With 3000€/$3000 USD, it is simply too expensive for most indie developers.įor commercial third-party libraries, the price depends on the number of licenses and the price the developer asks for. I think you can already see at this point why the market for free Kontakt Player is soo tiny. If the library attracts more people, you can buy another batch for the same price. The price differs here from a free to a commercial library.įor a FREE, aka promotional release, the developer has to pay 2500€/$2500 USD and get in exchange 25000 NFR serial numbers. Then the developer has to decide how many licenses he wants to generate for his library. Ouch, that’s a lot of money, especially for small developers. According to Native Instruments, this covers the development services for encoding, plus QA and integration into the NI ecosystem. Two scenarios: if a developer wants to release a free or commercial Kontakt Player instrument, they must contact the NI team and pay a one-off encoding fee of $1000 for each library. High Price For A 100% Free or Commercial Instrument The same applies to Reaktor Player libraries. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a free or a commercial library, both require them and cost a lot to the developer. This is because KP libraries require a Native Access 1/2 enabled license which costs the developer money. Kontakt PlayerĪlmost everyone has downloaded an exciting Kontakt Library and then, unfortunately, noticed that it cannot be played in the Kontakt Player or that it only lasts 15 minutes as a demo.

But don’t worry, I will give you some details. The answer is relatively simple, but you have to know the background details that Native Instruments like to hide from the public. Again and again, questions come from the community, especially from the free plugin community, about why there are so few Kontakt Player libraries available. Native Instruments Kontakt Player, however, is just a stripped-down version and a player for licensed libraries. With the regular Kontakt sampler, you can design custom instruments, play third-party libraries, etc. Both are currently in the seventh version but differ significantly. There are two versions of NI’s flagship soft sampler: Kontakt, the full version, and the Player. There are tons of them, from small, fascinating sound designers to big players. Plugins and Kontakt libraries have something in common. Native Instruments Kontakt Player: many wonder why there are so few free and commercial releases, the answer is simple!

Kontakt 6 free player