Black Friday, Cyber Monday, end of November, whatever … your inbox is likely overflowing with random sale prices. Here are a few of our favorite, in case you want to shop for yourself or others this weekend.
Updated – see also our Cyber Monday deal (but many of these below are still going)!
https://cdm.link/2018/11/cyber-monday-means-still-more-deals-on-music-software/
(Food coma, America, for instance? Winter blues, everyone in the northern bit of Earth?)
And yeah, with so much noise out there, these are the ones you might actually want to take advantage of.
The insane-est free-ish software deals deals
A reader tips us off that a whopping 46 GB of samples from Samples from Mars – 5 years of work, their entire product line – is US$39 instead of $1,367.00. In terms of percentage, that may be the steepest non-free discount I’ve seen yet. (Thanks, Davo!)
Waves have their brand-new Sibilance vocal plug-in for free with email. (Yeah, I signed up for it, actually.) Looks promising – Black Friday free plug-in.
And Waves have a bunch of other discounts and free plug-ins with purchase, meaning you can stock up for a fraction of the normal price.
Sibilance, Waves’ newest plug-in, is free this weekend.
pluginboutique has iZotope Neutron Elements for free if you sign up for their newsletter, and they’ve put all their plug-in discounts in one place. That means instead of digging through your inbox for lots of different plug-in developers, you can check everything on one page – and pricing starts at just US$1 for some of those plugs (really – check the AIR instruments and effects).
And Arturia have the entire V Collection – that’s a massive bundle of emulations of just about every instrument you can imagine – for just US$249, or even $199 if you already own something from them:
https://www.arturia.com/black-friday
Arturia want you to spring for it and own all of this … well, virtually speaking.
Yes, gear deals
US retailer Sweetwater are all over this one. Even rarely-discounted gear like Moog is on sale (Mother-32 for $100 off?) They also have some picks of their own on their blog.
But Sweetwater’s Roland deals are especially sweet. $399 for the SE-02 analog synth is a steal, and the original TR-8 drum machine is just $299, which might beat what you can get it for used.
ProAudioStar has a load of deep discounts, too. How about a KORG Monologue for US$229? (That’s cheaper than I can get from the KORG sticker price even if I twist their arm, and it means the Minilogue I just sold will just turn me a profit. Plus they have all three colors. And it’s one of my favorite recent synths – with microtuning, too.)
They’ve also got the Beatstep Pro for $159 (that’s a no-brainer – if you don’t have it, just get it), and Behringer Model D and Neutron for $225 (plus the DeepMind 6 for $369.99):
https://www.proaudiostar.com/landing/black-friday-2018/keyboard-synth.html
Going back in time a bit with KORG, Kraft have the beloved original microKORG for US$254.99.
And Sam Ash has the brand new IK Multimedia Uno synth for $150.
More favorite tools on sale
We just covered Tracktion making their engine open source; well, their full range of software is on sale. That includes Tracktion Waveform 9 Basic $60 (or $30 for an upgrade).
Visualists, all of Resolume’s VJ and visual tools are half off through Monday. Vidvox VDMX is down to $249 or $99 student/starving artists.
I already mentioned that Softtube has deep discounts on their software, including their modular platform and the superb Console 1. These Swedish developers have some of the best sounding stuff out there, so I have to give them a nod.
Speaking of excellent boutique emulation, Soundtoys has some serious 50-80% discounts on their plug-ins, including some starting for just US$30. I’ve been addicted to their EchoBoy Jr.; you can go ahead and leap for the non-junior edition, for instance.
And Universal Audio have been rolling out one new discount each day for 12 days which are … not the 12 Days of Christmas, but whatever. It seems those discounts stay to the end, so you’ll have all the deals by the last day of November if you set an alarm.
And we covered at the beginning of the month a big sale on Output’s bundle of instruments and effects.
Accusonus’ powerful mixing and production tools are on sale, as well.
Round-up of round-ups!
GearSlutz has a running discussion thread
Attack Magazine has a handful of picks
itsoundsfuture did a nice job of grabbing all the steepest software discounts.
SynthAnatomy has a beautiful, super comprehensive spreadsheet-style view with hundreds of deals. Exhaustive! (Nice, Tom!)
Get some music, too!
Indie darling Bandcamp is seeing loads of self-released producers and small labels doing their own sale. Assuming you signed up for mailing lists when you bought music – and you really should, as it helps artists – you can just search your inbox for loads of little deals. For instance, fans of techno producer Truncate, check out 60% off his whole discography!
Beatport, which has also been a home to a lot of sales for indie and underground labels (really, not just the big deep house hits) – type in CYBERSALE at checkout and unlock up to 50%. (Yeah, time to clear out my current cart there, too.)
Most unexpected Black Friday deal?
noiiz.com used the opportunity to post their jobs board. So if you need to get a job to, uh, pay for all the stuff above – give them a go.