Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
Bastards.
This. In fact f##k YT for nothing aside funneling (with care since they are taking off accounts funneling into twitch) and go directly twitch creative or if you ask me about future winning platforms dtube/dlive/steemit.
to get some context I checked channels for 2 entertainment items: Procreate and Plague Inc. 300/800k subscribers, playback per video 300/400k.
That simply is another dimension and Apple probably didn't even bother about music creation at all.
They've always been kind of ambigous in this context.
Exactlty this is all about control and power to get more revenue. By killing the affiliate program you demotivate a lot of (pro)reviewers and free today and price cut app sites. This means that besides consumers looking for an attractive price cut also developers will find it harder to promote their apps. In the end consumers and devs get more dependent on Apple's Appstore and we all know how such a mess this store is.
The irony is that they specifically mention their new App Store as a key reason for stopping the affiliate program. Even if you know where to look it's nigh impossible to find music apps in that new store - unless the apps get handpicked by the editorial team for a special feature. So with the new store the role of the review affiliates was actually more important than ever. Thanks Apple!
Agree, the new App Store is one big mess. It's frustrating for me as a consumer and also for devs. As I said earlier it's about control. Apple will be more and more able to push the apps that they think people need. And this will probably not be the cheapiest. They also could push agenda's like apps with subscriptions, because they make more money and keep consumers even more hooked to their eco system.
This drop of affiliate program should not be underestimated.
Keeping up the IOS-9 resistance I may be locked out of that ecology sooner or later ...
I have never, ever bought an app due to seeing it advertised on the store. The apps I want to buy are hidden away.
This forum, YouTube and blog reviews are essential to me for finding appropriate products for my needs.
The long-term implications of this short-term profit grabbing move are potentially very serious for iOS as a music making platform.
It just proves Apples best dongles are the Corp Execs.
I also learn about apps to buy from sites like this and YT videos. I never use the App Store except to make the purchase. It’s nice that YouTubers got a little bit of pay for their work from Apple when an app was bought, but is that what has driven the making of videos? It’s not much money is it? I think most do it because they like doing it, and then getting support through Patreon and/or promoting other things they sell. I could be totally wrong, but I’ve always thought the affiliate program pay was mere pocket change. That’s why I try to support the big iOS video producers in other ways.
I don’t know if it’s a good or bad business decision for Apple, but that is of course the bottom line for them.
I used to run a lot of info type websites, and they generated a small amount of income from a collection of sources - ad clicks, affliliate clicks and purchases, and general advertising. Over the course of a few years the affiliate programs I was on screwed me (they kept putting up the amount required before paying out - so I couldn't collect earnings, then closed their programs unexpectedly - taking my earnings with them), Adwords and other advertising recenue dropped from hundreds of pounds per month to pennies - courtesy of ad blockers. So from making a little bit of cash from my sites, I ended up working for a loss since I had hosting and other costs to factor in. Plus any earnings have to be declared, so there's accounts to do and tax to pay.
I'm sure vloggers and bloggers enjoy what they do, but as well as their time, there is a cost to them in equipment and other bills. Every time an affiliate or other avenue of income is cut off, it reduces the amount they receive for their work, and the incentive to do so. Hopefully those using Patreon will be able to make up for the loss with new subscribers - otherwise they'll be out of pocket and might decide to pack it all in, just as I did.
I just posted a Vlog about my initial thoughts about this on my Patreon page.
This is very very bad news indeed for people like me, Jakob, Tim, Jason and Dean and many many others too.
Interesting I’ve bought (way too many?) apps just based on this forum. But the majority of it had been influenced by the general community here not the affiliate driven activities.
Yeah, I just came back from watching Doug’s video. Sorry for your loss, Doug. I can see for the bigger video makers, the little bits of pay add up to something.
I think the problem is always there, that we iOS music-makers are just a very tiny market, and I’d bet Apple didn’t even consider our niche when making the decision. For apps in general, they must figure they don’t need whatever overhead is involved in managing the affiliate program. Our market has always relied on people producing for little to nothing—mostly for the love of it. Unless Apple changes the policy, the best bet seems to boost the number of Patreon supporters, and those of us already in, upping the donation.
I think the move sucks, mostly because it seemed so mutually beneficial to all parties. Basically cheap advertising for Apple, etc, etc.. Hopefully our favorites will be able to come up with other revenue streams to counter this...good luck!!!
I’m on fixed income now so can’t do much but I do support several of the iOS bloggers on Patreon and will continue to do so...just wish I could do more.
Makes me sick :-(
The absolute worst part is that this beautifully designed, maintained, and free, no ads forum has been paid for by the affiliate payout from the extensive catalog of apps at http://audiob.us/apps
I’m sure the forum will go on strong, but I think we will eventually hear from Michael about all this.
iOS music making is indeed a small market but consider the (presumably larger) gamer audience, TouchArcade has posted something that predicts a very bleak future if they lose their revenue.
https://toucharcade.com/2018/08/01/apple-kills-the-app-store-affiliate-program-and-i-have-no-idea-what-we-are-going-to-do/
Apple is just clueless, this is counter-productive even to their precious bottom line.
Agree with your point, but as a lot of people here I always buy through the affiliates that are also on this forum. It is/ was no extra effort to click on their links to the App Store and they earn an extra dime
And let us not forget Doug and co. do a great job in video reviewing the latest audios apps!
Corporations do exceptionally well for themselves at the expense of everyone. It’s the world we live in. I don’t have the inside information, so I’ll wait to see how clueless Apple is about this. Whether it’s good business for them or not isn’t going to help people who rely on the affiliate program.
The irony of all this of course is they are just glorified affiliates themselves. They don’t make any of this stuff, but take a commission on sales from developers.
In an ideal world, developers would have the option to offer affiliate programs themselves. But of course they can’t, as they’re tied into a closed system.
Doesn’t smell good, this.
It's the affiliates that sometimes surprised me with new apps, certainly not the App Store's search function
It just dawned on me that "increased methods of app discovery" probably refers to the fact that as developer you can now pay to have your apps higher up in the search results
Let’s see...
Facebook makes its money selling ads and hope. Amazon’s most profitable areas now include the selling of ads and hope.
I bet Apple has all kinds of great plans for selling developers ad placements and hope.
Five years ago self employed people had a reasonable hope that if they created a quality product, sales could gain traction by producing happy customers. But now, pleasing the customer is apparently less important than buying ad placements and marketing to people who buy whatever junk they see in the most ads.
They really have come a long way in distilling the idea of “a consumer” into its purest essence. Product quality is turning into whale blubber. (See Brian Eno interview to explain the whale blubber reference https://dangerousminds.net/comments/brian_eno_equates_recorded_music_with_whale_blubber )
Ads and hope are for people who don't know what they want. Content creators do. So we are a niche and apple doesn't care about us, obviously. They like whales who have no clue about what they are doing and so they will dump any little business for the greater good of their mighty sales.
Before when apps were still available thru iTunes on the computer it was possible to browse all apps in a category sorted alphabetically, by date added, date modified. Now we just have the lame 'TOP Lists' for Free/Paid/Top-Gross.
I personally enjoyed browsing around all the apps. The 'curated lists' hardly cover 'everything' and my gut says if one knows someone who curates app lists it's easy enough to pay them off to get ones app featured.
What Apple could do is to contract some of the 'high profile' users in each category and let them do the curation?
(Now Imagine if @thesoundtestroom had a separate section at the AppStore? That would be totally awesome!).
Exactly