a supported system, we fix it or refund you. The refund page says exactly what happens, and an email to [email protected] reaches a person.

This page is a commitment, not a campaign. If it ever changes, it changes before the prices do — not afterwards.